Editorials

• If only there was sex ed for parents: Why the older generation needs it

  Editorials October 18, 2010 at 3:35 pm Comments are Disabled

  Parents like getting worked up because it’s easier than parenting.

   

• The right government for America: What the people need and why

  Editorials October 18, 2010 at 3:33 pm Comments are Disabled

  Alan Moore penned a column two weeks ago about the political left and college education. I, too, have heard about the college horror stories: liberal professors quoting everything from Mao to Marx and demonizing conservatives. While it is not a sin to be liberal, I do resent the imposition of beliefs on a captive audience of students. Unfortunately, I have seen some subtle and some outward attempts to do just that in my short time at George Mason University. In the past year, I have pinned down a couple of the most pervasive assumptions among liberal academia. For the record, I’ve heard some here at Mason and others were taken from other universities. First, on most issues it seems the liberal view is that individuals are not capable of fully living their lives, spending their money or making important life choices. This takes many forms. Many would claim that we are simply too small in the scheme of things. We are so little compared to the big corporations and thus need someone to always help us fight them. While that view tends to be the most pervasive, I discovered it was only the first layer of the onion. When you […]

   

• Job Poll

  Editorials October 18, 2010 at 12:13 pm Comments are Disabled

  Over the past year, would you say it has been easier or harder to get a job? (polls)

   

• Indoctrination or education?: What students really get on campus

  Editorials October 4, 2010 at 4:44 pm Comments are Disabled

  College wasn’t always the cross between the bachelor party and study hall that it now resembles. As hard as this may be to believe, parents used to be OK with sending their kids to college because it wasn’t as disreputable a place as a crack house.

   

• Being Pro-constitution: What does it honestly mean?

  Editorials October 4, 2010 at 3:48 pm Comments are Disabled

  So you finally did it. A couple weeks into school, and you finally picked a weekend to make a trip into the District of Columbia. But when you get to the Metro, you find that your excitement about seeing panda bears has given way to befuddled confusion. Picket signs, anger towards the system…is the Million Man March today? Never mind, all these people are white…is the Klan having a rally? Nope, no hoods; there are lots of crosses though. Then, as the doors on the train close behind you, you see a “Beck-Palin 2012” bumper sticker stuck to the back of a USS Ronald Reagan cap; you then realize that you’ve just bought a ticket with the Tea Party. “I can make the best of it,” you think, as you attempt to make casual conversation with the man to your right, wearing an “Eliminate the Fed” T-shirt. You ask the man about his views, to explain the shirt, how he disagrees with the current administration, and one term keeps coming up again and again: pro-Constitution. You look around, and there are signs, T-shirts, stickers, all talking about restoring or supporting the Constitution. But what does that mean? Technically, aren’t all […]

   

• Mountaintop removal: Students rally to help Appalachia

  Editorials October 4, 2010 at 3:46 pm Comments are Disabled

  On Sept. 27, more than 2,000 people from all over the nation gathered in the District of Columbia to protest mountaintop removal mining in a movement called Appalachia Rising. Preceding Monday’s events, a two-day conference was held at Georgetown University consisting of workshops, speakers and live music preparing participants for the day of action. Several Mason students from the Environmental Action Group attended the conference and march. Three students, Emily Miles, Jason Von Kundra and I, along with more than 100 other people were arrested while trying to bring attention to the issue. Occurring specifically in the Appalachian Mountains, MTR is an extremely destructive form of strip mining where coal companies clear-cut the forests on mountaintops then blow them up with explosives to get to the underlying coal. The solid debris from this is then dumped into the valleys, burying the forest and streams. The liquid waste from coal washing is stored in slurry impoundments containing heavy metals that are toxic to human health. These impoundments have frequently leaked into the streams and into ground water, harming and depleting the indigenous species. Since many of the residents of Appalachia depend on wells for their drinking water, families throughout the region […]

   

• Obama’s long war: President simply won’t listen

  Editorials October 4, 2010 at 3:41 pm Comments are Disabled

  Recently, the war in Afghanistan reached a milestone that is not to be celebrated by Americans. It has become the longest war in U.S. history; for almost 10 years American servicemen and women have been fighting in that country. Here at George Mason University, there are numerous active duty service men and women. The state of Virginia has around a 100,000 on active duty, and the overall active duty American military totals 1.4 million. I hope Americans don’t need a history lesson as to why we’re there. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were planned in the mountainous caves of that nation. The Taliban government enthusiastically sponsored Osama bin Laden’s religious holy war on the U.S. by allowing him and his al-Qaeda terrorist group to work, plot, and train with impunity within their borders. In response to the murder of nearly 3,000 people on 9/11, the U.S. swiftly toppled the Taliban government. We also killed or captured many high profile terrorists operating in Afghanistan, while bin Laden escaped. Many could and have argued that America’s invasion of Iraq was equivalent to taking our eye off the intended target. However, it is worth noting that while al-Qaeda’s Iraq operations were […]

   

• Liberals and education: ‘Perhaps professors are to blame’

  Editorials September 27, 2010 at 3:22 pm Comments are Disabled

  Most people who have been exposed to higher education can reasonably assume the majority of college students identify themselves as liberals. Driving around the George Mason University parking lots you can see an influx of “Obama for President” and cheeky liberal slogans on bumper stickers. Even though most Americans identify themselves as conservative and the latest Gallup poll finds conservatives outnumbering liberals 42-20 percent, this trend is reversed on college campuses. But why? Perhaps professors are to blame. According to a study done by Mason’s Center for Media and Public Affairs, 72 percent of American university and college professors claim to be liberals while only 15 percent are conservative. Additionally, 50 percent affiliate themselves with the Democratic Party with only 11 percent claiming to be Republicans. Students attend college to prepare for the real world; it is reasonable to assume that the purveyors of such knowledge directly influence their politics. Why liberalism dominates the faculty of colleges and universities is a different debate entirely. It may have something to do with many professors spending their lives in academia, outside of business and competition. Liberalism is based in fanciful idealism. It would be great if everyone was guaranteed money and benefits […]

   

• Letters to the editor – Sept. 27 issue

  Editorials September 27, 2010 at 3:19 pm Comments are Disabled

  The student secular alliance fires back at Moore On Sept. 13, Alan Moore penned an editorial stating, among other things, that the U.S. Constitution does not mandate a separation of church and state and that the Secular Student Alliance is a threat to American culture. In response to church-state separation, we could go through a litany of court decisions, treaties and comments by the Founding Fathers that prove Mr. Moore wrong, and there are many. What is more important though, is whether we all still understand and agree on its benefits. A secular government is not an atheistic government. It just refuses to take sides on issues of religion. Many theists recognize this protects them and does not hinder them. If schools lead children in prayer, will it be a prayer you agree with? If the creation story is taught in school, will it be your creation story? We’ve spoken with students from a number of theist groups and found almost universally that we share respect and support for church-state separation. But Mr. Moore betrays that his true agenda is political when he attempts to equate non-theism with liberalism. There have been many prominent non-theists who would bristle at such […]

   

• Ladies, trust us, it’s a guy thing: The federal government teaches men to wash their penises

  Editorials September 27, 2010 at 3:14 pm Comments are Disabled

  Maybe the guys at the National Institutes of Health were remembering their early teen years, when washing their genitals was stimulating. For whatever reason, they spent over $800,000 in stimulus money on a research project intended to teach uncircumcised African men to wash their genitals. Perhaps no issue today better showcases our political process’s extent of disrepair than this. It’s all there: a naked boondoggle, a nearly indefensible waste of tax dollars and the approval of both houses of Congress along with the signature of the president. I can’t remember the part in high school history where we learned about the intense debate among the Constitutional Convention delegates regarding penis washing. I’m pretty confident something like that would have caught my attention. There was a time when questions of constitutionality were serious concerns. Not in our lifetimes, granted, but once upon a time. These days, most constitutionality questions quickly turn into bouts of anxious hand-wringing with the moaned mantra, “Oh, if only we had a way of knowing what the intent of the Founders would have been had they foreseen this issue!” On this particular question, there’s no anxiety required. No, James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” did not […]