Friday, November 30, 2012
Don’t Believe the Hype: The Future of Guantanamo Bay
No nation is perfect. Every country has either a checkered past, a disgraceful present, or
an ugly underbelly, although most have some combination of the three. The United States is no exception. With slavery, the brutal treatment of Native
Americans, and the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two in the
past, contemporary America looks pretty good.
This is not to say that there are not problems which should leave a bad
taste in the mouth of patriots; the denial of equal rights to homosexuals
certainly illustrates that point. One issue
which hurts the United States in terms of international standing does not technically
exist in legal terms. This refers to, of
course, Guantanamo Bay.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
The Fiscal Ditch and Republican Economic Brinksmanship
Aside
from the Benghazi incident and the scandal around former C.I.A. director David Petraeus,
the most talked about political issue since the November 6th
elections is the “fiscal cliff.” This
refers to the automatic spending cuts which will affect a substantial amount of
the government and the automatic rise in tax rates across the board due to the
expiration of the Bush-Obama tax cuts.
When looked at through a policy lens, one can see that “fiscal cliff” is
a misnomer. A more accurate term is
“fiscal ditch,” a ditch which separates old policies from new.
Monday, November 26, 2012
The Federalist Farmer's Almanac
Good evening everybody, hope you all had a pleasant Thanksgiving. I am pleased to announce that my blog will resume with shorter updates for the next few weeks while I work on a project entitled "The Federalist Farmer's Almanac" which will include some of my favorite entries thus far, some exclusive content from me along with writing from outside contributors. The project is still in the preliminary stage as I continue to recruit writers. If you are interested in submitting a piece contact me at ciollidominic@gmail.com. My first post back should be up later tonight or tomorrow morning.
Welcome back.
Welcome back.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Important Programming Note
As the temperatures drop and winter approaches, the Farmer is going into hibernation for a few weeks while I write a pivotal paper for one of my classes and work on a super-secret project, details of which will be given shortly.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
The Fallacies of an Ideological Victory Lap (or Tailspin)
Now that the
2012 elections are in the books, President Barack Obama has earned another term
in the White House with an impressive electoral victory of 332 electoral votes
to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s 206. With President Obama’s victory, social media
exploded with happiness amongst those who lean towards the Democratic Party
while those who sympathize with the Republican Party reacted with bitterness
and disappointment.
However, in the afterglow of the
election, the expectations for the next four years baselessly swung to the
extremes for both parties. Democrats
began praising America for accepting the equality of all people regardless of
sexuality, the acknowledgement amongst Americans that the rich should pay more,
and extolling the basic promotion of freedom.
Republicans once again retreated to their metaphorical bunkers –
stockpiled with guns, ammunition, and canned goods – to shield themselves from
the coming storm of socialism and demonization of those with wealth.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
The State of Statehood
On November 6th, while
all eyes were fixed on Ohio and Florida, waiting to see who would win the
presidential election, an often forgotten member of the United States was
holding a monumental referendum. Puerto
Rico, an America territory since the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898,
voted for the first time in its history to become a state. This does not end the process, however, as
the procedure to become a state does not often run smooth.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
The Death of Peacetime
Much is made
about how the United States has not fought a war since World War Two, labeling
all the other conflicts “police actions” or a myriad of other excuses. But the reality is that the United States in
the past seven decades has been one of the most bellicose powers the world has
ever seen. In the second half of the
twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty first, America has had
thirteen presidents, and every single one of them have seen American troops on
the ground in foreign nations. The
reason for this militaristic attitude is twofold: first, because of America’s emergence as a
superpower and two, because of the most astonishingly abrupt ideological shift
in the history of American politics.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Gun Control and the Supreme Court
If
1968 was the year of the assassination, with both Robert Kennedy and Martin
Luther King, Jr. falling victim to deranged assailants,
then 1981 was the year of the failed assassination. In March of that year, newly elected
President Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley, Jr., but survived after he
was quickly rushed to a hospital. A mere
six weeks later, Pope John Paul II was shot four times while in Vatican City by
Mehmet Ali Ağca. Pope John Paul,
however, also managed to survive this attempt.
Despite the failure of these two assassinations, a wave of fear spread across
the United States that gun violence would spill into the everyday lives of
regular citizens. Anti-gun sentiment
reached a fever pitch, particularly in Chicago where the murder rate stood its
highest point in years. Mayor Jane Byrne
proposed a ban on the possession of handguns, giving citizens who obtained a
license before the ban grandfather-clause immunity. The gun control law passed along with several
similar laws across the nation. It
seemed as though the gun control question was settled until, in 2007, a lawsuit
reached the Supreme Court and once more opened the Pandora’s box of gun control
laws.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Socialism of the Wealthy
In my
experience, the most common barb levied at the Democratic Party’s desire to tax
the income of the wealthiest two percent of Americans at a higher rate, as well
as maintaining and increasing the capital gains and estate taxes is that such
efforts are socialistic attempts to take hard-earned money from the successful
to give to those who are lazy and unsuccessful.
While I believe that I thoroughly debunked the argument regarding higher
income taxes, as well as the supposed laziness of the poor, I am focusing on
the capital gains and estate taxes in this venture into the murky waters of
economic theory.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
The Two Types of Vigilantism: Political Vigilantism
If you missed Part One, concerning criminal vigilantism, check the
archive to the right, as well as the post immediately below this one. Without further ado, I give you a discussion
on political vigilantism.
The Two Types of Vigilantism: Criminal Vigilantism
I believe
that there is a streak in our society of slipping into delusions of potential
grandeur wherein the common man becomes some sort of action hero. This was seen in dazzling display after the
Aurora theatre shootings where several commentators on the bastion of
conservatism, Fox News, lamented the fact that nobody in the theatre was
carrying a firearm of their own. They
believed that if somebody had a gun, they could have used it to protect
themselves and the other innocents in the theatre by shooting and stopping
James Holmes before he could kill and injure as many people as he did. While in reality, the likely result of such a
scenario would be more causalities, I have wondered what gives so many
intelligent people such a faulty assumption prone to a sense of vigilantly
idealization. The answer, I believe,
lies deep within our nation’s history and all the way back to a medieval folk
tale of the nation from which we took our independence, England.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Israel and the International Community's Inability to End it's Exercitation of the Rights of Conquest
With the
supposed “death of war” which has accompanied the widespread rise of liberal
democracies, as there is a general unwillingness of democracies to go to war,
especially against other democracies, the concept of conquest has almost
completely disappeared from international discourse. In the age of kingdoms and empires, conquest
was one of the most important goals of governments as can be seen by such
conquering powers as the Macedonians, the Romans, and especially the Mongols. While the issue has almost been rendered
irrelevant since the end of World War Two, a lone nation still exercises the
right of conquest over two territories with enormous geopolitical consequences
to today’s world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)