Liberty Forum of Fordham University

Chadwick Ciocci speaks at CPAC

2010-02-23T13:30:00.001-08:00

Be sure to check out this video of Chadwick Ciocci speaking at CPAC 2010: http://bit.ly/CPACspeech

Election Recap

2009-11-13T10:43:00.000-08:00

By Patrick Coughlin

PCoughlin@Fordham.edu

On November 3rd, voters in New Jersey, southern New York and Virginia sent a message to the Democratic Party by defeating Gov. Jon Corzine, Westchester County Executive Andy Spano and Creigh Deeds in favor of Chris Christie, Rob Astorino and Bob McDonnell, respectively. Their decision clearly states that excessive taxation and rampant corruption will no longer be tolerated.

Whether or not this is a referendum on President Obama or the Democratic-controlled Congress is irrelevant. In tough times, people often vote out incumbents with the hopes that a simple change of the party in power will lead to prosperity. New Jersey and Virginia are cases in point: both states went to Mr. Obama in 2008, and both states voted in Republican governors on November 3^rd. With that in mind, I personally believe that overall anti-incumbent sentiment won the day, regardless of whether policy has actually caused the recent hardships.

What is relevant is the reaction from Democrats following the election returns. On election night, Lawrence Otis Graham, an attorney and best-selling author, was providing election analysis for News12, a local media outlet for the Hudson Valley, a lower region of New York State. In his commentary, he argued that Republican candidates dominated in the aforementioned elections not because of strong Republican support, but rather low voter turnout among typical Democratic constituencies.

In 2008, former Republican presidential candidate John McCain trailed Mr. Obama in the polls for the majority of the race. After his defeat, I did not hear anything among conservatives that echoed the sentiment of Mr. Graham—virtually no one made the argument that Mr. Obama won because Republicans thought getting out to vote for Mr. McCain was a lost cause.

What I get from Mr. Graham’s argument is that when Democrats win, it is because the people support them wholeheartedly while Republicans only win because of Democratic apathy. This argument is outrageous and disgraceful. Westchester has the highest county taxes in the country and New Jersey has the 8^th highest state tax rates in the country. Regardless of political ideology, voters respond when the government excessively raises unnecessary taxes.

Whether this will catapult the Republican Party to victories in the midterm elections is still unknown. But if members of the Democratic Party continue to make asinine comments like Mr. Graham did, it will not be long before voters become disgusted by Democratic arrogance. Perhaps it was arrogance that caused Democrats to not even put much effort into the races. Even if low voter turnout was the cause of the Democratic losses, it was due to the failure of Democrats to mobilize and energize their party around their values, not simple voter apathy.

This should be a wakeup call to Democrats that ignorance towards the citizens they serve will not be accepted. Moreover, Republicans must not squander this opportunity and must return to the party values of fiscal responsibility, limited government and individual accountability.

Liberal Fascism and Obama

2009-10-28T10:02:00.000-07:00

By Chadwick Ciocci

Ciocci@Fordham.edu

(This article was originally published on The Americano.)

Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism is already a must read, but it will undoubtedly become known as visionary if the Obama administration continues its– pardon me– fascistic ways. When the President was (still is?) a candidate, opponents on the right vehemently held that he was a socialist- a real leftist potentially inspired by Marxist ideology and certainly by the radicalness of his associates such as Reverend Wright. And while this assessment isn’t completely off, the fact is that the Obama Administration has proven itself to be far more fascist than socialist.

Take for example this administration’s economic policies. One of the hall-mark signs of European fascism as exemplified by Italy’s Mussolini was government support of big businesses such as banks, manufacturers, etc. Sure, Mussolini removed a few heads of these companies (maybe literally) but supporting these companies became a matter of national prosperity, not just the economic success and failure of the companies themselves.

And while one might assume that businesses did not like this (because those on the left and right both almost always assume that businesses- especially large ones- prefer a capitalist environment,) the fact is that so long as they were doing well, businesses and government alike were hunky-dory. Then came the bad times, when business wasn’t so good. But what was around the corner? Government bailouts.

Fast-forward to today, where government inspired bubbles and regulation not only created the environment where businesses could make good money but alsocreated the conditions under which these businesses (used in the absolute broadest sense) would fail and then require government help to survive. It is a classic Fed/government inspired bubble that hurts everyone in the long run.

Now we have the White House removing and appointing CEO’s and regulating executive pay, and while this might upset the capitalist, who other than the CEO’s and executives being directly affected really minds this fact: we now live in a country where the government will not allow large businesses to fail and collapse. This is classic economic fascism, and yet it gets worse.

Let us move from the economic to the political, where the White House has declared war against Fox News and apparently has an enemies list deeply reminiscent of not just the Wilson administration’s war against the press but Nixon’s misguided attempts at silencing his opposition. Not only was Wilson deeply inspired by the fascistic tendencies that pervaded the Progressive movement he was a leader of, but he implemented those policies with zeal.

Now we have the Obama administration which has essentially nationalized certain companies, directly or indirectly controls the leadership of others and is openly trying to undermine the press which opposes him, and yet we’re surprised by all of this when he and others in his administration openly call themselves progressives!

Don’t be fooled: progressives aren’t the friendly but misguided liberals who live next door. They’re part and parcel of a serious movement in this country with deep intellectual and political roots which seeks to make both individuals and institutions dependent on government well beyond what any socialist in capable of.

Chadwick Ciocci is an editor for Parcbench.com, a student of philosophy and theology at Fordham University and running for his fourth-term in public office in Connecticut.

Lindsey Graham and the Neocon’s Last Grasp at Power

2009-10-26T17:51:00.000-07:00

By Phil Fraietta

Fraietta@Fordham.edu

With the Obama-crazed media of today, one is very likely not to have heard Republican Senator Lindsey Graham’s latest comments on the state of his Party. Senator Graham, like the typical neocon he is, launched a verbal attack on libertarianism and non-interventionism. He even went so far as to say Congressman Ron Paul is attempting to “hijack” the Republican Party and turn it into a party of “angry white men.”

Many members of the audience Senator Graham was speaking to took exception to these comments and began to question him. Senator Graham, in a nutshell, responded that he held no personal disliking towards libertarians and even would encourage them to vote for him, but that he is not a libertarian and will not adhere to any libertarian principles because he will continue to support ideas that “can win.”

Regarding the first half of his response, I would like to question Senator Graham on how he can consider himself a conservative if he will not adhere to any libertarian principles.

Conservative, in the “Reaganite” meaning of the word, refers to one who adheres to the principles of limited government, free-market capitalism and non-interventionist foreign policy. This sounds strangely familiar to libertarianism, because it is libertarianism. As President Reagan said “If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals…”

So if Senator Graham has declared not to adhere to the principles of libertarianism then what principles is he adhering to?

The answer: big government, centrally planned economics and interventionist foreign policy.

These are the very same principles that the Republican Party decided to adhere to during the Bush years. With our ever-expanding budget deficit, Wall Street bailouts and empire-building mission we refer to as “The War on Terror”, the Bush Administration successfully implemented all of these principles.

This brings me to the second half of Senator Graham’s response, specifically the statement “can win.” What exactly did the neocons win Senator Graham?

The Republican Party is currently is the minority party in both houses of Congress, after being the majority just six short years ago. The Republican Party’s neoconservative Presidential Candidate, Senator John McCain, was heavily defeated by President Barack Obama, and the party’s neoconservative Vice-Presidential Candidate, Governor Sarah Palin, became the laughing stock of the country and has disappeared from the national political stage.

All the meanwhile, liberty-minded Republicans, like Congressmen Ron Paul and Jeff Flake have held their Congressional seats for what seems like forever, liberty-minded Republican candidates, like Rand Paul (candidate for the Kentucky Senate), continue to set fundraising records, and the Audit the Fed movement has gained the support of nearly 75% of the American people.

So, Senator Graham, it appears that it is the neoconservatives of the Party that can not win.

It will be interesting to see how leaders of the Republican Party address these comments. Will they continue to support Senator Graham and the neoconservative hold on the party, or will they finally return to the roots President Reagan instilled in the party and subsequently return to their winning ways?

I sincerely hope it is the latter, or the limited government, free-market, non-interventionist values we so dearly love may be lost forever.

Will something good come of Iraq?

2009-10-14T09:52:00.000-07:00

By Douglas Kohn

Kohn@Fordham.edu

This will be the question that all American policy makers, especially Neoconservatives will have to ponder for the years to come. Was Iraq worthwhile with the sacrifice of blood and treasure that came with it? Will it be an example of Arab Muslim democracy and if so, will it help American strategic goals?

In my opinion the answers are no, probably and no.

Just because Iraq is a democracy does not mean that it is going help America’s strategic goals in the Middle East. Iraq is a majority Shiite nation with close historical ties to Iran. The fact that it was ruled for sometime by Saddam Hussein, was basically just a fluke of history.

In spite of its internal divisions and the violence of the last few years, the three Iraqi ethnoreligious subdivisions, Arab Shiite Muslims, Arab Sunni Muslims, and Kurdish Sunni Muslims do not seem to want permanent separation. Iraq is not a completely poverty stricken country and falls in the middle between say, industrialized Western countries and poor African countries. The three groups seem to accept that to move forward they have to participate in the system. But Iraq remains largely anti American even if they see some benefits of having America participate in their security operations.

The two largest beneficiaries of the removal of Saddam Hussein were Iran and the Kurds. Northern Iraq, dominated by the Kurdish ethnic group is the only pro American faction in Iraq and they have started to build a real economy and functioning institutions.

Chances are however, even if it does not openly cooperate with Iran on strategic issues, the new Iraq will not stand in its way.

Further reasons that the Iraq venture can be considered a failure is because we have now essentially seen the end of its Christian community, one of the oldest in the world. For a large part of history, Iraq had a largely cosmopolitan outlook on the world. Not only was it home to a large Christian community, but before the creation of Israel it was home to the oldest (and one of the largest, post Holocaust) Jewish community in the world. The Iraqi Jewish community dated from 586 BC with the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem. Now the Christians, and especially Catholic, communities in Iraq have been devastated.

Further horrid acts are still going on in Iraq. The gay community in Iraq, largely ignored by Saddam, has been subject to inhuman barbarism that it is safe to say no Fundamentalist Christian in the United States, or most other countries, would ever dream of.

So Iraq, even if it is an example of democracy, will remain a very flawed one along the lines seen in South Africa, if I am forced to make a comparison.

2009 New York Students for Liberty Conference

2009-10-09T05:51:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, October 10, 2009, the Columbia University Libertarians will present the 2009 New York Students for Liberty Conference.

From 8:30 am - 8:30 pm, the conference will feature a full day of speakers such as Fred Smith President of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Damon Root of Reason magazine, NYU Economics Professor Mario Rizzo, and many more!

The conference will serve as a forum for learning from experts in fields ranging from economics to history, meeting libertarian leaders and activists, discussing current issues, and sharing advice on best practices for advancing the cause of liberty on campus.

More information about this premier event for liberty can be found here: www.politicalconferences.org/2008/10/ivy-league-alliance-conference.

Begun in 2008, Students For Liberty is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide a unified, student-driven forum of support for students and student organizations dedicated to liberty. To learn more and support this rapidly growing organization, please visit www.studentsforliberty.org.

Regulation versus Wealth

2009-10-08T06:02:00.000-07:00

By Douglas Kohn

Kohn@Fordham.edu

For all the talk of implementing new regulations to tame finance, there are still elements of necessary deregulation that are being overlooked by the Federal Government.

The rules used to say that no one could get a mortgage unless they were able to pay 20% down on their home. This made sense, as the social consequences of having to later kick someone out of their home are more damaging than having large numbers of people not own their own home in the first place. This would still be considered “light touch” regulation.

America simply should restore the old regulation regime but consider deregulating in other areas. One of the most overlooked problems in America today is what the CPA Journal called “The Chilling Effect of Sarbanes-Oxley.” Sarbanes Oxley was passed (as usual, in a panic, with nobody reading all of the bill) in 2002 in response to the unusually large series of corporate scandals that came to light in the previous downturn. Included in these were Enron, Worldcom, Tyco and Arthur Andersen.

Arthur Andersen’s main role in that crisis was to be Enron’s auditor. This means they were an independent body hired by Enron to make sure the company’s books were clear of errors and to discover any possible fraud. As they did not do this correctly through both negligence and corruption, there was a crisis of confidence in the system. In response Sarbanes Oxley was passed to tighten auditing rules. An example of a new regulation was that CEOs had to sign off on the company’s financial statements and on the findings of their independent auditors.

The aforementioned regulation is not one of the more damaging ones, but the climate created by Sarbanes Oxley has made it grossly expensive for medium sized firms to go public on the stock market. The average cost of an Initial Public Offering (IPO) has reached $750,000. The result of this is that many American companies now find it easier (and cheaper) to bring their public offerings overseas, notably on the London Stock Exchange but to others as well.

Reform of Sarbanes Oxley is urgently needed to keep America’s medium sized firms competitive and able to raise money on the stock exchange for growth.

Dealing with Iran

2009-10-07T06:05:00.000-07:00

By Douglas Kohn

Kohn@Fordham.edu

Fareed Zakaria this week made a very prescient call for patience with Iran. Iran is in every manner a threat to the United States and our allies in the region, but it is a manageable threat.

Iran’s behavior calls for increasing international isolation. The prescription for containing Iran should be as follows.

Sanctions should be in place as firmly as possible. The number one sanction that would do the most to destabilize the Ayatollahs would be to lobby Iran’s suppliers of refined gasoline to cut off supplies. Iran, although one of the world’s largest oil producers, lacks the capability to refine its oil supplies into gasoline. There is some debate in policy circles whether sanctions will turn the Iranian population against the regime or that their anger will be toward the West and outside powers in general for making their lives more difficult. Personally I think that the 10 days of protests that took place over the summer illustrate who the people of Iran blame for their problems.

Further security guarantees should be made by the United States to any nation attacked by Iran, or Iran associated affiliates. The United States should use the war in Afghanistan as a way to bolster our presence in the region, while drawing down in Iraq and staging war games that will send a message to the Ayatollahs.

Next, restarting negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians is necessary to delegitimize Hamas and Hezbollah to take away Iran’s stellar reputation in the Arab street that it is the defender of the Palestinians (easier said than done, but it is only one part of the formula).

There is also another significant parallel to the end of World War II that should be realized. Nazi Germany, before it became a greater threat to the world in and of itself, was the main check on the expansion of Soviet Communism. The fact that Hitler eventually became stronger than the Soviets and embarked on a conquest of the world changed the circumstances and forced America to help remove him. Once the Nazi regime was gone, the Soviets had nearly unchecked power to force their no less barbaric ideology on the world.

Now America has removed Saddam Hussein from power, unleashing Iran’s revolutionary zeal on the Middle East. We traded the practice of dual containment on two small powers to now having to fill the gap left by one of the regimes (Hussein).

The final point is that we have been here before. In the 1940s there were calls to use America’s nuclear monopoly to rollback Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and uphold the Kuomintang’s war against Mao’s Communists. But it turned out that these extreme measures were unnecessary. As we have done in the past, we can wait out the Ayatollahs.

It is here, in Fortress America, that we will outlast them.

A Case Aginst Unions

2009-10-06T07:27:00.000-07:00

By Patrick Coughlin

Pcoughlin@Fordham.edu

When the first labor unions were established in the United States, working conditions in nearly all manufacturing facilities were abdominal at best. Factory owners exploited employees, forcing them to work 14+ hour work days without a break in the worst of conditions. Mistreatment of employees nearly overshadowed the benefits the Industrial Revolution brought to the country. In one of the darkest hours of the American worker, labor unions were founded and provided employees with benefits such as an eight hour work days and a fair living wage.

However, labor unions in this country have transformed from champions of worker’s rights to powerful juggernauts that have unduly increased their influence and have stunted economic growth in the process. On average, General Motors must pay $70 in wages and benefits to each current worker per hour (this figure adds together the cost of active and retired workers, divided by the number of hours each current worker is on the clock). This translates to a higher cost of production—approximately $1,200 more—for each vehicle General Motors rolls off the assembly line (The Heritage Foundation). Once again, this figure includes compensation due to both active and retired workers.

To stay competitive with their Japanese counterparts, American car companies need to produce cars with comparable prices. In order to do so, some features such as power windows/door locks and keyless entry must be omitted as standard on certain models. Finally, during the restructuring of GM and Chrysler, the United Auto Workers gained an ownership stake of 17.5% and 65%, respectively. The argument that companies do better when the workers have a stake in its success is only true when the workers are the actual stock holders. In this case, the stock holders are a nightmarish bureaucratic body with only one goal: self-aggrandizement. The same can be held true for the government’s involvement. Unless the American taxpayer sees a dividend check in the mail, he or she does not benefit from having an ownership stake in a failing company.

Labor unions also have a stranglehold on American politics as they traditionally vote in blocs. It should be of no surprise that after receiving heavy union support in this past election cycle, President Obama signed off on a plan to restructure GM and Chrysler which allowed the UAW to take a large ownership stake in both (see above).

This is just a twenty-first century form of political patronage. Why is the public, then, not outraged by this, you may ask? The answer lies in a comment made by President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel: “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” The Obama administration is seemingly using the current economic situation as an excuse to advance its supporters by dressing questionable actions as “beneficial” in these difficult times. This is clear government overreach of the “necessary and proper” clause of Article I of the Constitution.

A case for labor union reform will soon follow.

Decoding Qaddafi

2009-10-06T07:24:00.000-07:00

By Rachel Ring

Ring@Fordham.edu

Libya’s leader Qaddafi made quite a triumphant return to the UN General Assembly. He was bold, brash, and all and all, very happy to be back in the spotlight. Yet, for all of the bravado beneath Qaddafi’s ninety-minute plus tirade, he was trying desperately to show that he is a leader with whom international players can do business with, and that he can be the man to represent the needs of Africa. He tried in part to accomplish this goal by wearing a black brooch of Africa the size of a grown man’s hand while speaking, and wearing all types of flowing, oddly pinned brown robes that apparently were supposed to resemble traditional African wear- what I like to call ‘Qaddafi Couture’.

This choice of garb might seem odd, but for Qaddafi it made at least some sense in trying to manipulate the public. Qaddafi originally came to power in 1969 and since Qaddafi’s take over, civil liberties have been restricted severely, and the quality of life has plummeted as well. Even by the low standards of the North African region, which is by no means a bastion of human rights or free speech (Algeria, Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia are the other countries that make up North Africa), people in Libya have it very rough.

After he came to power, Qaddafi and Libya were in a sense banished from the international community due to the Lockerbie bombing, terrorism concerns, human rights violations, and his general unhinged demeanor. All of these past actions, of course, seem to be at odds with the UN’s concerns for human rights, but Qadaffi tried to polish his image with these groups by attending the Council on Foreign Relations meetings. This is obviously an irreconcilable paradox, but to Qaddafi, that does not matter. His appearance at the meeting alone signifies that he is back on the world scene after all of the sanctions and silent treatment from the West.

Qaddafi was elected head of the African Union last year, during a time when the African Union is desperate for attention to the concerns over climate change, poverty, AIDS and increasing inter-continental violence. It was a controversial choice, especially because Qaddafi is the leader of a country in an Arab-Muslim region not representing the whole of Africa, especially not of Sub-Saharan Africa.

During his speech (where he further tried to up his African “cred” by not speaking Modern Standard Arabic, but by speaking Libyan dialect composed of Arabic, French and local colloquial words), Qadaffi mentioned several times that Africa should play more of a role in UN bodies and councils, which, while a worthwhile suggestion is undermined by the fact that he is not the best person to represent it. This off base wardrobe further fed his delusion that he has some type of credibility to represent the whole continent of Africa, and in this dress he felt free to play the victim, to freely chastise the West for the sins of colonialism in order to gain favor with skeptical African countries. Yet at the same time he sits on oil in Libya, ensuring he will get US and European business.

The reversal of the UN on its attitude toward Qaddafi is a disturbing trend and further highlights the hypocrisy of an agency supposedly concerned with human rights, and especially with the future of Africa. Qaddafi has proven himself to be erratic, vengeful and unpredictable. It does not seem to be a smart course of action to suddenly invite such an unstable leader back into the fold of decision-making international leaders. Even if oil business could be lucrative, it is only temporary and not worth sacrificing the UN’s supposed morals for.

The UN will no longer have the authority to bad mouth countries such as Israel and the US if they continue to allow a human rights violator and terror supporter back onto the UN scene.

The End of European Socialism?

2009-10-02T06:40:00.000-07:00

By Douglas Kohn

Kohn@Fordham.edu

Europe, especially since the financial crisis, has made a drastic turn to the right. In all of Europe’s big powers the right is in power or the left is in retreat. Italy, France and Germany are now firmly in the hold of Center Right coalitions. In Spain and Britain, Center Left governments are under increasing pressure. In the case of Britain, the Labor government is a lame duck before the new government has been formed, and Britain’s Labor party, one of the two large parties, is now in third place behind the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats for the first time since 1982.

All over Europe the left is in disarray and it is quite paradoxical. In every poll of European public opinion, business is viewed with contempt and suspicion. In spite of these views, pro business parties have been thrust into power. This is partially because Europe’s immigration policies for the last 10 years have brought with it the problem of Islamic extremism within their own midst.

In Germany this past week, Angela Merkel was reelected with surprising results. Germany’s two main parties are Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democrats. Since 2005, the two parties have ruled together in an awkward coalition. Their intrinsic differences made it nearly impossible to implement proper economic reform to enable Germany to function in today’s increasingly interdependent world economy.

The election results have thrown the coalition to the wind. The new ruling coalition government will be between Merkel’s Christian Democrats and the smaller third party, the Free Democrats, led by Guido Westerwelle. The German left is in disarray, the Socialists, Communists and Greens have been left out to dry by the electorate, in spite of an overall anti business sentiment.

The Free Democrats are the most pro business party in Germany and now have a large coalition partner to help implement their ideas. Germany, like much of Europe, needs to free up its labor market, making it easier to hire and fire workers, and lower its overall tax burden, especially on businesses. Red tape also needs to be cut in order to make it easier for service sector businesses to develop, as Germany’s manufacturing sector is a disproportionately large sector of its economy that made it more vulnerable to the collapse in world demand for manufactures in the recent economic crisis.

This bodes well for Europe and the world. Freer markets in Germany will spur the rest of Europe to reform their economic and social policies and allow for greater growth in the future. Socialism in Europe has been dealt a devastating blow, country by country. The next will be Britain, where Gordon Brown’s sick joke of leadership will be crushed in the forthcoming election.

Violating Sex-offenders' Civil Liberties

2009-10-01T06:04:00.000-07:00

By Phil Fraietta

Fraietta@Fordham.edu

In the midst of the great healthcare debate many otherwise news worthy stories are flying under the radar. But, the Associated Press did manage to report on a civil liberties atrocity that is taking place in the State of Georgia: the relocation of homeless sex offenders to camp in a wooded area.

Georgia has some of the toughest probation requirements for sex offenders in the Union. Georgia state law bans sex offenders from living, working or loitering within 1,000 feet of schools, churches, parks and other spots where children would likely gather. This strict ban has left homeless sex offenders with no other choice but to camp out in the woods.

According to Sarah Geraghty, an attorney with the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights, there is only one homeless shelter in the entire State that meets the requirements, and that center only has 2 beds.

But, I am not writing this post to argue that the State has a requirement to provide housing for homeless sex offenders, I am instead arguing that imposing such strict violations on convicted sex offenders is a violation of human dignity.

By barring sex offenders from being within 1,000 feet of churches, the State has effectively excluded them from housing in churches like many homeless persons do. The strict 1,000 feet requirement also limits the amount of jobs these sex offenders could possibly find, when this number is already diminished given their ex-convict status.

The purpose of our prison system is to punish and rehabilitate. With respect to rehabilitation, if we do not let these people live normal lives after they are released, it is virtually impossible to fully integrate them back into society. The punishment is supposed to be the time spent in jail. Once you have finished your jail sentence the State should protect your rights equally to the rights of other citizens, as obligated by the Equal Protection Clause of the 14^th Amendment.

Those who support these strict limitations on the liberties of convicted sex offenders will say that the State is simply acting in the best interest of its citizens and is thus protecting these citizens’ rights. But, the fundamental issue here then becomes why are we releasing non-rehabilitated prisoners?

If the State of Georgia and others who support these limitations want to protect the law-abiding citizens then we ought to do it without violating the liberties of these convicted sex offenders. The best way to accomplish that is to simply increase the duration of their jail sentences and make it more difficult to receive probation.

What we mustn’t forget when discussing law and order is that convicts (in this case sex offenders) are humans too and therefore entitled to the same rights as the rest of us once they have served their time.

The Return of the 15th Century

2009-09-30T06:21:00.000-07:00

By Douglas Kohn

Kohn@Fordham.edu

One of the great events of the last quarter of the 20th Century was the opening up of the economies of China and India, as well as smaller economies in Asia. What the world is witnessing now is not so much something new as much as the return of normality to world economic (and consequently no doubt) political power.

For the vast portion of human history, the two largest economies in the world were those of China and India. This rule of thumb was only interrupted twice in the history of the world, both times by Western Civilization.

In the 15th Century China was by far the greatest power on earth, though technological limitations prevented much of its influence being felt in Europe. China’s navy ruled the waves in both the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and is considered by many historians to have been on the cusp of industrialization, 200 years before the same happened in Europe.

The two interruptions of Chinese and Indian dominance were the Roman Empire and the industrialization of the West. Individual Western powers became wealthier than China, and collectively the West eclipsed Chinese civilization.

There is really nothing new under the sun. The world has had Chinese and Indian dominance for most of its history, and when it comes to economic power, the creation of America was truly an unusual event in the history of the world. But now it seems that economic power will be distributed in a manner more closely aligned with population.

We are now seeing the buildup and modernization of the Chinese navy in a manner not seen since the voyages of Zheng He in the 1400s. The financial crisis and irresponsible use of American power has catalyzed the rise of China and India, in relative terms, to new heights of power and prestige.

America invented the wheel, and China’s leadership has studied its use, looked at America’s mistakes, and has perfected America’s path to development. They are using a combination of modernized mercantilist policies and economic nationalism.

The world is righting itself, and it could be very destabilizing.

Watching out for Sharia

2009-09-29T06:46:00.000-07:00

By Chadwick Ciocci

Ciocci@Fordham.edu

This past week proved a potentially dangerous and scary one for Americans. Three would-be terrorists were apprehended by authorities in apparently unrelated incidents- one who wanted to blow up subways in New York City, another who was hoping to destroy a sky-scraper in Dallas and the last who tried to blow up a federal building in Illinois.

But while all three individuals appeared to act separately- and authorities have drawn ample coverage to this point- there is one glaring tie between all three that also ties disparate groups like al Qaida and Hamas together: Sharia.

Sharia is Islamic religious law which, if the Quran is to be followed literally, is supposed to be applied to all people in all nations, whether or not they are Muslim. It is the driving force behind jihad (holy war) yet not nearly as understood in America as its militaristic counter-part.

Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy has raised a red flag with his most recent piece, but unfortunately political correctness has the best of Americans’ tongues right now.

Before Americans can confront jihad, they must understand two things: 1. just what jihad actually is and 2. why it isn’t commiserate with Western principles and in particular American values. While many people think of jihad as the violent, public war waged by groups like al Qaida, it is incredibly important that jihad needn’t be waged violently, as Gaffney aptly points out. Jihad can be waged covertly, by influencing culture, laws and individuals (and eventually moving these individuals towards more violent acts).

Back in 2007, Newt Gingrich compared the current War on Terror to the Cold War during which he pointed out, “There were moral underlying purposes. In the entire Cold War…we created a clear dichotomy and we reached out across the planet.” (Read the exchange here.) While the Cold War occasionally heated up, it was at its foundation a battle of ideas.

The same holds true today as exemplified in France where, mostly surrounding the very same capital which for many centuries personified Western Enlightenment, 751 “no-go zones” have been set up where French and Parisian authorities are not allowed to enter Muslim-only areas. The affects? Essentially Sharia-dominated enclaves where women’s rights, Western rule of law and other foundations of our civilization have become null and void.

One might think that al Qaida had violently taken these areas over. Instead French authorities and society have become so “accommodating” that they have literally lost control of some areas of their country.

As Gingrich said in the same speech, “We have now had a warning. The question is how serious we are going to take this warning.”

"Progressives" and Abortion Amongst Minorities

2009-09-28T06:10:00.001-07:00

By Chadwick Ciocci

(Originally published on Monday, September 28, 2009 on www.TheAmericano.com. Read the article in its entirety at http://theamericano.com/2009/09/28/progressives-and-abortion-amongst-minorities/)

Abortion is a touchy subject, but it is particularly touchy amongst minority populations which are disproportionally affected by the practice. According to the Gutmacher Institute, which is the research arm of Planned Parenthood (the largest abortion provider in the United States), nearly 60% of abortions are performed on minorities, even though minorities only make up about 25% of the US population.

Perhaps the most surprising fact about abortion today is that none of this should be surprising at all! The fact is that contemporary support for abortion found its start in the writings of people such as Margaret Sanger, whose work and influence cannot be overstated.

Sanger was an ardent feminist, progressive and racist who did much of her work between the 1920’s and 1940’s. She supported eugenicist policies which are said to have inspired Nazi German policies and policy makers (including Hitler). Sanger, like many Progressives of her time, believed that a better, stronger, more intelligent and all around superior race could be produced in America if only the birthrates and habits of minority populations and “lesser” peoples could be controlled. In The Pivot of Civilization, Sanger wrote, “There is but one practical and feasible program in handling the great problem of the feeble-minded. That is, as the best authorities are agreed, to prevent the birth of those who would transmit imbecility to their descendants.”

And what form should prevention take? Abortion, sterilization and other forms of “birth control”.

Sanger went on to found a number of organizations, the most prominent being today’s Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood performs over 300,000 abortions per year and about 80% of their “clinics” are located in predominantly minority areas. In 2008, the organization found itself embroiled in serious controversy, just like ACORN today- another organization formed out of the progressive movement.

In a similar fashion to how ACORN landed in hot water, an undercover caller posed as a wealthy donor and offered a number of Planned Parenthood clinics large donations but with this caveat: they had to be used to perform abortions on black women only. “No problem!” responded each clinic.

And while abortion disproportionately affects minorities in general, it is particularly harmful to black and Hispanic populations. In fact, blacks make up for about 36% of yearly abortions and Hispanics about 20%, meaning that non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics alone make for the majority of abortions. Even more disturbing, 25% of Hispanic pregnancies end in abortion, meaning that 1 out of every 4 Hispanic babies are aborted before they are ever able to see the light of day.

How does this affect these populations? According to John Lott, “If those aborted children had been born, the number of blacks born would have been slightly over 50 percent greater than it was.” This is the lawful decimation of a race, and yet it is hailed as “progressive”.

One can make the argument that blacks and Hispanics have a disproportionately high number of abortions because they are disproportionately impoverished, but the facts prove this assertion wrong. According to the very same Guttmacher report, “…at all income levels, abortion rates for black and Hispanic women were higher than those for white women.” This is particularly interesting considering the disproportionate high rates of church attendance of Hispanic and black communities.

And as one should expect, Americans respond generously to the problem of poverty. Each year Americans donate hundreds of millions of dollars to private charities to help the poor, disadvantaged and needy. But according to progressives like Margaret Sanger, such charity should be ceased! “Such ‘benevolence’ is not merely ineffectual,” wrote Sanger in Pivot of Civilization, “it is positively injurious to the [larger American] community and the future of the [presumably] white] race.”

So not only did Sanger and the early abortion lobbyists support abortion and sterilization as a means to controlling minority and “unwanted” populations but they went even further and deemed charity to these people as counterproductive to their ideal version of society!

The evidence against the progressives is startling, but it is all the more jarring when we realize that many politicians trace their ideological heritage back to people such as Sanger. Hillary Clinton, when asked if she would consider herself a liberal said during the campaign, “I prefer the word progressive, which has a real American meaning going back to the progressive era at the beginning of the twentieth century. I consider myself a modern progressive.”

The Left has given up on calling itself “liberal” and now considers itself “progressive”. I am by no means a liberal, but I would choose a liberal any day to the disastrous and terrible results the progressive movement has wrought on our country.

Chadwick Ciocci is an editor for Parcbench.com, a student of philosophy and theology at Fordham University and running for his fourth-term in public office in Connecticut.

Respect for Life meeting today

2009-09-28T06:08:00.000-07:00

There will be a Respect for Life meeting today (September 28) at 1:00 PM in Keating 319.

Race in America

2009-09-27T09:53:00.001-07:00

By Patrick Coughlin

Pcoughlin@Fordham.edu

In the aftermath of the now infamous remark “you lie!” by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) during President Obama’s most recent Address to Congress, former President Jimmy Carter had some decidedly interesting thoughts on the issue: “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African American.”

Personal opinions aside, Mr. Carter’s remark does shed some light on the discussion of race in this country. After Barack Obama was elected to the presidency, many political pundits opined that racism in the United States was dissipating, as evidenced by the large white turnout that Mr. Obama received. More white Americans voted for Barack Obama than the two previous Democratic presidential candidates, John Kerry and Al Gore. Additionally, three states that belonged to the Confederate States of America—Virginia, North Carolina and Florida—went to Mr. Obama in the 2008 Presidential Election. These facts, though encouraging, are not the center of this discussion. Rather, its focus is the role race has and will play in any criticism of President Obama.

While Rep. Joe Wilson’s comment was certainly inappropriate for the venue and disrespectful to the Office of the Presidency, it is of the utmost importance not to immediately pull out the “race card.” This concept is comparable to the predicament that a white police officer faces when confronted by an aggressor that is not of the same race, such as in the cases of Sean Bell and Omar J. Edwards. In both situations, the prominent civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton accused the police officers of essentially acting on racial prejudices that would not have come into play had Messrs. Bell and Edwards been white. The danger of such an accusation lies in the affect it has on a law enforcement officials’ ability to do his or her job. Second-guessing out of fear of being branded a racist will make an already hazardous job worse.

Just as police officers need to be able to do their job (albeit with restraint) without race in the back of their minds, politicians and the American people need to be able to ask tough questions and critically analyze policy initiatives without fear of the asinine “racist” label. Inappropriate charges of racism only block rational debate.

I believe that policy, not race, is the number one cause of apprehension among President Obama’s critics. Popular concern is over the record deficit spending and government overreach amongst the administrations initiatives. The same concerns would still exist with a white male in office.

With the frenzied state that Washington is in over the major pieces of legislation confronting Congress, sound judgment and rational discussion is needed now more than ever but is seemingly absent. Race is an issue that ignites emotions which close the mind to sensible deliberation.

Justice is blind. Why is politics not?

The Truth Behind Glenn Beck

2009-09-25T05:53:00.000-07:00

By Phil Fraietta

Fraietta@Fordham.edu

Conservative commentator Glenn Beck has recently taken a lot of heat regarding comments he made to Katie Couric in which he was heavily critical of failed Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain. Beck even went so far as to say he would’ve voted for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over McCain and that he believes President Barack Obama will be better for the country that McCain would have.

While I do not agree with Beck that McCain would have been a worse choice than Clinton or Obama, I was particularly fond of his explanation. Beck argued that McCain has a strange sense of progressivism in him. For instance, McCain supports Cap and Trade and was a pioneer for Campaign Finance Reform. But, perhaps what was most telling was Beck indicating that McCain’s personal political hero is President Theodore Roosevelt.

As President, Roosevelt authored some of the most progressive legislation this nation has ever seen, including strong environmentalist legislation, and often spoke of high taxation in order to improve income equality. Despite this progressivism, contemporary conservatives often times look to Theodore Roosevelt as a great President and a hero. Why? Because of Roosevelt’s military heroics.

This brings me to the real point of this post: it’s about time conservatives stop tolerating progressive policies in the name of military heroics. Over the past 100 years we have seen this happen with progressive Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower, and most recently with progressive Senator John McCain.

Now, it is certainly true that military heroics should be honored but they most certainly do not excuse progressive behavior while in office. In other words, respect these individuals for their military heroics, but criticize them for their politics.

Fellow conservatives should be praising Glenn Beck’s comments, not criticizing them. I believe it is time we, as conservatives, toughen up and refuse to tolerate progressivism, regardless of military credentials. Let’s put true conservatives into office, people who will keep government small, who will lower our taxes, and most importantly, who will preserve liberty. Not people whose only conservative appeal is past military heroics.

Obama's surprising idol

2009-09-24T06:14:00.000-07:00

By Douglas Kohn

Kohn@Fordham.edu

Trying to sort through all the screaming about Obama’s healthcare plans and charges of racism from the left, it seems his overall mannerisms and style are very close to a certain President that few people know Obama has a soft spot and great respect for.

Obama’s presentation and style are more like Ronald Reagan than any Conservative would like to admit. In watching old Presidential speeches from FDR to Bush, there is no other closer parallel that I can find. I am not alone in this analysis.

Obama has a deep respect for Ronald Reagan, thus far his political opposite (if you need proof and find this preposterous, take a look at this). There have been several occasions where Obama has recognized Reagan as a transformative president. Obama has now arranged a celebration of Reagan’s 100th birthday, something he was under no formal obligation to do (incidentally, Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday passed with the President giving no more than a speech in Illinois).

The aforementioned brings the issue of Presidential styles. The Gipper’s two favorite Presidents past were none other than FDR and Lincoln. This may come as a surprise to us right-wingers, but even after he switched from being a Democrat to Republican, Reagan maintained a great respect for FDR, despite presenting himself as undoing, or at least adjusting, much of Roosevelt’s legacy.

People have compared Obama many times to JFK but I find this a difficult comparison to sustain. Kennedy’s style was of a class by itself. No American president in the 20th Century has matched his eloquence and charisma. Reagan may have been the Great Communicator, but did not possess Kennedy’s ability with the English language.

Obama wants to see himself as a transformative president akin to the three he routinely cites in his speeches. Roosevelt, Kennedy and most of all Reagan. This is not to say he is going to follow Reagan or Kennedy’s policies. By today’s standards, Kennedy would probably be considered a far Right Republican.

So who does Obama compare to, when bringing together his style and his policies? Obama has spent untold sums of money on ‘stimulating’ the economy, escalated a war with grossly unrealistic aims in Afghanistan, and been an excellent communicator of albeit lacking policies.

Thus far, in my opinion, Obama is Roosevelt on economy, Reagan in style, and Kennedy/Johnson on foreign policy.

College Republicans meeting today!

2009-09-24T05:58:00.000-07:00

Make sure to check out the College Republicans meeting today at 1:00 PM in Dealy 115.

* Learn how to get on Fordham TV

* Here about campaigns in NYC

* Talk about Obama's latest lunacies

Plus...FREE PIZZA!

Where: Dealy 115

When: Thursday, September 24

Time: 1:00 PM

Young Americans for Liberty meeting today!

2009-09-15T05:55:00.001-07:00

Make sure not to miss the Young Americans for Liberty meeting today!

Dealy 115

2:30 PM

YAL is Fordham's newest and only libertarian club on campus. For more information, contact Phil Fraietta at Fraietta@Fordham.edu.

Some thoughts on tariffs

2009-09-14T17:04:00.000-07:00

By Douglas Kohn

Kohn@Fordham.edu

Anyone who has spoken with me at length on the subject knows that I am highly skeptical of unfettered free trade. There is no question that if you take the world as one economy, free trade increases productivity, creates jobs and new wealth.

But for all the talk of the world economy, it does not exist in the manner many academic economists believe it does. Nations have competing interests and sometimes the growth of one nation comes at the expense of another. In a manner of speaking I am a cautious economic nationalist, as I am for America, first, last and always.

President Obama’s latest imposition of tariffs on Chinese tires worries me greatly, however. I believe that a proper tariff regime can only be imposed on world trade during times of economic growth. Smoot Hawley has taught us that to protect industries during recession is disastrous, but history has also taught us that some of America’s greatest periods of economic growth took place under a tariff system.

America’s capitalist economic formula was engineered by our founding father Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury. He knew that manufacturing was necessary for economic advancement, and that only with a large domestic market protected from foreign goods would America be able to thrive. Tariffs would enable us to keep taxes low on the people that produce our food, goods and services.

That being said, tariffs and national banks (another Hamiltonian policy) were not enshrined in the Constitution and therefore are guidelines for the future, not unbreakable law.

In my own observations I have come to conclude that free trade with nations that do not have labor or environmental standards is folly (though I would make some exceptions), but that free trade with some nations would be mutually beneficial and create unprecedented wealth and opportunity. For example, if the United States was to sign a Trans Atlantic Free Trade Agreement with the European Union, we would see the creation of vast amounts of new wealth and opportunity, coupled with greater competition to keep down prices between nations that cannot undercut each other’s economic advantage through abuse of the labor force.

However, the trading regime with China cannot be allowed to continue. The problem is, when it comes to policy regarding China, timing is everything. Right now the world looks to China to help resuscitate trade and economic growth. The United States especially needs China to keep buying our debt until such time as we are able to cut expenses and pay it down.

After such time, America should take a more nationalist approach toward China as we did in 2005 when CNOOC, the Chinese government’s main oil producer, tried to acquire American oil producer Unocal. This was particularly troubling because it was not independent investors that were trying to acquire American oil resources, but an arm of the Chinese government. Between that and nationalist currency manipulations, China has behaved in a manner that suggests it is trying to steal American industry.

A tougher line must be towed but when the timing is right.

Respect for Life meeting

2009-09-06T16:49:00.000-07:00

Fordham's award-winning Respect for Life club will be having a meeting on Tuesday, September 8 at 7:30 PM in Keating 116.

For more information, please contact R4L President Brendan O'Morchoe at Omorchoe@Fordham.edu.

Returning soon!

2009-07-20T08:10:00.000-07:00

The Liberty Forum will be returning in September in time for the new school year. If you are interested in getting involved with writing, editing or a number of other aspects of our organization, then please contact the LF Publisher Chadwick Ciocci at ChadwickCiocci@Gmail.com.

The Uniqueness of American Values

2009-05-06T15:29:00.000-07:00

An interesting video by Dennis Prager, a conservative radio show host, on American values:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn4IH3yng4k

Young Americans for Liberty

2009-04-22T06:51:00.000-07:00

Young Americans for Liberty is a new libertarian group starting here at Fordham University. The first meeting was yesterday and there was a great group of enthusiastic libertarians here at Fordham ready to get to work.

The next meeting will be Wednesday, April 29 at 1:00 PM. Dealy 115.

Please come out and join us.

Young Americans for Liberty: http://blog.yaliberty.org/

If you are interested in more information, please contact Phil Fraietta at Fraietta@Fordham.edu.

What is libertarianism? http://www.theihs.org/ContentDetails.aspx?id=38

Obama administration: conservatives the real terrorists

2009-04-15T18:22:00.000-07:00

By Rachel Ring
Ring@Fordham.edu

Recently, the United States Department of Homeland Security issued a report stating that veterans returning from war, pro life activists and ultra conservatives are deemed security risks to the nation. The Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has approved the reports and stands by them, associating the threat of American “right wing extremists” with those of foreign terrorists. “She stands by the report sent to law enforcement that lists veterans as a terrorist risk to the U.S. and defines ‘rightwing extremism, as including groups opposed to abortion and immigration”, writes the Washington Times.

Napolitano continued with, “Let me be very clear: we monitor the risks of violent extremism taking root here in the United States. We don’t have the luxury of focusing our efforts on one group; we must protect the country from terrorism whether foreign or homegrown, and regardless of the ideology that motivates its violence”.

Despite being offended at the fact that veterans and people who hold contradictory opinions to those in power are being attacked and compared to terrorists, is anyone really surprised? It’s utterly ridiculous that post war veterans are being included in a report of terrorism potential risks. Furthermore, for the democratic, very left leaning administration which aligns itself with such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), it’s ironic and humorous that they would target groups that simply just don’t agree with their ideas and then label them as terrorists. This is quintessential liberal hypocrisy: you can have free speech as long as you agree with them, and if not, then you’re a risk to free society.

President Obama would be wise to have this report re-worded or speak out against it, but of course he won’t, because he’s not the centrist leader that he ran his election campaign on. He’s truly a left leaning liberal who would support the prosecution of people who are deemed “right wing extremists” who simply just differ in opinion with him on matters of gun control, immigration and abortion. He might want to re-read the Constitution, with a Second Amendment that protects the right to bear arms, the laws of the nation which demand employees be American citizens and thus have taxable income and lastly that American citizens have the right to life.

There are pirate attacks in Somalia carried out by REAL terrorists (where was the President when that crisis was going on?) and a porous border with Mexico through which Al Qaeda terrorists are desperately trying to infiltrate (and who most like currently are). Those are real, concrete threats.

The Department of Homeland Security has better things to do than focus on Americans who are not in line with the leftist ideology of the current President.

America's Long History with Pirates

2009-04-14T12:50:00.000-07:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

The Somalia piracy, which has progressed from a benign tumor to a malignant cancer over the last few years, has at last been dealt a blow by the US. There must be a follow up and the Navy must pummel the port city of Eyl, where the pirates are based. There is a great historical parallel for this which should be explored.

The US Navy was created by President Thomas Jefferson for the specific purpose of disrupting Islamic piracy off the coast of Africa. Certain Islamic states were called the Barbary States, which are in present day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. The Sultanate of Morocco was the first country to recognize the independence of the United States after the Declaration of Independence and was also the first one then to begin to prey upon America’s seaborne trade.

It was thought for a long time that the best way to deal with these pirates was just to pay them off. At first this seemed like a good deal, until the pirates just decided that they would plunder again and extract more ransom from the American government.

The problem exploded when it came to the point that the payment to the pirates was consuming 20% of government revenue.

Finally, in 1794 Congress authorized the creation of the US Navy and its first three ships: the USS United States, USS Constellation and the USS Constitution, with three more on the way. This was done with the Barbary Pirates in mind. President Jefferson later ordered the navy to confront the Barbary Pirates in 1801.

The marines then earned their nickname ‘Leathernecks,’ because they wore leather collars to protect their necks from pirate cutlasses. In the marine hymn, the lyric ‘to the shores of Tripoli’ refers to the Barbary state of Tripoli, where the marines engaged in their first ever overseas operations. The Barbary War was fought against African Muslim pirates and this was the first time Americans ever died fighting overseas.

There is precedent for this action and these pirates will only understand force. Jefferson knew it and our leaders of today should know it.

Why the Value of the Dollar is Important, and why the Obama Administration Will Destroy It

2009-04-08T17:04:00.000-07:00

By Phil Fraietta
Fraietta@Fordham.edu

In the midst of this recession it seems like it is impossible to pick up a newspaper and not see multiple stories concerning the economy. Interestingly enough, however, very few, if any, of these stories seem to discuss the matter of currency value.

It is an issue that has long lost interest in the United States. The policies of the Bush Administration substantially weakened the dollar, and the policies of the Obama Administration may very well end up weakening the dollar even further. But, while the issue may not receive much attention, it is one that is arguably the most important long-term issue facing the United States today.

Currently, Congress and the Federal Reserve are directed under law to make decisions in an attempt to attain short-term full-employment rather than in the best interests of the dollar. This is because according to Keynesian economic theory, the value of the dollar has little effect on the macro-economy and is only important to Americans who frequently travel or shop abroad. What the Keynesians fail to realize, however, is that the value of the dollar largely directs international investment into the United States.

But one may ask, what importance does international investment really have? International investment is of importance to the United States because it is what allows us to fund our budget deficit.

As most Americans know, we currently face a tremendous budget deficit that cannot reasonably be balanced for years to come. To make matters worse, the Obama Administration has determined that the deficit is not an important issue to face in these recessionary times and has continued to increase spending at the Federal level. Assuming the President does not retreat from his promises of tax cuts for 95% of Americans, it seems as if all of this spending cannot possibly be funded.

That is where international investment comes into play. In order to fund a deficit of such drastic proportions, without reducing government spending or increasing taxation, the Federal Government sells bonds to international investors. With doing so the government provides itself with the necessary income to fund its deficit.

But what people seem to forget is that these international investors must eventually be repaid. In this global recession, it is not crazy to assume that international investors would want to cash the bonds soon. After all, the tank of the stock markets has lost investors a lot of money and cashing in bonds would get these investors some of their money back.

So, assuming that foreign investors do suddenly begin to cash their bonds, how in the world could the Federal Government possibly pay? It seems the only way to do so is to simply print money. Obviously, printing money increases the supply of money internationally, which due to the laws of supply and demand, will cause the dollar to depreciate. If the dollar depreciates enough, we may very well find ourselves in a never-ending cycle of high inflation.

To explain, assuming the stimulus plan does work to stimulate demand and helps us escape the recession, foreign investors will be ready to invest again. However, if the dollar has depreciated sharply it will act as a disincentive to invest in American bonds because the investor will be repaid in with a weakened dollar. This means that the Federal Government will be forced to continue to print money in order to finance the deficit. Because printing money increases the money supply, it works to stimulate demand and thus creates inflation.

This is precisely what happened in Zimbabwe, where the Government turned to money printing in order to fund its deficit and now finds itself in a severe hyperinflation where prices are said to double every 24 hours. While it seems unreasonable that the United States could ever find itself in such a severe hyperinflation, it is not unreasonable to expect that printing money will cause inflation rates near 10% (an extraordinarily high number in an economy like the United States). It is now obvious why the value of the dollar is of such importance to the United States. If the Obama Administration continues to run the nation into debt and finances that debt with foreign investment, the dollar will be weakened. And, if we allow the dollar to be weakened enough, we may reach a point where foreign investors are no longer interested in investing in the United States. If this becomes the case, we can expect high inflation for the years to come.

This is not to say that we are hopeless. If the Obama Administration does act to balance the budget by reducing government spending, and the outdated Keynesian laws to strive to attain short-run full-employment are eliminated, we can avoid this fate.

To conclude, if the Obama Administration is concerned with the idea of hope, like the President claimed to be in his campaign, then this is the time to prove it.

Status Update: Big Brother is Watching You

2009-03-27T12:59:00.001-07:00

By Louis Papa
Papa@Fordham.edu

The benefits of instant communication are obvious. But many lament that our vastly superior communication technology has made us tragically incapable of communicating with each other—text messages and social networks have basically retarded our ability to just sit down and talk to each other. On the other hand we are connecting with more people, and in that regard communication has substantially improved.

According to Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, “More than 175 million people use Facebook. If it were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world.” The size of this network is truly incredible, and it only continues to grow. But at least one fairly chilling aspect of this information revolution is not that we’re not sharing enough with each other…it’s that we’re sharing too much.

Admittedly, this concern is somewhat paranoid. Nonetheless, it absolutely boggles the mind that in a society that both condemns and fears wiretaps, spy surveillance, unwarranted monitoring and other generally Orwellian practices, we actually encourage putting as much private information about ourselves as possible on the single most accessible universal library in history—the Internet.

Consider: Without even a second thought, you supply who you are, who your friends are, what you look like, and what your political and religious affinities are. You not only list your friends, but you also specifically describe how you are related to each of them. Also, let’s not forget that you have no qualms about sharing your sexual orientation or your romantic exploits with what are really just a bunch of strangers. You put up photos of yourself that everyone can look at, shamelessly chronicling with unmatched detail every single one of your actions (including illicit drug use) and you carefully identify everyone in your photos. You can even put up numerous videos of yourself and your friends, but when that isn’t enough, you can post a note listing 25 inane facts about yourself for everyone to read.

It is outside the scope of this article to discuss any one of these particular phenomena, but it’s worthwhile to take a moment to discuss the overall recklessness of putting this sort of stuff on the Internet. We have essentially created a compendium of information about ourselves that can be used at anyone’s discretion. We have done all of this absolutely free of charge without anyone even asking us. Never mind hackers and identity thieves. This is an Orwellian nanny-state’s wet dream—a populace that zealously volunteers information about itself for fun.

Legally speaking the government cannot spy on you. It is completely legal, however, for them to collect information that you volunteer. Hold on to your tinfoil hat, because if some shadowy government organization were putting together an index of some sort about its subjects, Facebook would actually be the best place for this cabal to start cataloging information about its citizens and begin categorizing them into various groups…for whatever reason.

But do you really volunteer that information? Take a moment to read over Facebook’s current terms of use:

“By posting User Content to any part of the Site [Facebook], you automatically grant…to the Company [Facebook, Inc.] an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy…and distribute such User Content for any purpose…and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content. [Emphasis added.]” – Facebook’s Terms of Use, Date of Last Revision: September 23, 2008.

To clarify, this means that when you post anything on Facebook (wall posts, notes, status updates, drunken photos, etc.) you give Facebook the permission to share that content with anyone they wish (whom may then share it with anyone they wish, and so on). Additionally, even if you delete your account, anything you post is saved on a file that someone else (whom you most likely do not know) can access. There has been a recent movement on the site to change the terms of service. But regardless of whatever the final terms of service are, in the end this is an agreement with an intangible corporate entity and this agreement is based solely on trust.

Take this merely as a casual observation; there is no hard evidence actually indicating that Facebook is a part of some devious plot to conquer our Western democracies. (Though you might want to Google “In-Q-Tel,” “D.A.R.P.A.” and “data mining” to learn about a fascinating connection Facebook has with the Central Intelligence Agency.) But the main point is, before you post up that next bleary-eyed photo of yourself staring at the camera through a haze of bong smoke wearing your “ARREST BUSH” t-shirt, you might want to take a moment to consider just who is going to see it and just how they might react.

[Check out the following for something a bit more illuminating:
http://www.dailynewscaster.com/2009/02/18/is-facebook-ran-by-darpas-information-awareness-office/]

The Devalued Primeminister

2009-03-25T08:18:00.000-07:00

Watch a British MEP stand on principle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs&feature=player_embedded

Obama's Empire

2009-03-24T08:37:00.000-07:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

Now that we are nearing the tail end of the Iraq War, one thing is certain: America is the worst imperial power to ever try to take over another country. It is not in our blood and we simply cannot do it.

It has now become clear that Obama is not going to withdraw all of our troops from Iraq. He has announced that about 50,000 will stay on longer than his promised withdrawal date of 16 months. This is the pragmatic, responsible thing to do.

I personally think the United States has been far too nice. We allowed oil prices to rise to catastrophic levels in the last few years, which no doubt did not make our economic crisis any easier.

Here is the proper solution. Evidently we Americans have resigned ourselves to some form of overseas empire, be it an empire of the mind or otherwise. If we are going to be an imperial power, that means doing it right.

We should use our military power to break up OPEC. As payment for the removal of Saddam Hussein Iraq should give American companies an option price on barrels of oil at $35 a barrel or less. Force them to pump more, force them to give us oil and stop trying to bring democracy in the most dysfunctional region of the world.

Second, as troops are withdrawn from Iraq send them to the border with Mexico. Illegal aliens are bankrupting this country pure and simple. They are the reason California is bankrupt and they are harming other states. For every working illegal alien there’s three on welfare. They get free healthcare, something your average American citizen does not have access to. They get as much healthcare as they want by simply walking into a hospital. Using the soldiers on the border with Mexico, the Mexican government should be forced to give us one barrel of oil a day for every illegal alien on welfare. Fair is fair.

It is time for the United States to stop being the nice country and we should start looking out for ourselves. No more bailing out of bankrupt third world countries now that we are becoming a third world country ourselves. If we are not going to kick out the illegal aliens that are bleeding the country dry, make Mexico pay for it. Make Iraq pay for their liberation just like Kuwait paid for it. Enough of the United States doing everything for everyone and not getting anything in return.

Reciprocity should be Obama’s foreign policy doctrine.

BREAKING NEWS!

2009-03-23T15:03:00.000-07:00

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives and leader of the 1994 Republican Revolution, will be speaking at Fordham University on April 20, 2009.

More details to come!

The Decline and Fall of General Motors

2009-03-10T10:00:00.001-07:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

There was a time when the saying “What’s good for GM is good for America” used to hold water. No longer. GM has been destroyed not by its inability to sell cars and adapt, but by Big Government and Big Labor. It has not been significantly undercut by foreign competition alone and the quality of GM and other American cars, though not up to par with Japan’s cars, are significantly better than most of the cars coming out of Europe or emerging car companies in India and China. GM fell because of mismanagement and labor unions, not subpar demand for its products.

In 1977, GM dug its own grave. It signed a contract with the American Auto Workers Union, guaranteeing full benefits to each employee for the rest of their life after retirement. Sounds like a good, fair deal for everyone but this was deeply flawed. It is not that GM should not pay generous pensions and benefits, it is that they essentially unilaterally lowered the retirement age. After only 30 years of working at GM, a retired worker was entitled to all these benefits and luxuries. This means that if someone began working out of high school at age 18, they could then retire at 48. First of all, why should GM’s retirement age be any lower than that of governments around the world? It is simply economically unfeasible.

The other reason that GM became unable to meet its costs is that the cost of healthcare in America skyrocketed in the last generation or so. It came to the point where roughly $2000 of every vehicle sold by GM went to pay health benefits of employees and pensioners.

If GM had had the proper foresight and not entered into these bogus contracts, it would have been hurt by the current recession but probably not forced to go to the government for a bailout. This would be in spite of a boom in oil prices.

How do I know this? Because in the last few years GM’s sales of cars were increasing until the beginning of the current recession. The American market was mostly saturated and GM was the market leader, but it was rapidly increasing its sales to developing countries. Nations in Latin America and Russia were rapidly increasing purchases of GM vehicles as their emerging middle classes gained a taste for SUVs.

Congressional Republicans like to point to Toyota and BMW as models of how car manufacturers should manage their businesses when producing in America. Fair enough. GM’s workers, including compensation, were being paid the equivalent of roughly $70 an hour. Toyota and other foreign car manufacturers were paying their workers approximately $37 an hour. All of this is understandable but completely ignores the fact that many states where foreign car manufacturers operate gave subsidies to those companies to open factories.

So consider this. Government intervention allowed those foreign car manufacturers to operate in America and create jobs. GM is essentially now requesting the same subsidy. I am not writing this piece to take a position on either the issue of subsidies or bailouts but simply wish to state the reason why GM collapsed and the circumstances of other car companies. Unions may have once been a good thing, but they have no place in 21st Century economies.

The United States of Argentina

2009-03-08T16:49:00.001-07:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

Those steeped in history can best predict the future. George Santayana said “He who does not understand history is condemned to repeat it.”

Argentina, at its peak was the fourth wealthiest country in the world. That’s right, Argentina, now just one of any number of Latin American economic basket cases. In the case of Argentina, the once mighty have fallen quite far.

Argentina was once considered a model of economic prosperity, prudence and management. Its people enjoyed an incredible standard of living. Out of 38 million people, 20 million are of Italian descent. Argentina was a place immigrants wanted to go, much like America. It was a land of promise and opportunity.

Of course, like the rest of the world, Argentina was crushed during the 1930s. It began to recover during World War II when renewed global economic activity pushed up prices for Argentine goods. Then came Juan Peron.

Peron began an economic program that nationalized much of Argentina’s industry. He also began massive public spending programs that were ill advised. He threw up trade barriers. All of this was done in the name of making Argentina economically independent and prosperous. What followed was a disaster.

Argentina began periods of stagflation and massive recessions. The country became a serial defaulter on its debt. This debt became so overwhelming that the government, after Peron left, was forced to raise taxes to a level that destroyed business activity. The country was ruined by populist policy, over spending and ruinous trade barriers.

The country is still the wealthiest in Latin America but is nowhere near developed status. Recent developments such as the default of 2001 and the inflation driving public spending continue to plague Argentina.

This is the history of Argentina. Why should the history of the United States be different? Under George Bush the deficit reached record levels. Under Barack Obama, it has now been doubled.

Every time a Republican points out that the deficit is too high they have the Bush years thrown in their face and rightfully so. But this is still counterproductive, especially from someone with my view who never approved of Bush’s wild spending. Obama is just the same as George Bush. They were both basically fiscal Marxists. There is no justification for Obama’s massive spending.

Now America is becoming a mix of Argentina and the Weimar Republic (interwar Germany). We owe all our debts to foreign powers and are about to undergo a trillion dollar tax increase. We have committed ourselves to insane public spending that will take a generation to pay off. Somehow, I doubt there will be a world war to end the economic pain quickly. Just because the Republicans overspent, does not make it the right thing to do when it is Democratic spending. It is childish now to say ‘Bush started it.’ It is quite obvious, but now that basically all of Bush’s policies are continuing and it is just Barack Obama doing it, that somehow makes it okay.

The Failing Messiah

2009-02-24T09:07:00.000-08:00

By Phil Fraietta
Fraietta@Fordham.edu

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it best, when talking about President Obama’s image during the campaign season, "The sky will open. The lights will come down. Celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect!"

The President was able to convince the American public he was the man to save the nation, and the liberal media quickly gave President Obama a Messiah-like image during the 2008 campaign season. But, as President Obama is starting to find out, words of “hope” and “change” may mean something to the American public, but they mean very little to investors.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 both hit their lowest marks since 1997 on Monday. This coming just six days after the President signed into law his stimulus bill that was supposed to be the immediate fix to the economy.

Now it is certainly true that fiscal stimulus is not an overnight thing, and the stock market is never the best way to evaluate an economy, but with that said, the collapsing market is a sign that investors are not fooled by President Obama’s rhetoric and are fearful his stimulus package will fail.

Much to the surprise of President Obama, his speeches have been unable to provide confidence for investors. What the President must realize is that investors aren’t your average everyday Americans, amazed at the concept of “hope” and “change,” but rather, they are professionals. They are people with high-level degrees who understand the economy and what it means for the financial sector.

As I’ve said over and over again, if the President wants to turn around the trend on Wall Street, the most effective way to do so would be a cut in the capital gains tax. This would entice investors to put their money into a poor market with the prospect of seeing high returns at a very low taxation rate.

What we can all agree on is the key to turning around this recession is to increase consumer confidence and to do so by correcting the tailspin the stock market has seen over the past few months. What we disagree on, however, is how we can do that. President Obama seems to think he can simply speak and fool investors into believing the Savior will take care of things. In reality, however, investors want to see a sound economic plan, one that includes capital gains tax cuts, rather than more leftist rhetoric.

The Other Surge, Part II

2009-02-22T18:21:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

(Publisher's note: This is the second part in a two part series. The first part can be found below.)

In 2001, after September 11th, America began special forces and air operations to support an offensive by the Northern Alliance to remove the Taliban from power. Intervention in Afghanistan was nothing short of a matter of national honor. Notice, we sent in very few ground troops in the beginning. The Taliban was removed from power faster than any regime by an outside force in history. The people of Afghanistan, no matter what the press may tell you, greeted us as liberators. Every poll showed overwhelming support for the United States intervention and for the removal of the Taliban. America had successfully defended her honor after such a disgraceful and cowardly attack. America then failed to win the peace.

We set up a democratic government led by an inept technocrat named Hamid Karzai, we underfunded the Afghan army and recruited our allies to help with the occupation. Our erstwhile allies, NATO, had for the first time in its history invoked Article 5 of NATO’s charter, stating that an attack on one nation in the alliance was an attack on all. However, our ungrateful and disloyal allies, with few exceptions, refused to give their soldiers in Afghanistan rules of engagement allowing them to actually fight. They were only allowed to engage in nation building operations and defensive operations. The offensive operations in Helmand Province and across the border in Pakistan were undertaken by the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Poland, Denmark and Turkey, the only countries who had given their troops permission to engage in combat. I find this disgusting and came to the realization that even in a difficult moment, America mostly has fair weather friends.

After the American invasion of Iraq, that country became a massive strategic distraction for America. Troops, money and resources were diverted to Iraq to try to pacify it. I had, at first, greatly supported the United States invasion of Iraq. I did not support the surge. I did not think it would work and that our soldiers would simply be eaten alive. I was completely and totally mistaken in this position. Under the brilliant leadership of General David Petraeus, America, for the most part, prevailed in Iraq and is now withdrawing responsibly. The optimism must be cautious however, as there are many counterproductive forces in Iraq.

During this time, the situation in Afghanistan greatly deteriorated. American, Allied and Afghan casualties were piling up and lawlessness was everywhere. General Petraeus, after his successful handling of Iraq, is now in charge of Afghanistan.

This is the right thing to do. America, for the sake of national honor, must at the very least, look like we have not lost in Afghanistan. If there is a general anywhere or from anytime in history who may be able to turn the country around, it is David Petraeus. But the situation must be held in perspective. Democracy be damned if need be in Afghanistan. We face a clear and present danger from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, three areas that are closely linked. I agree with President Obama on the necessity of at least having a stalemate in Afghanistan.

But let us look at the great hypocrisy here. Obama, the peace candidate, on the very same day of signing the stimulus into law, ordered the troop increase. Does any Liberal out there remember Vietnam? Please someone show me a Liberal who knows or understands history. I have never met one. Not a single Liberal I know understands history.

Let us recall Lyndon Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Upon being elected, Johnson had three major policy objectives. The first was the extension of civil rights to minorities in the southern United States. The second was the expansion of economic opportunity and the creation of a welfare state. The third was to contain Communism and limit the influence and power of the Soviet Union.

When a magician performs a trick, they generally use optical illusion and distraction. A magician will wave his hand to get the attention of the audience and then do something behind a curtain with his other hand resulting in a ‘magic’ trick. Lyndon Johnson, in May 1964, announced the Great Society, an economic program that has had very mixed results. That is a matter for another post, not this discussion. While making a huge deal about how the Great Society would save our country and bring justice and opportunity for all, Johnson, three months later, made the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, announcing a massive escalation of the Vietnam War. Notice the illusion and distraction here. Johnson, while signing an economic bill of near unprecedented proportions, took a back door to announcing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and committed America to an extended war.

Now think of today. On the VERY SAME DAY Obama announced the economic stimulus bill, he announced the drastic escalation of the war in Afghanistan. The stimulus, the corrupt pork laden bill that is going to ‘save us from economic collapse.’ Spend with one hand, escalate with the other. Right out of the LBJ playbook. There is no clearer historical parallel I can think of. But where is the left? Why are they not screaming about this? If anyone bothered to read a whole newspaper, they would know that the Afghanistan story was at the very back end of every newspaper in the country while the stimulus bill was on the front page. The reason is that they do not know history. Obama is their messiah. He can do no wrong. Afghanistan is now Obama’s war, if he breaks it he owns it. But according to the leftists who denounced Bush as a war monger, this one gets a free pass because it is a Democrat’s war. Because it is Obama’s war now. Where are the people whose parents were hippy flower children that screamed “Hey hey, LBJ, how many kids ya kill today?!” They are everywhere and they are nowhere.

In short, the forces of history are colliding on America in a way that has not been known in quite a while. It remains to be seen if we still have the will to weather them.

The Other Surge, Part I

2009-02-21T14:24:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

(Publisher's note: This is the first part in a two part series on the matter of Afghanistan. The second part will be published tomorrow.)

President Obama has just ordered 17,000 troops into Afghanistan to combat the resurgent Taliban and hopefully capture Osama bin Laden. This is the right thing to do but it is riddled with hypocrisy.

Let us think of history for a moment. Three great empires were humbled in Afghanistan. After Alexander the Great defeated the Persian Empire in less than ten years in 3 battles, his soldiers poured over from Persia (Iran) and into Afghanistan on their way to India. It was fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan (then considered India) that eventually forced Alexander to give up his dreams of conquest. The resistance of the Afghani people and the Indians (basically today’s Pakistanis) beyond was so fierce that his brave soldiers could no longer take it and forced Alexander to turn around after the Battle of the Hydapses River in 325 BC. Alexander later died in Babylon in 323 BC.

Beginning the 19th Century, the fierce Afghani people began to cause serious security problems for the British and Russian Empires. The British had set up a massive colony in India known as the British Raj. It was considered a model of imperial domination because the number of British it took to rule India was so small compared with the size, geographically and demographically, of India. There were two objectives Britain had in its interventions in Afghanistan. One was part of an imperial competition known as the Great Game between the Empires of Britain and Russia in Central and South Asia. Britain had a key interest in ensuring that the Russians could never completely overrun Afghanistan and threaten their prized possession, India. The other security concern was the Afghani people themselves. Warlords in Afghanistan had regularly raided into British India and disrupted trade. From the point of view of the British Empire, this was an unacceptable state of affairs.

Britain then fought three wars in Afghanistan, each one bloodier than the last. But the Brits were not stupid and knew they could never come to dominate Afghanistan. They knew the fate of Alexander. They setup a friendly king who held some authority but could never really control the country. They made alliances with local warlords to keep the peace. Rudyard Kipling once remarked, “When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.” Afghanistan is turf unfriendly to civilized people.

Lastly, there was the intervention in Afghanistan of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, though it was never as economically powerful as it seemed, was still the greatest enemy that ever faced the United States and a nation whose ideology enslaved nearly half of humanity in the second half of the Twentieth Century. In 1979, its treasury swelled by a huge increase in the price of oil, the Soviet Union flexed its muscles and invaded Afghanistan, throwing all of its military might into the venture. This was an ill fated attempt. A colorful covert alliance began to supply and train Afghani guerillas for resistance against the Soviet-backed communist government and Russian soldiers installed in Afghanistan. With American, Pakistani, Israeli, Egyptian, Saudi, British and Chinese backing, the Afghani guerillas were turned into one of the most formidable fighting forces in the history of mankind, with brutality to match their skill. The Soviets received such a crushing, overwhelming and humiliating defeat in Afghanistan that they were never to recover, and two years later the Soviet Union collapsed.

In the interim, a massive civil war began in Afghanistan. There were no good guys. Every side in the civil war committed acts of barbarity matched only by the previous Russian invaders. Eventually, in 1996, the Taliban was in control of most of the country, with the exception of the Northern Alliance. The Taliban presided over a totalitarian regime committed to a hateful Islamofascist ideology no less barbaric than Communism or Nazism, only less powerful.

These events were the incubator of Osama bin Laden’s now infamous terrorist group, al Qaeda. Given shelter by the Taliban, he was able to carry out attacks on America, our interests and our allies all over the world, particularly in the Middle East.

The Chicagoization of America

2009-02-16T17:41:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

Corruption and greed are every bit as real in the Obama Administration as it has been in every other administration. Obama- Mr. Squeaky Clean- has appointed no less than 17 lobbyists to his government. So much for Obama being allergic to lobbyists.

All this stems from where he learned politics. America’s great cosmopolitan cities are exciting and productive places to live and work in, but one should not want to be a politician in them. Chicago and New York both have the most dysfunctional political systems in the country, dominated by Democratic Party machines with no significant opposition.

Machine politics is nothing new to America but it has bred relatively few presidents. New York and Chicago are constantly riddled by unrelenting political scandal as evidenced by Eliot Spitzer, Rod Blagojevich, the Richard Daley machine, the David Dinkins fiasco with a list of others ranging back to the days of Tammany Hall.

The politics of neither of these cities or the states they are in are something we should like to see on a national scale. But it would seem that the Democratic Party, led by the Chicago machine of Barack Obama and his hatchet man Rahm Emmanuel are intent on turning American politics into Chicago politics.

Rahm Emmanuel has been granted permission by President Obama to take on direct oversight of the Census Bureau. This is a travesty and has not been given nearly the attention by the American media it should have been. A backgrounder follows.

The Census Bureau is a division of the United States Department of Commerce. After Governor Bill Richardson was taken down in a corruption scandal of his own, he withdrew from the offer of being Secretary of Commerce. President Obama then offered the job to a Republican senator from New Hampshire, Judd Gregg. Gregg accepted on the condition that the Democratic governor of New Hampshire appoint a Republican to replace him on his seat. Rahm Emmanuel was then given control of the Census Bureau.

The Bush Administration had been criticized for its ill fated attempt to create permanent conservative leaning government. Now it seems Rahm Emmanuel, architect of the Democratic victory in 2006, is bent on doing the same for his party. The Census Bureau is responsible for assigning electoral weight to each district and each state. Every ten years, a census is taken and based on shifts in populations, states and districts gain or lose electoral votes. Having a rabid partisan such as Emmanuel in control bodes ill for American Democracy. Combined with the possibility of giving illegal aliens permanent resident status, it seems that if the Democrats do not usher in a period of permanent control they will be ushering in a period of prolonged control.

The last real bastion of Conservative resistance is on the radio. Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage are continuing their fiery rhetoric trying to save American nationalism. Nancy Pelosi is going to try to impose her fairness doctrine on the American media. Sound like freedom? That’s because it is not. The Democrats are going to roll back freedom in this country to an extent we have not seen since the Civil War. Do not write it off thinking they cannot do it, it has been done before.

Remember 2004? The Bush Administration was feeling righteous over the ‘wardrobe malfunction’ of Janet Jackson in the Superbowl. Who did they take it out on? Talk radio. Howard Stern was brought under new pressure by the FCC’s Michael Powell. They began to put the clamp on his show because of ‘decency’ issues. Meanwhile, Howard Stern’s most important staffer, Robin Quivers, is a black woman who voted for George Bush in 2000. Howard does not usually take up politics on his show but has consistently been libertarian and right leaning. He was a proponent of the Iraq War. He regularly talks of his respect and admiration for Ronald Reagan. He supported Giuliani and then John McCain.

What is happening now is scarier, as the Obama Administration begins to talk in earnest about the “fairness” doctrine. What is the need for fairness? There is mostly liberal media with Conservatives on talk radio. What happened to freedom? Why fairness? This is more terrifying because this is a liberal assault on talk radio for their political views and ideas, not some notion of decency. The Bush Administration began it by hurting one of their supporters, but the Democrats are going to destroy freedom of speech in this country.

The New European Politics

2009-02-09T15:11:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

In stark contrast to America, it seems that Old Europe is taking a different turn politically.

After years of lagging behind the United States both in economic growth and in the ability to assimilate immigrants, ordinary Europeans are bringing center right governments to power all over the continent, lead by the charge of the nativists.

Europe’s inability to assimilate its mostly Islamic immigrants stands in stark contrast to the US. In America, in every poll Americans are overwhelmingly open to legal immigration, but paranoid of the illegal kind which threatens our cultural integrity and is a drain on our resources.

It started with Germany, when in 2005 Angela Merkel led Germany’s Christian Democrat Union to electoral victory over Gerhard Shroder’s Social Democrat Union. Germany has gradually begun to tackle some of its long term problems such as a social safety net that is unsustainable with a low birth rate.

Next was France, where Nicholas Sarkozy has proven himself quite a dynamic leader by Continental European Standards and has also begun to implement reforms and is thoroughly resisting the pressure of massive strikes to free up markets.

Now comes our old mother country, the United Kingdom. The Conservative Party has generally been the favored party in British elections and is now staged for a massive comeback. The Labour Party coalition was largely held together by the force of Tony Blair’s remarkable political ability, charm and no nonsense leadership that embraced markets, an Atlanticist foreign policy and led years of sustained economic growth and shared prosperity in the Island.

Gordon Brown, his successor, while a competent politician, has none of the charisma and agreeableness of his predecessor. Polls show a significant lead for the Conservatives under their young leader, David Cameron. This is particularly interesting because it shoots a hole in the notion that politics in Britain and America follow similar trends.

Italy, while recently moving to the right is so corrupt that it is aptly named the new sick man of Europe. Silvio Berlusconi is a man many Conservatives should like to be able to agree with but his personal corruption bodes ill for the sunny peninsula.

The Czech Republic is an interesting case, although it is a small country. Its leader, Vaclav Klaus, is widely regarded as a grumpy old man. It is important to mention them because the Czech Republic is now holding the rotating EU presidency. Klaus has referred to Al Gore as ‘an apostle of arrogance,’ denied global warming, affirmed the right of countries (Israel specifically) to defend themselves from terror, opposed government intervention in the economy to try to re-inflate bubbles that have long since burst and promotes economic prudence everywhere.

The holdout of major powers on the Continent seems to be Spain. In 2003, Jose Maria Aznar was the Conservative Prime Minister but his views on just about everything were significantly to the right of the Spanish public. He sent Spanish troops to Iraq when 90% of Spaniards were opposed to cooperation with the United States. After Spain was attacked by Al Qaeda in 2004, the new Prime Minister, Zapatero immediately pulled Spain out of Iraq, which in my opinion was a show of weakness even though Iraq may not have been necessary.

Now, a far left attitude prevails all over Spain combined with ignorant policies. Spain recently granted basic human rights to apes. The population is unwilling to change governments because they rightly view the financial crisis and housing bust as not being Zapatero’s fault. But it would seem the country at large has fallen into a cultural ignorance that will greatly harm its future.

It seems that the left is taking a time out in Europe. This is the first time in the Post War histories of most European countries that the left has not fared better in the polls during recession.

Obama vs. Limbaugh

2009-02-07T09:51:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

President Obama is letting his inexperience and partisanship show through. For all his talk of post partisanship he is still partisan. This stimulus bill was an egregious abuse of power. I think Peggy Noonan put it best when she said ‘President Obama made news by meeting with GOP leaders, but he would have made history if he had listened to them.’

Furthermore, Obama made a gigantic mistake by picking a fight with Rush Limbaugh. The way Limbaugh phrased his opposition to Obama’s socialist leanings is despicable. One should never hope for a President to fail, but should oppose individual policies without hesitation.

If you look at past President’s statements, not one has ever mentioned their opponents in the media by name. Presidents Bush and Clinton had more than their fair share of outrageous critics in the media but never made the mistake of mentioning them by name. By mentioning Rush Limbaugh by name, Obama gave him recognition he could never have hoped for in the past. He will bring new listeners who, even if they may have disagreed with everything Rush said in the past, will find themselves in agreement with him once he goes down the checklist of the outrageous pork and useless spending in the bailout.

Limbaugh gets paid $30 million a year and has a massive audience. If Obama continues to pick a fight with him, Limbaugh will win. There is an old saying, “never pick a fight with a medium that buys ink by the gallon.”

I had thought 2008 might prove to be a year of political realignment, but now I have my doubts if this administration continues to screw up.

A new New Deal?

2009-02-06T09:08:00.001-08:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

One of the most egregious media perversions I have seen in the last few months is that of President Obama’s face replacing Franklin Roosevelt’s in a famous picture on the cover of Time Magazine. The article inside was calling for a ‘New New Deal.’

Put simply, the New Deal did not work. It has been the most overhyped government program in our history. What the New Deal did do, was provide a little temporary relief for very desperate people but it was World War II that finally ended the Great Depression.

In 1940, President Roosevelt passed the Lease Lend Act, allowing the United States to supply the British Empire with armament when it had to face the storm of Hitler alone. This was when real economic output began to pick up. Massive government orders of armament to factories allowed for renewed economic activity which created jobs and as people earned money, allowed them to consume again.

After the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes became the Economic giant of his time. He believed that massive government stimulus could prevent a repeat of the Great Depression. A running competition between Keynesians and Supply Siders has been the great debate of politicians and economists ever since.

The general consensus among economists seems to be that while government spending should increase in a recession, stimulus should be in the form of tax cuts rather than freewheeling government spending. Spending on infrastructure is always appropriate and should be increased during recessions, but the rest of the stimulus should come in the form of massive tax cuts. Many of these tax cuts should be targeted.

The stimulus bill that has passed the House and is now working its way to the Senate is an embarrassment. It includes nonsensical appropriations such as $335 million for birth control.

The root of this problem is still the crisis in housing. Existing homes inventory is still too high to allow for sustained economic recovery. Giving workers an extra few hundred dollars a piece is not going to entice consumers to renew their spendthrift ways. Therefore, the most important part of any stimulus package should be a tax cut or credit for people buying existing homes. Building new homes will create some jobs but is only going to make the problem worse because it will increase supply without liquidating excess inventory.

Some of the conditions relating to 1929 are similar. After the crisis, people had been buying on credit for so long that companies had greatly overproduced relative to demand. After the crash, it becomes necessary to dispose of excess inventory otherwise a nearly unstoppable deflationary spiral will ensue. We are not yet in a deflationary cycle. Due to high oil prices inflation in the second quarter of 2008 was running at nearly 5%, whereas in the 4th quarter inflation was running at 1% (if you believe government statistics). This means deflation has not yet occurred but the drastic decrease in inflation suggests that it will in the first half of 2009.

Surprise! The Stimulus Bill Includes Protectionism

2009-02-04T09:44:00.000-08:00

By Phil Fraietta
Fraietta@fordham.edu

It should come to no surprise to most people that when it comes to economics, Democrats, have no clue. It was first reported late Thursday afternoon that the version of the stimulus bill passed by the House includes a “Buy American” proposition. The proposition requires all iron and steel used in the bill’s infrastructure projects to be purchased by American companies. And, it is now expected that when the Senate produces its own version of the bill, the “Buy American” proposition will expand beyond just iron and steel to include all materials used.

Trade is a topic of heated debate amongst politicians, but amongst economists there is no debate—protectionism fails. But of course Democrats are not concerned nor educated when it comes to economics so this should come as no surprise.

The central idea behind protectionism is that by requiring all materials to be purchased from United States companies, these companies will employ more people to meet their increased demand; thus creating jobs. While this may be true, the protectionists fail to see the wider scope of the argument.

First, there is no evidence that protectionist policies create jobs on a macro level. Of course, requiring all steel to be purchased by domestic companies will create jobs in the steel industry, but what about the jobs lost in the import industry, and other industries dependant on free trade?

This brings me to my second point. If we impose strict anti-trade laws on neighboring nations, why would they not be enticed to do the same? Chances are they would be enticed to do the same and they most likely would. This can have disastrous effects on domestic companies. Take a company like General Electric, which receives nearly half of its revenue from overseas. If foreign nations were to increase their import restrictions, GE would suffer huge losses causing them to cut back on costs, most likely by cutting labor. When you take into account the fact that we live in a global economy, this same process is likely to be repeated by thousands of companies, meaning thousands of lost jobs.

Finally, we have yet to consider the effects of protectionist policies on the price of goods. As anybody who has taken an Econ 101 class would know, when supply is limited prices rise. By limiting the supply of products such as steel and iron, we can expect prices to rise in the near future, which will have catastrophic consequences. When dealing with government purchases, prices with contractors are set ahead of time in contractual form. But the prices offered by the contractor will of course be based on steel prices at the time the contract is signed. Once the price of steel rises, however, the costs increase for the contractor. Because the price was agreed upon in a contract, the contractor could not ask for more money from the government to cover the increased costs, and would be forced to cut costs. As stated earlier, when businesses cut costs they normally do so by cutting labor costs. This means fewer jobs.

For those who doubt that protectionist policy can really affect prices that much, take this example. The Bush Administration was faced with the problem of low steel demand in 2001 and again in 2003. Both times the Administration implemented tariffs to try and protect US steel factories from closing. This of course led to foreign steel makers finding other markets, namely China. Once the steel market recovered, and US steel demand rose again, in 2004, steel prices rose a staggering 48% that year according to the Labor Department.

We are currently in the midst of the worse recession this country has seen since the early 1980’s. Protectionism is a policy that is not advocated by any school of economic thought, yet the Democrats have decided to implement it in this stimulus bill. Not only should trade never be limited, doing so in the midst of a recession is plain stupidity. Unfortunately, economics is not an area in which Democrats are caring or educated. The American economy will recover from this recession, but with the Democrats in control it may take a little longer than we thought.

The Truth Behind the Economic Stimulus Bill

2009-02-01T09:29:00.000-08:00

By Phil Fraietta
Fraietta@Fordham.edu

We are just a little over a week into the Obama Presidency and already the President has begun to show his true socialist colors. On Wednesday, by a vote of 244-188, the United States House of Representatives passed President Obama’s proposed $819 billion stimulus bill.

Before analyzing exactly how the bill is supposed to stimulate the economy, be sure to note that a total of zero Republicans voted in favor of it—there’s that bipartisan spirit President Obama promised to bring to Washington.

Now as far as the bill itself goes, upon further analysis it is easy to see why zero Republicans voted for it, and even easier to see why it is far from a stimulus.

The Democrats have argued for the bill on the principles of Keynesian economics. Keynesian economics, named after its founder John Maynard Keynes, is centered on the idea that the government can stimulate the economy by increasing spending. The validity of this claim is something that economists have debated for over 80 years, but nevertheless, the idea that increases in government spending can stimulate the economy is one that most economists agree upon. That is, when the money is spent on infrastructure. And, when you think about it, this line of thought makes sense. If the government spends money to build a new highway, that money will be given to a construction company who will then employ workers to build the highway, thereby creating jobs.

So then in good Keynesian spirit we would expect that majority of this $819 billion to be spent for infrastructural purposes, right? Wrong. The stimulus bill actually only allots $322 billion to infrastructure.

So then where is the other $497 billion going? Being that this is a stimulus bill, and there are only two universally accepted ways in which the government can stimulate the economy, we would assume the other $497 billion is going to option number two—a tax cut.

The bill certainly does contain a tax cut, just like President Obama promised. But the size of the tax cut isn’t nearly $497 billion; in fact the tax cut only amounts to $145 billion for individuals (many of whom already pay nothing in taxes) and $22 billion for businesses. Given the fact that GDP statistics for 2008 are expected to show the lowest GDP for the United States sine 1982, a tax cut this size isn’t nearly enough.

Now that we have accounted for the tax cuts, we are still only at $489 billion, leaving us $330 billion short of the $819 billion the bill allots. So then where does this $330 billion go? Some of the money goes to safety net programs such as Food Stamps and Unemployment Benefits, (genius idea to pay people to be out of work at a time where unemployment continues to rise), some to pork spending (like every other bill run through Congress) and roughly $127 billion to healthcare.

I’m sure your initial reaction was much like mine when I saw just how much money was being spent on health-care—shocked! It is a widely held view that healthcare expenditure by the government takes up far too large of a portion of United States GDP. Yet, this stimulus bill makes sure to allot $127 billion towards it. So then how is this $127 billion broken down? $87 billion to Medicaid, $39 billion to COBRA, and $1 billion to creating a new bureaucracy called the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research.

It has become clear what the real purpose of this stimulus bill is—to begin the transition to government run healthcare.

If the President were truly interested in rescuing the economy from recession, he would’ve had all $819 billion allotted towards infrastructure spending and tax cuts. He would’ve eliminated the capital gains tax for at least one year, cut the corporate tax rate in half, and made the tax cuts for individuals large enough that they will be noticed.

Unfortunately, this was not the case. I am afraid that President Obama has gone back on his word. With this bill he is fleeing from the politics of hope and reverting to the politics of fear. The President is using the current recession as a means of justifying quick action. But those of us who do not view President Obama as a Messiah who can do no wrong, can see the truth behind this bill. President Obama is beginning his quest to socialize the United States healthcare system.

Bravo, House Republicans!

2009-01-29T16:19:00.000-08:00

By Chadwick Ciocci
Ciocci@Fordham.edu

Finally, a little backbone!

Although Barack Obama’s stimulus plan passed the House this week, it was met by staunch and unanimous opposition by every single House Republican- a move that every free-market capitalist, conservative and just plain opposed-to-government-waste voter should applaud.

Not only will the package create only 3 million jobs at a cost of over $800 BILLION dollars (that is, if you actually believe in Keynesian economics) but provisions of it have called for:

* BILLIONS of dollars for ACORN (remember that organization that Obama was affiliated with which is under federal investigation for voter fraud?)
* $200 MILLION to fix up the national Mall
* $50 MILLION for the National Endowment for the Arts
* $100 MILLION to reduce the danger of lead paint in peoples’ homes

This is just the tip of the ice berg. The bill includes billions of other dollars in wrong, wasteful, and inappropriate pork spending.

Even if you actually believe that government spending is the way to get us out of this recession, there is no doubting that the stimulus bill includes billions of dollars that will do absolutely nothing to stimulate the economy.

So much for the change we need…

Che

2009-01-28T11:05:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

I am sure most people that read this are in agreement that Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, was nothing more than a murderer and a thug. What has been done for years by idiot youth across college campuses is now being brought to the big screen. Benicio Del Toro is playing Che in a movie of the same name. This is a disgrace to all the Cubans who left the island in a panic and I take it as a personal affront because of my family’s involvement.

My grandfather was a principal American investor in Cuba. Having been a Colonel in the US Air Force and the Royal Air Force, he retired from the military with many international connections. He used these to become an investor in Cuba. At the peak of his wealth, he owned cigar factories, a motorcycle factory, several tobacco farms, apartment buildings in Havana as well as homes in Havana, Pinar Del Rio and Miramar. In addition to this, he had a monopoly on all of the parking meters in Havana.

What did he and other American investors do that was so terrible? He created thousands of jobs and contributed to the welfare of Cuba by increasing the island’s wealth, which at the time was substantial.

Then Castro and Guevara decided this was no good. When they took Havana from Batista, the very first thing they did was smash my grandfather’s parking meters to steal his money. They then nationalized all of his assets and froze his accounts for no reason other than their anarchism and hatred. They then murdered many of his friends. They were the lowest form of life on Earth.

As if the widespread immortalization of Che and Castro is not enough, Hollywood has to pour salt in the wounds of many people. After he lost his fortune, my grandfather died of conditions which were surely brought on by the increased stress of becoming destitute, though I cannot prove this. What I can prove however, is that my father was thrust into poverty at the age of 18 and forced to live out of a car for a year. He later returned himself to wealth by working long hours for little money to put himself through school.

Guevara was evil and anyone with a conscience should not see a movie that portrays this monster as a hero.

Fordham’s Cardinal Dulles Society Gives a Voice Back to Catholicism

2009-01-27T08:17:00.000-08:00

By Michelle Hardy
Hardy@Fordham.edu

It’s a bit ironic when students at a Catholic university find themselves deprived of an outlet for promoting Catholic values. Countless Fordham students have complained of this lack of representation, but it wasn’t until now that someone decided to respond.

Brian Stong, a Fordham senior and former president of the campus’ Respect for Life club, is creating The Cardinal Dulles Society this spring. The club will hold lectures and facilitate discussions regarding the preservation of Catholic values within the college atmosphere, addressing both personal and campus-related issues of faith.

By giving an in-depth look at the core tenants of Catholicism, meetings will ask students to question how these concepts should be materialized in everyday college life. The club will also feature lectures by learned scholars from the Fordham community and beyond. Some potential topics of discussion will include faith and reason, Christian hope, the liturgy, and the real presence of the Eucharist.

Brian believes these lectures and discussions will provide a comfortable outlet for devout Catholics, as well as those simply interested in expanding their knowledge on the religion. He wishes for his club to serve as “…an intellectual society, a forum for learning the Catholic faith more seriously and discussing it seriously, as if it is something we actually believe.”

The Cardinal Dulles Society will also have several officer positions available for students interested in future involvement, including the office of president after Brian graduates this spring.

I was fortunate enough to have a discussion with the club’s founder regarding why this group was so greatly needed. Below is our conversation:

Michelle: During your time at Fordham, what have been your main concerns with how the University represents Catholic values through its actions and policy making?

Brian: We’re concerned with the lack of solid Catholic information we receive at Fordham. It seems that it’s assumed we all know about the Catholic faith, or else we wouldn’t have come here, but in reality it’s just not the case, even after some of us have gone to Catholic grade schools and high schools our whole lives (Here I’ll mention one of my good friends who was one such lifelong Catholic schooler and didn’t know who Judas Iscariot was when we were playing trivial pursuit).

This certainly isn’t Fordham’s fault, but when our theology requirements allow us to dodge learning about the Catholic faith by taking other options, it just seems that the University doesn’t care enough about sharing the beautiful and selfless faith that it holds and has prospered from. If we really believed that we have the right faith and that people can be saved by it, how come we don’t teach it? The Cardinal Dulles Society seeks to fill the gap and provide solid teaching on the Catholic faith. It is a direct response to the late Avery Cardinal Dulles’ proposal for a Catholicism 101 course that was not wholly welcomed by the theology department.

Michelle: Have there been any similar attempts to form this sort of organization in recent years at Fordham?

Brian: Not that I know of, but there has been tremendous growth in Christian life Communities (CLC), which I’m also proudly a member of, so we know that there is a growing number of seriously faithful students at Fordham who want to know more about their faith and continue building a solid foundation for it. The Cardinal Dulles society seeks to build the foundation with complete and total reverence for the traditional Catholic faith we have inherited and are proud of.

Michelle: What are some of the main topics your club wishes to address in this first semester of its existence? Are there any specific Fordham policies you wish to speak out against immediately? Any specific political issues?

Brian: In a way we want to rise above politics. Just like how the Gospels or the Pope don’t endorse a certain candidate, so would the Society seek to stay above politics. This isn’t to avoid contentious issues, but to realize that a certain political party or candidate really isn’t the answer to our problems, but rather Christ is. So we want to keep the focus on Christ.

Perhaps the point I’m trying to make is that there are certain times and places to be whiny and abrasive about politics, (been there, done that—ex pres of Respect for Life right here), and people definitely need to take a stand to real world evils, but this forum of the Cardinal Dulles Society helps teach the roots of the faith that are essential frameworks for being able to deal with modern political or university issues. For example, building a respect for the dignity of the person based on the Gospels and the Papal encyclicals can be indispensable in being able to deal with the modern real world issues of abortion, torture, war, euthanasia, nuclear armament, etc.

Michelle: What will you do to create a welcoming environment that facilitates cooperation among students of different spiritual backgrounds?

Brian: Certainly we’ll encourage people of any spiritual background to join and learn more about the core of the Catholic faith. Not surprisingly this will probably turn out to be mostly Catholics who join, but we would gladly welcome anyone so that they can see the great treasure of a faith we have and hopefully be inspired to join the Church themselves.

The club’s first meeting is planned for February 2nd at 7:30 pm, in a Keating room to be announced. Brian would also like to thank Joe Hill S.J., a Jesuit scholastic and graduate student, for assisting him in forming the club. If you have any questions about The Cardinal Dulles Society, you can contact Brian at stong@fordham.edu.

No More Nice Guy

2009-01-26T13:29:00.000-08:00

By Phil Fraietta
Fraietta@Fordham.edu

First and foremost let me state that what happened on the afternoon of Tuesday, January 20th was a truly historic event and one that Americans of all different political beliefs should at least appreciate the history in. But, with that said, it is now time to move past the history of the inauguration and into the Presidency of Barack Obama.

It is my belief that we as conservatives have gotten “soft” for a lack of a better term. We just endured eight years of the largest expansion of the Federal Government since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and many of us still refuse to speak critically of President Bush. Now yes, it is true that President Bush kept our nation attack-free after 9/11, and did some very honorable things with respect to AIDS in Africa. But, all in all, his entire Presidency was a complete and utter failure as well as an abandonment of conservatism.

I address this refusal to criticize President Bush because I fear some fellow conservatives may give the same treatment to President Obama. We must not be afraid to play insult to history. Meaning that just because President Obama is the first African-American President does not mean we should be afraid to evaluate and critique every decision he makes as President.

We must remember what the Civil Rights Movement was intended to achieve. The goal of the Civil Rights Movement, as stated by Martin Luther King Jr., was to “one day live in a nation where [a man] will not be judged by the color of [his] skin but by the content of [his] character.” I believe the election of President Obama does not signify that we have reached this day, but rather it will be when we are able to applaud or criticize his decisions without second-guessing ourselves for fear of being called racist that we will have reached this day.

In conclusion, while the election of President Obama will always be a truly historical event, it is time we stop looking out of a historical lens and resume looking into a political lens. We owe it to ourselves as conservatives; we owe it to this great nation and her citizens; we owe it to the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, who fought so hard for racial equality, to evaluate every last decision made by President Obama without using race as a factor and to voice our opposition to every last decision that opposes the principles of conservatism.

Reporting from Israel

2009-01-23T08:02:00.000-08:00

By Rachel Ring
Ring@Fordham.edu

These past three weeks I have been involved in a short session intensive study abroad program to Israel. As an American leaving right when the Gaza fight erupted, I was a bit apprehensive to continue with the trip, but excited too, because this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Because of my experience there, I can now say with a solid background and knowledge my opinions, and am not just some idiot in a political science wearing a Che Guevera t-shirt in class pontificating on what the Israel Palestine problem should look like and how it should be solved.

With that being said, having been to areas all over Israel, including the West Bank, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Umm al Fahm, the settlements, seeing the security wall, Beersheba, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and the Golan Heights, I can say that I completely get why both sides fight as hard as they do. (Which, I think some people miss the point on this issue). There’s an intertwined history, there’s a religiosity on both sides, there’s a victimhood syndrome that paralyzes both sides into not negotiating and cooperating. And let’s face it; to keep the status quo in Israel and the territories is easier for everyone, because then no real changes have to be made. Settlements won’t have to be uprooted, lines won’t be drawn, and there will not be a huge social upheaval when both sides don’t get their way 100%.

Besides the places I saw, I also had the privilege of meeting with Israeli and Palestinian officials (on levels that I could never dream of meeting as a college student in a conflict resolution course in the USA, such as the equivalent of the secretary of state for the Palestinians and an Israeli foreign minister taking time off during wartime to speak to students). I saw two common themes in these meetings, one is that Israel’s prime concern is its security, and it is achieved both through police force and by land acquisition, and on the other side I saw that Palestinians just want their own state and economy. However, how they want to achieve it, and how the Palestinians manage their own people and affairs is a huge deterrent to ever getting the borders finally drawn and being free of “occupation”.

Furthermore, Palestinian leaders (and this is a trend throughout the Arab world) tend to have a bit of a revisionist history when it comes to the past and present. There’s a constant blame the “big bad Zionist Israel” theme, with no sense of responsibility for the way that the Palestinians have been dealt with in the peace process. Fatah (or the PLO remnants) is not some nice, moderate group. Sure, they act like it now, because they realized that Israel would crush them if they didn’t, but this is not the core attitude or belief of the group. Hence, why Israel doesn’t trust them, and Fatah’s dual identity problem is one of the reasons why Hamas has flourished.

Lastly, Israel is not some golden angel in this argument either. While I do believe Israel has the right to exist, is a viable state and will continue to prosper, the settlements are a travesty and need to go. Settlement building needs to be stopped immediately, and the settlers need to be relocated. While I understand the religious fervor for the land, there could be negotiated ways to set up Jewish sites to visit or worship at, but the religious settlers are a small part of the settlement population (Just like the Muslims want in Jerusalem). The rest of the settlers are “quality of life” settlers, and receive tax breaks and benefits from the government to populate in the less expensive West Bank settlements. This is clearly a flawed policy and not a plan for peace, which should be Israel’s ultimate goal, especially to get the borders drawn before the demographics get out of hand against Israel, when they will face a huge problem in trying to keep the Jewish democratic state a viable option.

Russia-Georgia Revisited

2009-01-19T10:44:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

20 years ago, America and the West were triumphant in the grand ideological conflict which pitted them against Soviet Communist barbarism. As the Soviet Union collapsed, America and Russia would be cooperating on a global scale in many areas. Russia could finally become a proper European country, not one driven to dominate the continent. America could go back to being, in the words of Jeane Kirkpatrick, “a normal nation in a normal time.” Such was the optimism of the age as new openness brought increasing contacts between the ex-socialist stalwarts of Russia and Eastern Europe, China and India.

Alas, although there is a long list of common enemies and interests between Russia and the West, it has not come to pass. This was greatly the fault of the Clinton Administration, failing to show Russia the respect it deserved. We made a ‘peace’ with Russia nearly as dishonorable as the one made at Versailles. George H. W. Bush came to an unwritten understanding that NATO would not be expanded into Russia’s backyard.

Now NATO has three very weak countries right on Russia’s border. Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania all have large minorities of ethnic Russians living within their borders. Russia placed Estonia under cyber siege in 2007. All of these countries have populations under 4 million people. American law now dictates that our military is obligated to defend them.

A look at Russia’s history shows that they have always been overly concerned with encroachment on their borders and sphere of influence. This fear goes very far back to the time of the Mongols. Russian expansion was partially defensive in nature.

Now there are large movements in Washington to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. Neoconservatives believe that if Georgia had been in NATO this summer Russia would not have invaded. This may be true, but are we really willing to risk going to war for Georgia, a small country that probably provoked Russia in some way? There is no justification for bringing either one of these countries into NATO. NATO expansion has rules. It is not allowed to take in countries that have existing border disputes. There are no definite US interests at stake by the fact that Russia has recognized the independence of Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkazia and South Ossetia. It is a situation that has to be watched, and certainly on a diplomatic level we should not let Russia do whatever it wants, but we should not be endangering US troops.

On Israel

2009-01-16T07:28:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

I cannot pretend to be completely unbiased in my analysis of Israel’s problems in the Middle East. I have family living in the city of Herzliyah in range of Hezbollah rockets. My family was intrinsically involved with the Zionist movement for many years. I myself have my issues with the Zionist organizations that I have been in contact with as I am paranoid of what I consider elements of dual loyalty. This, in and of itself, does not mean they are wrong on all issues.

There are two important interests the United States has with regard to Israel. America’s interests are served both by a strong, stable and mighty Israel and by an Israel at peace, or at least non violent stalemate with its neighbors. Part of this can only be accomplished by cajoling the Israelis into taking certain action that could be either politically hard to swallow or could possibly endanger its geopolitical viability. This means a solution that will have to be found that can best be palatable to the virulently ideological side of America’s Zionist sympathies and with careful regard to America’s overall position in the region.

The bottom line is that many Israeli settlements are going to have to go. This is difficult to swallow because the center of Jewish history is in Judaea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank. This must be done without America seeming to criticize or come down hard on Israel. The mere appearance of a loss of American support could have even more difficult consequences for the region. Here is a compromise that I believe will be most palatable.

The United States currently gives Israel $3 billion a year almost all in jets. A simple proposal, rather than telling the Israelis we are going to cut this aid if they do not freeze settlement activity, would be to offer just the opposite. The best compromise is for the United States to offer double or triple this amount of money in exchange for the withdrawals. This allows Israel to withdraw from the territories out of strength rather than weakness.

A miniature Cold War is brewing in the region with Iran if it is not totally underway. Our Arab allies are no less paranoid of Iran and its proxy groups than Israel is. As I have said before, Saudi Arabia is no less important an ally in the region than Israel. I believe it is more so. The Arab regimes have been cooperating with Israel on a scale unseen since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in order to restore some semblance of order to the region. America can achieve a settlement. It is important to think of it this way. It is just a settlement, not necessarily a formal peace.

The Illusion of Choice

2008-12-11T17:54:00.001-08:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham .edu

Contrary to popular belief, there is no real Right Wing in America. Every single government, Democrat, or Republican, has vastly expanded the government. There is only one real difference; ways and means. The Democrats like to tax and spend, the Republicans to borrow and spend. Either way, there is more government encroachment on the economic livelihoods of Americans, especially if you are in the top 60% of earners. This is not to mention slowly conditioning Americans and others round the world to being watched 24/7.

Check out the latest issue!

2008-12-10T09:55:00.001-08:00

Make sure to check out the latest issue of The Liberty Forum! Our newest issue comes out today so make sure to check in the dorms after 2:00 PM.

If you live off campus, are a graduate or other reader and unable to obtain a copy but would like one, please e-mail us at fordhamlibertyforum@gmail.com and we will be sure to get one to you.

Thank you to everyone who made this issue possible!

Why Can't Conservatives be on TV too?

2008-12-10T08:21:00.001-08:00

By Phil Fraietta
Fraietta@Fordham.edu

For those of us who watch Fox News it is no secret that the channel is far from “fair and balanced.” With commentators such as Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Mike Huckabee and now Glenn Beck, I am comfortable saying that Fox News is a conservative political commentary network.

My question to those on the left however is, so what? The left makes it no secret that they are offended by the existence of Fox News. For some reason, conservative political commentary has no place on television in the eyes of the left. My own roommate (a liberal) often times laughs at what is said on Fox News programs and has on more than one occasion stated he believes they’re simply making things up.

It is not as if the left does not have its own political commentary on television. To see leftist political commentary all you need to do is turn to MSNBC. The channel runs liberal political commentators such as Keith Olbermann and Rachael Maddow (who just the other day stated she believes President Bush has been the worst President in the history of the Republic).

Unlike those on the left, however, fellow conservatives and I do not have a problem with MSNBC; we just don’t watch it! America is a nation that emphasizes the idea of free speech. Therefore I see nothing wrong with one television network running conservative commentary and another running liberal commentary. The American public will decide which network they most agree with and most enjoy watching.

That decision has already been made—Fox News. Nielsen TV Ratings consistently show Fox News doubling MSNBC in Prime Time ratings, which is when the political commentary programs air. For example, for the eight o’clock hour on Thursday December 4, The O’Reilly Factor drew 3,149,000 viewers, compared to the 1,553,000 viewers drawn by Countdown with Keith Olbermann. For the nine o’clock hour, Hannity & Colmes drew 2,131,000 viewers, compared to the 1,242,000 viewers drawn by The Rachael Maddow Show.

So, my overall message to liberals here is simple—stop whining! Conservatives have just as much of a right to have political commentary on television than liberals do. The fact that the American public prefers Fox News is not a sin; it proves that America is still a center-right nation. If liberals want to change this fact they should try and compete with Fox News by creating better programs on networks such as MSNBC, rather than attacking the existence of Fox News all together.

Forum on Conservatism

2008-12-05T08:15:00.000-08:00

What must you believe to be a conservative? Do all conservatives believe the same thing? If you are interested in these questions and more, then be sure to come to the Forum on Conservatism on Monday night (the 8th) at 7:00 PM in McGinley 234.

Panelists will be representing paleo-conservatism, neo-conservatism and libertarianism. They will be explaining and discussing the differences and the audience will have much opportunity to become engaged.

Make sure to come!

The Nobles of the United States Congress

2008-12-05T08:13:00.000-08:00

By Phil Fraietta
Fraietta@Fordham.edu

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (or Prince Reid and Princess Pelosi, like Sean Hannity likes to refer to them as) have been able to dodge deserving criticism, mostly due to the fact the media is overrun by liberals. However, those of us who are not blinded by the left-wing light are able to see just how narcissistic these two really are.

Despite the fact that I am opposed to a bailout of the auto industry, like I wrote on this blog before, I do not believe Princess Pelosi has any right to so harshly criticize the CEOs of the Big Three for flying into Washington DC on private jets. As just about everybody knows, the Big Three CEOs were heavily criticized the first time they went to Washington because they flew private corporate jets and still had the nerve to ask for taxpayer money.

Despite the ridiculousness of this argument (CEOs do not own companies they work for them) it brings up an interesting question: Why is it that nobody criticizes Princess Pelosi for being the first Speaker of the House to have her own government-issued private jet? In case her Highness forgot, the taxpayer pays for her private jet! If Princess Pelosi is so concerned with protecting the taxpayer why not get rid of her private jet? The answer is simple of course—Pelosi could care less about the taxpayer, all she cares about is criticizing American business to advance her socialist agenda.

Now what about Prince Reid? Recently, a new visitors area for tourists of the Capitol was completed. When Congress issued the original plans, the people were told it would cost some $350 million less than it did. In reference to this brand-new visitors area, and why it was necessary, Prince Reid said, “In the summertime, because (of) the high humidity and how hot it gets here, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol.” Apparently, the Prince cannot be bothered by the foul smell of the masses. While he claims to care about protecting the taxpayer dollars from being abused by the Big Three CEOs, he seems to believe taxpayer dollars should be put to use to prevent him from having to smell us common people.

Over 230 years ago the Declaration of Independence was drafted in order to declare our independence from the nobility that was England. Perhaps the most famous words of that document read, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It appears that today, however, Princess Pelosi and Prince Reid do not view themselves as equals, but rather as superiors.

An Outsider Observes the Church

2008-12-02T19:35:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

I am not a Catholic. I was raised in a Jewish family in an Italian American neighborhood outside New York City. I attended public schools other than a three year stint in a secular private institution. In college I decided on Fordham for several reasons. I liked the Catholic and Renaissance background of the school, I knew many people who went there and it had the perfect location for me. When I desperately needed to move on with my life, Fordham was there for me and took me in as a member of the family, as many a Catholic family did for me when I was growing up. Fordham, The Jesuits and most of all, the Catholic Church granted me my ticket to freedom.

My background, I believe, having been involved in many Catholic traditions out of support for friends, gives me some insight as to the condition of Catholics and the Catholic Church today. This also comes from reading endless volumes of mostly periodical material on the subject.

In spite of how many Jews view the Catholic Church, I have always seen it as a pillar of Western Cultural life. The thought of empty pews in Europe depresses me. The Catholic Church is easily the oldest surviving Western Institution. Its various projects greatly lessened the damage done by the collapse of the Roman Empire. Its monks and scholars wrote down everything they possibly could to preserve the knowledge of millennia that had been built up. The Church was later instrumental (but had less power than many would like to think) in building the national project in Europe. They made kings and empires and allowed people to form into political organizations that last to this day.

Now, if you were to speak to any Catholic on the streets of New York, they are either dissatisfied with the Church’s teachings or disgusted by the crimes of a select few members of the Church. Except in Hispanic communities, the pews are not empty, but they are lacking. Most priests are older, and most New Yorkers cynical. Everyone seems to think the Church is passé and out of touch with the times.

In many ways there is not so much reason to be gloomy. The priests are older, yes, but the number of new priests does not seem to be declining too rapidly, as many men become priests from an older age. This may help them in their struggle to bring God to people’s lives, as they themselves have had many more of life’s experiences which brings wisdom

Roman Catholicism is also growing, albeit not as quickly as Evangelical Christianity and Islam, but it is nonetheless growing. The number of Catholics from 1900 to 2001 increased by 394%. This is not just because of a baby boom, but because of conversion. Therefore, right now as growth slows somewhat, it is probably just because of an era of expansion unmatched by any other in the history of the Church. But these numbers mask overall demographic picture. In 1900, 25% of Catholic lived outside the Western World. In 2001, 70% lived outside the West. Asia, Africa and Latin America are where new Catholic life is to be found.

Those who think the Catholic Church does not reform should realize that in actuality it constantly does so. The problem for these people is that the Catholic Church reforms without telling anybody. It has to save face during reform.

Catholics should keep their faith in the Church. It has done much great goodness in the societies it has touched. The sudden turns to extremism are few and far between considering the whole picture. Regardless of what positions it takes in the future it will always put forward its core beliefs, salvation in Christ and the belief that life beings at conception. The Catholic Church is and will most likely always be powerful and righteous institution.

The Laughable Revolution

2008-11-28T18:23:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Kohn

America, like many other nations, tends to view Latin American politics as a matter of trends. Of these various social and political trends lately, the one that makes the most headlines is the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ of Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela, and the seemingly endless rants of a blowhard elected dictator whose position is becoming ever more untenable.

As the most recent poll by the Latinobarometro points out, the Latin American public is significantly further to the left on economic and political issues than Americans would like them to be. In poll after poll, the people of Latin American nations consistently favor big government doing many of their services.

The so called Revolution of Chavez has expanded its following to include the states of Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador and Cuba. For all of Chavez’ blustering, this is relatively little to show for his efforts and his active foreign policy that has come at the expense of the long term economic and social health of his own Venezuela.

The other story of Latin America has been the notable progress of pragmatic, center left governments throughout the region, having permeated much further than Bolivarianism. In Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, and others, fiscal restraint and government deregulation has been the real trend, in spite of the left wing preferences of the population. Rising economic growth, decreasing inequality and an overall increase in the quality of life in so many Latin American nations have ensured that these governments are reelected and prudent policies continued.

Chavez received his first setback a few years ago in a plebiscite that would have greatly expanded his powers and ability to preserve his socio-economic policies. His rants of racism in the United States have had the rug pulled out from under them in the election of America’s first black president.

Chavez then made the mistake of trying to tangle, possibly militarily with Colombia, the most Pro-American country in South America. With American backing, the democratically elected right wing government of Colombia has brought order to a country usually known for its lack of it. Through a combination of military buildup and amnesty programs, Uribe has nearly eliminated Colombia’s largest rebel group, the FARC. Chavez tried to support this group through back channels and gave them some protection, in spite of their heinous acts of hostage taking and other forms of brutality. This was a major diplomatic loss for him. Colombia, in conducting daring raids into Ecuador and its own territory, has won the respect of many in the region. America’s Colombia policy may be counted as one of the only foreign policy success stories of Bush Administration.

Venezuela, after these setbacks, is increasingly looking for allies and support. It is now reaching out to Russia, Iran and other regimes united only in their hostility to the United States. Venezuela is stepping up armed cooperation with these nations as well, hosting Russian naval units. These developments, however, are probably not nearly as dangerous as some in the media have been portraying.

The best evidence of this is Chavez’ most recent difficulty that the opposition party has gained ground in municipal elections in Venezuela. Chavez, essentially an elected dictator, is now a cornered animal. With the decrease in the price of oil, his policies now seem increasingly wrongheaded and imprudent. The ultimate test of Venezuela’s electoral system is about to come, the world will watch and see if Chavez lashes out like a caged animal as his power decreases, or if he peacefully concedes the failure of his false revolution.

The Case Against Universal Healthcare

2008-11-27T07:35:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

To implement a ‘universal health care’ plan in America would be one of the greater follies of our government. There are many reasons to be against it, but there is one glaring one. We already have it. America has had universal health care for many years. It may not be like Britain’s National Health Service but it is on just as great a scale relative to our population. The simple fact is, anyone within the geographical boundaries of the United States of America, even a tourist, can go into a hospital emergency room where by American law, the hospital is obligated to treat them even if they are unable to pay. Even if an individual has so much as a head cold, they can go to a hospital where they will receive treatment, and if they are unable to pay their bill, there are no consequences.

This goes beyond the Medicare and Medicaid programs that target the poor and the elderly respectively. The bottom line is, there is no one who is denied health services in the United States when they go for treatment. This is despite what Michael Moore may have us believe. The 47 million uninsured or under insured in America still have access to all the health care they could possibly need. For this reason alone, a ‘universal health care’ law would be simply redundant.

The other reason that ‘universal health care’ would be folly is America’s great tradition of scientific research is far beyond that of other nations. According to Economist Magazine’s World in Figures 2007, America spends 2.59% of its GDP on R&D (research and development). As a percentage it ranks 7th among all nations listed. However, as a hard number, no nation comes even remotely close to what America spends.

This number includes the very hefty amount of money spent by drug companies on R&D. Yes, this drives up the cost of many drugs in America (where 1/7 of GDP is spent on health care), but it pushes the bounds of the medically feasible. This is a service to America and to mankind that no one in their right mind can doubt the great achievements that result from American research. The bottom line here is that if new costs are imposed on insurance companies and hospitals engaged in activities such as clinical trials, this country will look more and more like Europe, where relative to their economic power very little R&D is done. The only sizeable country that rivals America in scientific achievement is Japan. The others on the list are very small countries all with populations of under 10 million and GDPs comparably small.

There are other factors that make medical care much more expensive relative to other developed nations but the primary reason for high cost health care in America is R&D. This is widely noted by leaders of pharmaceutical companies.

The last reason to oppose ‘universal health care’ is that there is no reason to impose greater costs on the American taxpayer for those who can afford their own health insurance and medical care. The existing bureaucracy has become so complex that many people who can afford it simply opt out of the existing system and pay medical costs out of pocket. We have programs for the poor and elderly, we have emergency rooms that take literally anyone and also impose great costs on the taxpayer. Why, if someone can afford to pay for their own health insurance, should the tax payer take up the burden? At the very least we may look at the logic on car insurance, where laws prohibit owning an uninsured vehicle.

The last reason that ‘universal health care’ is a bad idea in America is that when the government runs an economic entity in this country it usually is handled terribly. The late great economist Milton Friedman eloquently put it; ‘if the US Government ran the Sahara Desert, in five years, it would be out of sand.’ Look at every single government run program. Social security is going to be bankrupt in the near future, welfare was a disaster, Medicaid and Medicare are becoming ever more cost prohibitive. Even our great military is such a disaster, that $2.5 trillion of its budget went missing. Nearly every time the government steps in to run something in America, it runs over budget or is unsustainable in the long term. One can only imagine with the massive bailouts of the idiot bankers of Wall Street, how badly underestimated the overall costs will be.

Conservative Solution to Poverty

2008-11-24T18:53:00.000-08:00

By Phil Fraietta
Fraietta@Fordham.edu

Throughout my lifetime, I have often times found that those of the left and even in the center tend to take the position that conservatives are not interested in helping the poor. While I still believe this a complete falsity, I must say that over the past decade it has become clear to me why many people feel this way. We, as right-wingers, need to stop using the populist rhetoric of “job creation,” and instead need to offer clear but conservative solutions to poverty. Conservative reforms to education would certainly be a good place to start. One such reform that I believe should become a staple of the conservative movement is school choice.

School choice may in fact be the Civil Rights issue of our day. The late great economist Milton Friedman first proposed the idea in the 1960’s. Unfortunately, the “conservative” No Child Left Behind Act failed to include school choice because the far-left, in particular Senator Ted Kennedy, fought against it.

The idea of school choice is simple in principle but genius in application. School choice simply refers to allowing parents to use tax vouchers in order to opt out of sending their children to public school and instead sending them to a private school of their choice. Right now, the tax system forces parents who choose to use private schools for their children, to still pay public school taxes. In my opinion, this is simply wrong. Why should one pay for a service they do not use? Why not allow one to use that same tax money to send their child to a private school?

School choice would not only better the public schooling system by forcing it into even stiffer competition with the private school system, it would serve as a pathway to the American Dream for many impoverished Americans. Take conditions such as those on Fordham Road right outside this campus for example. A family living in conditions like these is forced to send their children to run-down public schools with poor quality teachers and almost no path to advancement. Under school choice, this same family would be able to use a tax voucher and send their child to Fordham Prep. Clearly a student at Fordham Prep has a greater chance to succeed than a student using the Bronx Public School system. Not coincidentally, 73% of Hispanic Americans and 82% of African-Americans (both of which suffer higher poverty rates) support school choice according to the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance.

In fact, most people of all demographics support school choice (63% according to The Center for Education Reform) and see it as a great way to help the poor. So then why is it that school choice has still not be installed? The far-left opposes it.

They argue that school choice is unconstitutional in that it violates “separation of church and state” by sending tax dollars to religious schools. But those of us who are actually familiar with the Constitution know that “separation of church and state” does not appear and that all the Constitution does is prohibit the State from establishing a national religion. The far-left is also under extreme pressure from the teacher’s union to oppose school choice. Clearly, if public schools were forced into stiff competition with private schools, sub-par teachers would have a difficult time keeping their jobs. But, I for one, would rather see our children being educated by the best teachers we have to offer, rather than making sure sub-par teachers still have work.

School choice is an issue we as conservatives can all support. It is vital for us to push for school choice as the number one means to help the poor. The American Dream is beautiful, but the government monopoly over education has started to break it. School choice is a conservative way to reform education and make the American Dream attainable for everyone once again.

Bush vs Obama in the Media

2008-11-19T18:28:00.000-08:00

By Rachel Ring
Ring@Fordham.edu

Although I’m still concerned about the outcome of the election and would’ve preferred anyone over Obama (by anyone I mean, Hillary, Kerry, even Ted Kennedy), I refuse to treat him or even think of him in the same disrespectful, disparaging light as the liberal media and even fellow Republicans painted our current president, George W. Bush.

His treatment from the media was absolutely unpatriotic, deplorable, and downright scary. Obama should be weary of the media building him up to take him down, as the media has done to Bush post 9/11, our hero who led us out of the dark confusing days into a strong global war on terror that has produced results. Even the war in Iraq, since the surge, has been going well, but you would never hear that from the media. It’s certainly no longer reported that Fallujah has been given back to the Iraqis for control and that US marines have withdrawn their posts there, or that suicide bombings have gone down dramatically. Of course that wouldn’t be reported, because that would have been positive news about Iraq and consequently, about Bush’s competence and decision making.

Furthermore, I’m intrigued as to how Michael Moore is going to create another piece of misinformed propaganda about Bush. He intends to do just that on the economic crisis, yet he must be conveniently blocking out some very important years in history. 1966, 1977, and 1995 are three glaring years that again, Americans won’t hear about because it would make Bush seem less like an incompetent president.

1966 started the Lyndon Johnson “Great Society” program, which increased entitlement programs (read: welfare, read: higher taxes) nationwide. 1977 was the year Jimmy Carter plummeted the country into a recession due to his bad foreign policy agenda, which lead to the gas crisis. 1995, under the beloved Clinton administration (again, I’m baffled as to why he is so revered considering he was impeached), showed us a Democratic president signing into law the deregulation of banks. (And who could forget that Clinton had Osama bin Laden in his sights and let him go?!) Most recently, in the past two years, the public has seen a Democratic Congress sit by as the sub prime mortgage crisis raged out of control. Their motivation behind that: move slow, pin the crisis squarely on Bush, and guarantee a Democratic President-elect.

Besides all of those essential facts, I still refuse to revert to the kindergarten like behavior of the Democrats and “rogue” Republicans have done the past 6 years. Not only was their behavior distasteful, it was downright embarrassing internationally. What must enemies think of a country who can’t stand behind their president, with at least a bit of basic respect? It was unpatriotic, not in the sense that a person in America can’t disagree with the government, but there are ways to disagree with a President and compromise than instead, tear him apart personally to demonize him to gain public support and get their way. That’s the exact opposite route I hope Republicans take in dealing with Obama, to if nothing else, demonstrate that there is a fundamental difference in the way Republicans view authority than Democrats have recently, and that difference needs to be noticed so that damage control can be done in the way Bush was treated (an apology would be nice too).

What Liberals Won't Tell You

2008-11-18T10:24:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

Anyone who hears a left wing intellectual or writer speak of Barack Obama would notice they never speak to the strength of America. I am hoping that Barack Obama’s presidency does not end in disaster, but that is another question. On other issues, Barack Obama, by his very identity is having an impact on America and the World.

The reaction globally to Barack Obama’s electoral victory is astounding. Historically speaking, only Kennedy has engendered that reaction. But this shows the enduring strength of America in the hearts and minds of people around the world. The Liberals do not mention this; they prefer to say that it is only because of Barack Obama’s personality and charisma that the rest of the world is reacting this way. But Bill Clinton was no less charismatic than Obama and the world did not welcome him in the same way.

To the rest of the world, rightly or wrongly the election of Barack Obama is the embodiment of what America has meant to them. A nation that unlike any other is able to redress historical wrongs. America is still the shining city on a hill. It is still the canary in the coal mine of civilization. And the rest of the world still sees it as the last, best hope. Hopefully, Obama governs well and keeps it that way.

What the liberals do not say, is that America, not Barack Obama, is what has captured the fascination of the world.

History returns, but is America still exceptional?

2008-11-16T05:42:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

Ever since the founding of the nation, people have touted the everlasting idea of American exceptionalism. Even though every country is unique in its own way, Americans liked to see their place as exceptionally exceptional, especially when compared with other capitalist, democratic nations.

This notion was further reinforced by an essay written on the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Communist Manifesto called ‘On Marxism and American Exceptionalism.’ It was written by two American communists. Former Neoconservative Francis Fukuyama declared an end to history after the Cold War, and Samuel Huntington declared the Clash of Civilizations. The new world we are entering is looking increasingly like the latter.

Now, after the Cold War has ended, the world is on the precipice of the return of the 19th Century. America will no longer be one of two poles during the superpower years of the Cold War or the only pole during the hyperpower years of the end of the 20th Century and the Beginning of the 21st Century. The world is going to have many poles, with America being of the foremost of several great powers, with political power increasingly distributed by population, rather than technological or economic dominance.

The primary powers in this new world will be America, China, India, Brazil and possibly some form of European political entity. I am intentionally leaving Russia out of this equation as I believe that country to be in real decline, even if they will be able to cause trouble in many ways in the future. The new world we are living in will look increasingly like the map of Europe in the late 19th Century, with many great and powerful nations uneasily trying to maintain a precarious balance of power.

Every single time in history that has had the doctrine of a balance of power has led to war. This was most appropriately played out in Europe after the 30 Years War, after the War of the Spanish Succession, again after the Napoleonic Wars, after the Rise of Germany, and lastly after World War I. In his famous Sinews of Peace speech at Westminster College, Winston Churchill declared that after the Second World War the doctrine of a balance of power was unsound and in a new age ‘We cannot afford to offer temptations to a trial of strength.’ This may have been the world that was taking shape in the days of the ideological conflict between the Free World and Communism, but it is no longer the world we live in.

Somehow, a new balance is going to have to be put in place, and this is why America’s much longed for isolationism may not come to pass. It is a desirable place to be, where you do not have to depend on the rest of the world for sustenance, but the world is much smaller and America will have to find some place in it to preserve its interests and keep any possible competition for geopolitical power as peaceful as possible.

The End of Empire

2008-11-13T08:31:00.001-08:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

America’s posture since the rise of Bill Clinton increasingly looks like we are trying to forge an Empire. The NeoConservatives, who took their inspiration from earlier American liberal ideas were the main intellectual force behind this. The movement culminated in the invasion of Iraq. Such was the imperial hubris that several essays came out in direct defense of it, such as ‘The Case for Empire.’ It seems that as America is humbled militarily and economically, this new empire will have to be the first thing to go.

Contrary to popular belief, the ideas of the NeoConservatives have a long history in America going back to the founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson spoke of using America’s future potential power to build ‘an empire of liberty.’ The NeoCons further believed they drew inspiration by twisting many of the ideals of Winston Churchill.

America has at least a small military presence in nearly130 nations, though most of these are not combat ready troops. Our largest permanent bases remain in their post war locations, with Japan, Germany and South Korea having the most.

Much of this is unnecessary. Why do we have bases in South Korea still? Yes, North Korea is a problem but South Korea has nearly twice the population of the North and are armed with the most sophisticated American weaponry money can buy. Their army has over half a million men, and though it is smaller than the North’s, it has much more sophisticated weaponry and tactics. America maintains a force of 37,000 men in Korea, a fact greatly despised by a local population that has come to greatly despise the country that saved them from Communism. Our 37,000 men would not be able to help the South Korean army in any significant way if the North were to invade. South Korea is more than able to take care of itself in the event of a war, which is very unlikely.

The Bush Administration recently set up the African Command for the Pentagon. Under his administration engagement with the nations of Africa has deepened on every level. Funding to fight AIDS has increased to a historically high level. This is not a problematic policy; AIDS is a truly global problem that has the ability to spread by exponential levels when more people contract it. It is something that could very well reach America’s shores quite easily. However, there is a new semi imperial scramble for Africa going on. China has engaged with Africa on record levels as well, mostly on an economic sphere. America has only two recognizable interests in Africa, increasing African oil production to keep prices low and contributing to fighting AIDS.

Our constant intervention here is unnecessary. It was not necessary to intervene in Somalia when an Islamist regime was formed. Yes, it would have been a radical Islamic regime and we have worked with many of these before, but it would not have been in a serious position to cause major problems around the world. Somalia is not a powerful country and would not have had access to nuclear weapons. The spread of Christianity in Sub Saharan Africa will serve as its own check on the spread of Islam and its militants. We do not need significant numbers of troops to trounce around Africa, our election of a Kenyan president will give us much sway over the hearts and minds of the continent.

An Opportunity for "Fundamental Change"

2008-11-11T10:31:00.000-08:00

By Phil Fraietta
Fraietta@Fordham.edu

Throughout this election season President-elect Barack Obama constantly hammered the idea of “fundamental change” and bi-partisanship. With the current American automaker crisis, President-elect Obama has the chance to bring this “fundamental change” and bi-partisanship to life by finally rejecting the political wishes of lobbyists and those in his own Party.

Prominent Democratic leaders in Congress, in particular, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, have lobbied for a federal bailout of the auto companies. This is not the way to restore the auto companies. Contrary to their belief, the current troubles the auto companies face are not due to the current credit crisis, but are instead due to the all-powerful labor union United Auto Workers (UAW). To give an example of the power of this union we can compare data on the average labor cost per U.S. hourly worker reported by General Motors (GM) and Toyota.

In the year 2005, this data was as follows: General Motors $73.73, Toyota $48. Anybody familiar with economics should immediately take note that in a free-market equilibrium system, such a drastic difference in these statistics would not be possible. It is the power of the UAW that allows for such a drastic difference. Also, American auto laborers belonging to the UAW are often times paid to not work! In fact, according to The Detroit News, as of 2005, 12,000 UAW workers were paid to not work.

In addition, current federal mileage standards also force American automakers to produce small cars that make almost zero profit, at plants organized by the UAW. This is why we see American automakers continually produce cars that do not sell. These are just a few of the problems American auto companies suffer, but what is most important is that none of these problems have to do with people being unable to receive credit to purchase automobiles.

In fact, even when the economy was thriving in 2005, GM reported a third-quarter loss of $1.7 billion, according to The Washington Times. What this data tells us is clear—American automakers are hammered by their labor contracts. One would think that Pelosi and Reid would recognize this and demand that the bailout will only be provided if these labor contracts are re-written. However, we are talking about the far-left ideologues of the United States. What have they decided to do to ensure the taxpayer money goes to good use? Place limits on executive pay. What a shocker!

Also, not by coincidence, Pelosi and Reid are only fighting for bailouts for the American automakers stationed in the blue-state of Michigan and controlled by the largely Democratic union, the UAW. This despite the fact that nearly 113,000 Americans work for “foreign” auto companies, which are not doing so great right now either. In fact, Toyota is reporting a 70% fall in profits in the third-quarter according to The Guardian. So then if the proposed auto bailout is meant to protect American jobs, why not provide money for companies such as Toyota as well? This answer is simple; these companies are stationed in the red-states of Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee. This proposed bailout bill by Pelosi and Reid is entirely partisan-based and has been created in order to please the lobbyists for the UAW, as well as, the voters of the blue-state of Michigan.

Assuming President Bush decides to end his term as a conservative (which is a broad assumption) and veto this bailout proposal, it will be the first piece of legislation before President-elect Obama. If Obama truly wants to bring fundamental change and bi-partisanship he should stand-up to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, the UAW and partisan-based politics in general and veto this proposed bailout for failing to address the issue of labor contracts.

New World Order

2008-11-10T06:07:00.000-08:00

By Barbara Delo
BFDelo@hotmail.com

America voted for a fix to the economy. But what we may get is a new world order.

The news media is already reporting that Obama wants to start off with a surge of executive orders, the least balanced and accountable form of action, to begin what he sees as a mandate to change America.

I believe that America, despite its flaws, is a great nation. I am convinced that many others feel this way too. I hope you’ll join me in watching carefully, standing firm, and making our voices heard to our representatives and senators so that the basic tenets and principles of our nation are not altered in a misunderstood reading of the wishes of the American people.

Let’s start with the representatives who will listen best, those who are up for election in two years.

Trouble on the Northwest Frontier

2008-11-09T07:38:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

Terror, militant Islam, tribalism, violence, backwardness and corruption are the running themes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, particularly in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, where the NATO fight against the Taliban has taken on a new front. There are many problems with taking the fight there, though further measure will be necessary to end it.

The area has not had a significant governmental presence since the time of Alexander the Great. When Alexander and his men fought a deadly battle against the Indian army of the time, his men became so demoralized that they forced him to turn back. He then died in Babylon.

The area is full of many cultures, but no civilization. As civilization is defined as a culture that has some form of written record, this area has a literacy of less than 10%, and most literate people are in the capital of the region at Peshawar. America is not going to bring civilization to this part of the world that has never been reached by it. We made grave errors in our war aims and it will take a master warrior and politician to not make this battle look like a loss for America.

At the height of its Empire, Britain had many problems in this area that was ostensibly under its rule. Pashtun (the main ethnic group) warlords were carrying out raids into British India and harming Imperial interests and security in the region. Britain then took military action, but it was a much more measured response. They raided all over the area and set their aims at killing and capturing the warlords and radical Muslims that were causing them so much trouble. This region was also the buffer zone of the Great Game of imperial domination between the British and Russian Empires. America would do well to look at their records in the region.

At the outset of Operation Enduring Freedom, America did not just set its goals as the removal of the Taliban and the neutralization of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, we set out to establish a democratic government in Afghanistan, a country of little civilization to speak of in its long history on the map. Not realizing that this is a near impossible country to govern, we set up a weak parliamentary system led by an impotent technocrat, Hamid Karzai. We now need to eventually withdraw from Afghanistan and Pakistan while saving face and accomplishing at least some of our goals. The fight is not over.

President elect Obama, as part of his campaign pledge, promised to step up efforts to finish the war in Afghanistan and kill or capture bin Laden. What he does not realize is that we are going to have to lower our expectations and aims for the rest of the country, because it is not fit for any government, much less a weak democratic one.

Afghanistan has seen the passage of many invaders through its borders, especially through the Khyber pass on their way to the vast riches of India. Aryans, Greeks/Macedonians, Arabs, Turks, British, Russians then Soviets, and now the Americans have all been pinned down in this region of fierce warriors. If Alexander could not conquer it, does America really believe it can?

Saving the Saudis

2008-11-07T05:45:00.001-08:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

When America’s closest historical permanent alliances come to mind, the names that usually come up in conversation are Britain, Canada, the rest of the English speaking world, Continental Europe, Japan and Israel. We have other allies to be sure, but few of them are on as deep a level of cooperation and common values as these.

However, an alliance routinely overlooked by many in America who wish we did not need it is the Saudi monarchy. Reminiscent of the absolute monarchies of 15th Century Europe, this oil powered ally of America’s is no less significant than any other. Relations were first forged at the outset of World War II by President Roosevelt very much under the auspices of Winston Churchill. The Saudi royal family, though they have to carefully manage their behavior publicly, is currently our most important ally in the Middle East. I think it would suffice it to say that in the short term, they may even be more important than Israel.

The Saudi royal family is firmly pro American. The Saudi people are not. This is a massive disconnect. There are many threats to the Saudi family but their power does not seem to be in serious question. At any given time there are some 200 wealth wielding members of the al Sauds and another 7000 in the extended family. The state’s infrastructure and traditions are firmly still in place and the standard of living has been rising on the back of oil exports.

The world is changing. Al Qaeda has been beaten from much of the Middle East and the alliance between the al Sauds and the Wahhabist (anti American) clerics remains. Al Qaeda’s intellectual firmament remains the Wahhabist ideology. But there are many nuanced issues that deserve their own attention.

The first is that Saudi Arabia remains an ally despite being a despotic repressive regime at home. The al Sauds are experienced in the art of statecraft and need peace and security for themselves. America’s oil for security pact with Saudi Arabia may be under strain. However, it seems the internal security of the monarchy, though challenged, is not in critical danger.

Unusually for many countries around the world, the Saudi official position, while officially impartial, is known to be friendly and comfortable with George Bush, in spite of his mistake in Iraq. The al Sauds have long ties with the Bush family and with the Republican Party. The Saudis will meet with President Elect Obama this week and size him up for the first time. Among inner circles within the Saudi Court it is known that hearing his calls for hope and change ring hollow and even cause nervousness. Stability is the word of the day. The Stability of Saudi Arabia and the Greater Middle East is necessary for furthering American interests there and facing up to an increasingly belligerent Iran. Saudi Arabia will also be a key diplomatic force in pushing through any Israeli Palestinian Peace Accord.

If Obama pushes the Saudis away he will be making a colossal failure. The last monarchy that the US turned its back on was Iran, and it then became one of our fiercest enemies, blocking every move America has made to try to set up stable regimes in Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan (though it originally cooperated with us in Afghanistan). The Saudis knew that in ousting Saddam from Iraq, the only check in the region on Iranian power and influence had been removed. Iran was now free to play a chess proxy game across the region to increase its influence at the expense of the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and our smaller Gulf allies. The Russian invasion of Georgia further complicated that country’s value to Western Strategic schemes in the region.

This issue has a very long history. If one goes back to read the old New York Times articles from the 70s they railed on and on about how the Shah was running the most evil and brutal regime ever created. The truth is he was running an enlightened monarchy and was favoring eventually introducing democracy. He had also built a country with a highly educated workforce and vast industrial and mining base. But the Times and eventually the Democratic Party did not let up. When finally Ayatollah Khomeini took over, there was nothing left but for America to elect Reagan to get the hostages out.

We must not make that mistake today. It seems that even on its own the Saudi Monarchy will stay in place. But President Elect Obama must not try to take a moral stand on them. They are slowly reforming. It is painful to not see it go further but the alliance must be maintained. They are now the key to holding back Iran.

The 2008 Election: A Libertarian Perspective

2008-11-06T09:05:00.000-08:00

By Phil Fraietta
Fraietta@Fordham.edu

On November, 4th 2008, around 11 PM Eastern Time, the final blow was dealt to the Republican Party as Barack Obama was elected to be the 44th President of the United States. But, I do not believe this loss will throw the Republican Party into the wilderness forever, in fact I believe it will finally make the Party wake up. What do I mean by “wake up?” I mean that the Party will now finally understand the reason for its demise—the alienation of libertarians.

At first thought the average reader will probably say, “ So what? There are hardly any libertarians anyway” but this statement is simply untrue. In fact, the American National Election Studies finds that roughly 13 percent of voters are libertarians. The shift away from the Republican Party started four years ago in the Bush-Kerry election. In the 2000 election, libertarian voters preferred President Bush to Former Vice-President Gore, 72%-20%, according to the Cato Institute.

In 2004, however, libertarians preferred President Bush to Senator Kerry, 59%-38%, once again according to the Cato Institute. And now in 2008, although the data has not been made official yet, it is very likely that Senator McCain and President-elect Obama may have split the libertarian vote. This assumption being made due to the vast number of “libertarians for Obama” movements as well as Obama’s victories in the libertarian strongholds of the nation.

These areas include the “sun-belt” region of the nation, as well as the “live free and die hard” State of New Hampshire. Not coincidentally, in the 2008 election, President-elect Barack Obama won such sun-belt States as New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada, while only losing Arizona by 162,482 votes. In 2004, President Bush won all of these States. Perhaps even more telling is the election data over the past 8 years from the State of New Hampshire. New Hampshire, a State that is known for its heavy libertarian presence most notably seen by its lack of State Income Tax, State Sales Tax and seat-belt laws, went for President Bush in the year 2000 by a 1.4% margin. In 2004, however, the States went for Senator Kerry by a 1.37% margin, and now in 2008 the State went for President-elect Obama by a 10% margin.

From this evidence I believe it is undisputable that libertarians are leaving the Republican Party and opting to instead vote with the Democrats most likely because the Republican Party has decided to forget about us. The Bush Administration grew the size of government larger than any Administration since the Lyndon Johnson Administration. The Republican Establishment, who instead chose to compel to an idea of “compassionate conservatism”, has laughed off our prominent voices in the Party, such as Ron Paul and Jeff Flake. And what did they get for it? A government controlled by the far-left.

What I believe this election must do for the Republican Party is help us return to our Goldwater-Reagan roots. We need to center a platform on limited government ideas. Such ideas as school vouchers, privatized Social Security, and a flat-tax may be good places to start. But, either way, as a libertarian while I am deeply stung by the Obama victory, I am also confident that it will return the Republican Party to its limited government roots and bring us victory in 2012.

Honor, Duty and Looking Forward

2008-11-05T07:57:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

No one writing for this blog is happy with the result of this disappointing, though historic, election. John McCain, a great man who has served his country in a way that the vast majority of us will never have the opportunity to do, lost. We must look to the future and to make the best with what we have.

First of all, Barack Obama is now our President. He is not the President of African Americans or Democrats or Liberals. He will govern all of us, and as he is the President- elect we owe him our loyalty and must uphold the honor of this country.

As a matter of policy, now all Conservatives can do is hope for the best, that Barack Obama is not the Socialist of his youth. May he rule his people well.

I Love America

2008-11-05T07:51:00.000-08:00

By Barbara Delo
BFDelo@hotmail.com

With Democratic victories in the Senate and Presidential races, political control in Washington has shifted from Republican to Democratic- from a philosophy of limited government to a philosophy of larger government, from a philosophy of greater freedom to a philosophy of greater government control and regulation over our individual lives.

Perhaps this was the result of panic over the economy.

Perhaps this was just the swinging of the pendulum after 8 years of a Republican presidency.

Perhaps the nearly billion dollars spent by Obama made the difference.

Perhaps this occurred because of disarray and dishonesty that had infiltrated the Republican Party itself.

Regardless, we now have a President who ran on the platform of changing our great nation. How far he succeeds in moving our country towards the world of George Orwell in the book 1984 depends on how we respond to this setback. We must not give up but rather MUST start today to defend our freedoms, use our talents to become involved in the political debate, and build the skills and grassroots organization needed to be successful in the future.

I love America. Too much change could destroy it.

Liberal "Tolerance"

2008-11-04T06:57:00.000-08:00

By Katie Poedtke
Poedtke@Fordham.edu

This morning, as I passed a freshman dorm on my way to the deli, a female student blew the smoke from her freshly lit cigarette in my face and snarled “I HATE McCain!” I assume that the sight of the small McCain-Palin pin I wear on my jacket sparked this disgusting reflex. Such knee-jerk, thoughtless reactions are inarguably much more common amongst liberals than amongst conservatives. Blogger and investigative journalist Michelle Malkin details this fact brilliantly in her 2005 book “Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Going Wild” in which she describes the outrageous behaviors of unhinged liberals after the 2000 and 2004 election cycles, as well as some of the unbelievably hateful treatment that she herself has been subject to as a crusader in the conservative movement.

In every major US city, police forces are preparing for the riots that are expected should Obama lose on Tuesday. Just as I could never imagine any conservatives I know blowing smoke in the face of an Obama supporter, I could never, ever imagine Republicans rioting if an underdog Democratic candidate for president were to win a surprise victory over a media-darling Republican (and I realize I’m pushing the limit of a hypothetical situation with that). Such irrational behavior is not in our nature and it is just plain wrong.

“There are crazies on both sides,” a friend told me in discussion of my run-in today, “take abortion clinic bombers,” he said. Abortion clinic bombers are not conservatives. They are radicals, and indeed, “crazies.” In no way does killing abortionists help the pro-life cause, and the vast, overwhelming majority of conservatives recognizes this clearly and condemn such crazies. Liberal crazies, on the other hand, get much more sympathy from their liberal cohorts in this country. Take Bill Ayers, and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, for example. Conservatives have clear limits on what is acceptable and what is unacceptable, on what is right and what is wrong. Liberals tend to accept a wide “diversity” of philosophies, behaviors, and tactics as helpful in advancing liberal causes, which reveals the dangerous lack of rationality in today’s American liberalism.

Liberals often assert themselves as staunch proponents of diversity and tolerance, yet, in reality, the diversity they promote is a diversity of liberal thought and tolerance and that alone. Conservative thought is outside this spectrum. Conservatism is too diverse to be tolerated. And so we, conservatives, get smoke blown in our faces. Literally. Since our beliefs fall nowhere in-between the bounds of liberal thought, as diverse as that spectrum may be, I suppose we do not deserve their respect.

And they say conservatives are the “close-minded” ones?

Trickle Down Socialism

2008-11-02T17:33:00.000-08:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

Gradually, American government has moved further and further left over the last 60 years. There has never been a concerted effort at communism or socialism in America, but it has been a gradual march. Each time the left makes an advance, no President rolls back the expansion of government. No one rolled back the New Deal or the Great Society.

Obama’s Robin Hood policy seems contradictory. The rich will be taxed more, even though the wealthiest 5% pay 60% of the tax bill and the lowest 40% pay no income taxes. It has been long, slow and arduous, but the left is winning. Especially with the country’s changing demographics, where there is a large immigrant population hostile to the Republican Party and Conservatism in general, it is hard to see anything standing in the way of this mutation of all that is American.

A Call for Perspective

2008-10-30T11:14:00.000-07:00

By Michael Lynch
Michael.lynch9@hotmail.com

We are in the midst of fighting two wars as a financial meltdown threatens to escalate into a global crisis. We have a president with a historically low approval rating and a congressional GOP that has lost its way amid the complacency of Washington. We have a dependency on foreign oil from countries who do not have our best interests in mind and a national consensus that proclaims we are headed in the wrong direction.

America has certainly seen better days and there is no question that a valiant effort will be required to put us back on the right track. A fundamental question remains however. If the perspective of this country is so bleak and the people of this country so dissatisfied, why has the “agent of change” not closed the deal yet?

This is the question that the left has been grappling with over the past few months. Times are tough, so change seems like the practical remedy to assuage our national woes. It would seem that the candidate who proposes a new direction would be the candidate of choice. In times of peace and economic growth the residing political brand is the hero, in times like these, the natural villain. So I ask again, if a new direction is so desperately needed, why has Obama not closed the deal? I believe the answer can be found deep within the soul of this country.

For the past several months, America has been watching Senator Obama. We have learned a great deal about his associations, his voting records, his accomplishments, his beliefs, and most importantly, his idea of what direction this country should go in. The soul of America has absorbed the prevailing knowledge and has found pause with the senator. The reason? His direction contradicts certain truths in life. Some of which include: capitalism not socialism is the best way to achieve economic prosperity; smaller government not larger, is the best structure to assure individual liberty and the preservation of private enterprise; evil exists in this world and the best way to protect self interests and prevent the prospect of war is to remain strong from within.

Peace remains the highest aspiration of the American people. Ronald Regan showed us that without firing a shot, wars can be won with a robust dollar and military, as Barry Goldwater so famously coined the term “peace through strength.”

Our founding fathers mapped the trajectory of this country on the premise that we the people could govern ourselves better than an intellectual elite in Europe could. Americans defined patriotism as telling England to shove it when they imposed confiscatory taxation on us. The revolutionists did not consider paying higher taxes “patriotic,” they considered higher taxation an infringement upon liberty. Contrary to what Senator Biden believes, the Boston Tea Party was not over the dislike of a certain brand of tea.

I think now is the time when Americans should call this presidential race into perspective. We should ask ourselves, what is it that has made us so great and in such a short duration of time considering the youth of our country? What are the ideas and convictions that have kept us strong from within and an inspiration to those who seek a better life? Why is it that immigrants who seek opportunity flock to our shores and countries who rule with the sword of oppression plot our demise? The majority of Americans understand who the real Barack Obama is and what he stands for. This is why it is still a race. As for the polls, they have been more volatile than our current stock market and only one poll truly matters, November 4th.

As a final thought, John McCain found the spirit of America inside a rat infested prison in North Vietnam. It is what gave him the resolve to forgo a ticket home and put his countrymen before him. America now needs to find McCain. We are in tough times, and tough times call for a leader who truly understands what it is that has made us great. This must be understood in order to continue that direction. John McCain knows this because it is what kept him alive in Vietnam and kept his campaign alive after the pundits and intelligencia wrote him off. If there are two things in life that I will never underestimate, they are the will of the American people and the power of a comeback. This could be the comeback of a lifetime.

Sarah Failin'

2008-10-29T12:52:00.000-07:00

By Phil Fraietta
Fraietta@Fordham.edu

Following the exposure of Governor Sarah Palin after she was selected as the Vice-Presidential candidate for the Republican Party, the Party has seen a great schism. On one side of the fence stand the populist conservatives, on the other stand the small-government/intellectual conservatives (this is not to suggest populist conservatives are not intellectual it is just a political term). Governor Palin clearly represents the ideals of populist conservatism and to myself, and other small-government conservatives, this is not the direction the Republican Party should be heading.

First, it is necessary to explain what is meant by “populist conservatism,” and why Governor Palin’s adherence to it divides the Republican Party. The term “populist” refers to a political philosophy that puts the ordinary people above the elites of society. When the word “conservatism” is attached, it simply means a political philosophy that places the ordinary people over the elites of society while supporting conservative positions. By this definition, Governor Palin clearly is a “populist conservative.” The Governor constantly stresses the point that she is just an ordinary “hockey mom;” this is great and all, but as a small-government conservative the fact that the Governor hosts a bake sale for her son’s hockey team doesn’t really mean much to me.

Personally, I want to hear why we must support a privatization of Social Security, why we must install a school voucher system, and why we must drastically cut, if not eliminate, the capital gains tax. Maybe I just haven’t had the television on at the right time, but I do not recall ever hearing the Governor address matters such as these. Rather, she spends her time ranting about “the liberal media elite,” abortion, hunting moose, her family and “real” America.

This brings me to my next point, what is the ‘real America’? Am I not a real American because I do not hunt? Am I not a real American because I take interest in our financial markets? Am I not a real American because I happen to live in New York? When Governor Palin speaks of this real America she has effectively isolated the Republican Party to just include those who live according to her lifestyle. This is why her adherence to populist conservatism serves as a divider to the Republican Party. She effectively excludes all those who advocate small-government conservatism, moderate conservatism, libertarian-conservatism, etc.

If Senator Obama is elected on Tuesday, November 4th, I will personally point the finger of blame at Governor Palin. She has turned the Republican Party into an exclusive party of populism: a party that does not include intellectuals, corporate businessmen, social moderates and non-religious people. I urge conservatives of all types to think about why our movement was so successful in the past before anointing Governor Palin as the Party’s new-coming star, and nominee for 2012. Let us not give the image that Republicans are ordinary people with ordinary ideas, but let us give the image that Republicans are intellectual people with small government ideas based on free-market economic theory.

Larry Kudlow Analyzes the Election Disaster

2008-10-28T07:05:00.000-07:00

By Michelle Hardy and Sean Radomski

MHardy@Fordham.edu; SRadomski@Fordham.edu

“What a mess. What an awful mess,” began the renowned economist and broadcaster Larry Kudlow in his address to Fordham University on October 21st. With a shake of his head, he confessed to the crowded Keating Auditorium his fear that America will most likely “elect a socialist” on November fourth, largely due to Senator John McCain’s ineffective campaigning.

“I’ve known John McCain for 25 years,” he continued. “He’s a good man, a wonderful man. But he’s not a good presidential candidate.”

The host of CNBC’s Kudlow and Company claimed the GOP candidate slipped in the polls after his poorly judged response to the credit crisis. McCain held roughly a five-point lead coming out of the convention in St. Paul. The worsening stock market in following weeks, however, made McCain suspend his campaign to assist with the bailout initiative, which “might have made sense,” said Kudlow, “if he himself had a plan. But he did not.” This failure to offer a personal proposal for the crisis, according to Kudlow, greatly weakened his support.

In the midst of citizens’ heightened panic over this issue, the senator also announced that America’s economy was still fundamentally sound. While Kudlow agrees with this view, he feels it was an ill-timed remark.

Kudlow, although a free-market capitalist and supply-side enthusiast, does approve of the bailout bill. He feels this strategy is a necessary part of capitalism, and explained, “It’s not nationalization, and it’s not socialism. It’s a rescue.”

The bailout plan, which passed Congress on a second try after being defeated in the first attempt, allocates $700 billion to the Secretary of the Treasury to buy up mortgage-backed securities from firms. Kudlow believes that once these “toxic” assets are removed from banks’ portfolios, they will begin lending to each other again, the frozen credit markets will thaw, and foreign investment will flow in.

The speech further validated the rescue bill when Kudlow dated the first bailout initiative back to Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the US Treasury. In 1790, Hamilton convinced Congress to buy $25 million in state debts in order to establish good US credit and draw in foreign capital, and the American economy has required similar methods several times since.

While Kudlow feels McCain responded ineffectively to the credit crisis, he commended two main positive actions made by the senator in recent months. The first was his advocacy for offshore drilling, which will form a bridge to the future when the US can use alternative energy sources like nuclear power. 75% of Americans agreed with this plan, and McCain’s enthusiasm was very beneficial. The second positive was choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate, which energized the conservative social issue base.

Still, the speech showed that McCain has yet to gain the majority vote in several vital groups, the most important being the investor class. “A Republican can’t win without support of the investor class,” said Kudlow. There are 100 million in this group, including citizens who own direct brokerage accounts and 401 K and pension holders. Right now, 46% of them are for Obama, while 43% support McCain. Kudlow advocated McCain’s recent call to cut the capital gains tax from 15% to 7.5%, but then citied McCain’s failure to hammer home the issue as evidence of his poor campaigning skills.

Kudlow also pointed to three main tenants that he believes if strongly emphasized by a Republican candidate, ensure election victory: low tax rates, strong national defense, and pro-life legislation. Kudlow claimed he has never seen someone with these three tickets lose an election. It is McCain’s failure to push for tax cuts and a pro-life agenda, Kudlow believes, that will ultimately cost him this election.

The concluding remarks offered a bit of hope to panicking citizens amidst the nation’s financial nightmare. “We have the most long-running, prosperous economic system, we have the most political freedom, and we have the most economic freedom out of any country in the world,” said Kudlow. “In America you can fall several times and still pick yourself up and succeed.”

Tuesday’s speech suggested American capitalists will manage to do just that. As for November 4th’s turnout, however, Kudlow isn’t so optimistic. For America’s sake, he simply prays Obama is ready.

Don't Know Much about History

2008-10-27T13:37:00.000-07:00

By Sean Radomski
Radomski@Fordham.edu

As a sophomore at Fordham University, I am required to take a semester of philosophical ethics. Among other things, the class teaches the two major worldviews of Kantian Ethics (deontology) and Utilitarian Ethics. Kant would have us believe that results are not important in determining whether an action was just or not; for him, only the motive matters. In other words, if we try to start a fire in order to keep a homeless person warm but in doing so we accidentally burn down the adjacent building, thus killing all the inhabitants, our action is still moral.

On the other hand Utilitarians, such as John Stuart Mill, believe that actions should be judged by results, not intentions or motives. Today, as our economy is burning, Democratic Senators Schumer, Reed, and Menendez would have us believe that this is ok because their intentions and those of Congress have been just.

The 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, pushed through Congress by a Democratic super majority and signed by a Democratic President, had a “noble” intention. The act sought to increase homeownership among minorities and low-income families by setting lending requirements for banks. However, as anyone who takes the time to look at the causes of the current financial crisis will admit, this act has had disastrous consequences despite its intentions. Although history clearly shows that government involvement in bank lending is a bad idea, the trio of Democrats is about to repeat this mistake.

Because all three currently serve on the Senate Banking Committee, they surely understand typical banking operations, right? Wrong. On Wednesday, they called on the Treasury to set “lending goals” for banks receiving capital injections under Paulson’s rescue plan. They fear that the banks will hoard the cash as opposed to increasing lending and unfreezing the credit markets. Perhaps these career attorneys should be enrolled in Finance 101, in which they would surely learn that it is unnecessary to force banks to lend since this is the principle way that they make money.

Banks, run by finance and economics professionals, know how to loan money to ensure that borrowers will be able to pay it back. The recent call from the Senate for “lending goals” is particularly frightening because I believe it mirrors the same uncalled for policies of the Community Reinvestment Act. With (as I fear will be the case in 3 months) Democrats in control of both Congress and the White House, who knows what these “lending goals” will require. If they require loans to low-income families with no chance of paying the loan back, it will be “all just a little bit of history repeating”. As the economy burns, I fear the American people are about to send arsonists to fight the fire.

On the polls

2008-10-25T10:51:00.000-07:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

Though the margin seems to be narrowing even by standard polls, Obama has maintained a slight lead over John McCain for most of the election season (though the season has spanned two years). There is a problem however. Many Conservatives such as myself either used to be slightly more left wing or rejected George Bush as being a Neoconservative and not a real Conservative. I will admit it on this blog, in spite of being pro life and fiscally conservative, I voted for John Kerry.

At the time I was in high school and somewhat more left wing, usually splitting my vote between both Republicans and Democrats. I believed George Bush had been very destructive. I still do. But what these polls do not take into account are people like me. Not all, but some are ignored because pollsters assume everyone votes the way they did in the last election, which is not always so. This must be kept in mind when looking at the numbers. Needless to say, though I will still throw a vote to Conservative Democrats when one comes to the ballot, I am going to be voting 100% Republican without asking questions in this election because the Democratic Congress has shown itself to be every bit as irresponsible as the Bush Administration.

A Graceful Decline

2008-10-23T17:13:00.000-07:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

Otto von Bismarck once said that the most potent factor in 20th Century geopolitics will be that Britain and America speak the same language. So was predicted the greatest and most effective alliance in world history, between the United States of America and the British Empire, that brought Nazi Germany to its knees and faced down the Soviet Union and global communism.

America is now faced with the prospect that, while she is the preeminent power in the world, it is no longer quite as preeminent as it once was. America will continue its relative decline for the foreseeable future, though there will not be a major power that is able to take over as the world’s sole superpower in the same way America is. However, a cold hard look at America’s position in the world must be taken into account so that she can leave the world a safer place, especially when she must preserve her interests overseas.

In the spirit of Bismarck, it seems to this writer that there is a corollary. This writer believes that the most potent factor in 21st Century geopolitics will be that America and India were once colonies of Great Britain. Some scoff at this suggestion and say that India is too culturally different and bogged down by the age old caste system.

I make the argument that India has retained many customs that Great Britain tried to spread there. The first is the rule of law and democracy. India is the only country in the world that has been able to maintain a completely democratic government in the face of soul crushing poverty. It is now rapidly industrializing and in many ways is becoming more Americanized and Anglicized than it was even under the British Raj.

This is particularly important given the strategic position of India being between,-let’s face facts- Jihadistan (pretty much everything from Morocco to Pakistan) and “Communist” China. This is America’s opportunity to decline in secure manner as Great Britain did at the loss of its empire. Britain, realizing its position in the world was in decline, aligned itself with the rising power of the age, the United States of America. Let it be clear, neither India nor China will overtake the United States in overall geopolitical strength for most, if not all, of this century.

Even if China’s overall economy becomes larger than America’s, which all indicators say it will, The People’s Republic will still not be able to project its power in the same manner as America has because it will be consumed with internal problems that it must resolve first. However, having America forge a formal alliance with India, one of the few countries with which we have excellent relations right now, is pivotal for her to be able to protect its interests in a future where she does not completely dominate the global system.

America should not reserve her alliances and affections to only those countries which are democratic. But India makes sense because it has become a nation much friendlier to America than during the Cold War and in poll after poll, its population regards America as a great and respectable power in spite of her fraught reputation in much of the world. In this new world America is also forging stronger relations with Vietnam, a former foe whose interests are now much aligned with America’s. An alliance between India and America has the potential to do much good in the world and preserve some of America’s standing overseas.

Yes, Obama is clever and articulate but...

2008-10-23T11:16:00.000-07:00

By Barbara F. Delo
bfdelo@hotmail.com

Yes, Obama is clever and articulate. So clever that he picked Senator Biden to block for him and obscure the fact that NO, HE IS NOT FOR MIDDLE AMERICA.

Obama’s Senate record, his record in Illinois and his life’s work show his very liberal outlook and his focus on programs for the poor and urban populations. He even voted in S. Con. Res. 70 against death tax relief for small farms, small businesses, and middle class ‘estates.’ In the words of William W. Beech of the Heritage Foundation, “Senator Obama’s focus is on the redistribution of income.” .

John McCain is the candidate with a real history of balance, the candidate for all Americans.

America's real responsibilities

2008-10-22T10:07:00.000-07:00

By Caroline Valvardi
Valvardi@Fordham.edu

In Father McShane’s homily at the opening Mass of the Holy Spirit for this 2008-2009 academic year, he spoke about the responsibility we have to ourselves and to others. His insights complement my own feelings about our values and mission both as individuals and as Americans, but I would like to clarify what those actual responsibilities are. As the world becomes more interconnected through globalization and economic trade, the U.S. continues to display an imperialist nature, which we justify with rhetoric that emphasizes magnanimous intentions for spreading democracy and peace.

We think it is our obligation to enforce our supposedly supreme way of life on the rest of the world. I do think we do have an obligation as a world superpower to support struggling countries that make honest efforts to build stable political, economic, and social infrastructures. However, unnecessarily involving ourselves in every foreign political affair is not only unwise in my opinion, but also against the very founding principles of this country as promoted by our very first president, George Washington.

I do not think that the isolationism Washington advocated is realistic today, and as an International Political Economy major, I see the importance of providing guidance and political and economic assistance to nations that need and deserve it. Nevertheless, trying to institute our specific form of democracy on every country lacking a democratic structure is not only impossible, it is foolish.

The tradition, history, and culture of many nations are not even compatible with our democracy. Also, by trying to build an image of ourselves as a righteous and benevolent world power, we have instead developed a paternalistic attitude, and we believe we have the right to invade countries at will. Ironically, we have created more enemies in our obstinate quest to spread democracy, and many people— even citizens of our own country— question what our true intentions really are. Furthermore, we need to reassess our responsibilities and fix the ongoing problems here in the U.S. before we can effectively serve as a virtuous leader and guardian of nations abroad.

We must focus our responsibility to ourselves back on ourselves. Many of the most serious problems in the U.S. are unrealized by a majority of people, and these issues are never represented in the political arena. The degradation of the stable family structure, the sexual carelessness and immorality encouraged by pop culture, the lack of educational opportunity for the impoverished, and the chemicalization of the foods we eat are just a few of these fundamental, underlying issues.

However, we tend to only want to recognize and fix the consequences. Our method of improving situations in the U.S. is to find solutions to problems rather than to prevent the problems in the first place. We never seem to want to look to the root of problems, and if we would just take more responsibility for our actions and reflect on how we are living our personal lives, we could make a world of change. We have a responsibility to ourselves and to our future generations to make this country a better place in which to live. Our responsibility lies here in the U.S. first and foremost, so it is about time that we start paying attention to our personal selves as well as our collective American selves.

America, You’ve Been Fooled.

2008-10-21T08:04:00.000-07:00

By Rachel Ring
Ring@Fordham.edu

As much as I hope, desperately hope, that Barack Obama will not get elected in November, I’m beginning to get very nervous about the outcome of the election. I must hand it to Barack’s media and public relations staff- they’ve successfully made it seem like he is this new found messiah, this savior and “international” leader of America.

Even Colin Powell has been overcome by the mirage of Obama. Recently, Howard Stern’s radio show antics prove my point- people don’t know the issues, and even go so far as to side with McCain’s idealogy when they are told that the ideas are Obama’s policies!

However, that is deeply upsetting to the parts of the American population who are actually paying attention. Obama’s socialist policies, international policy naivete, elitism and down right hypocrisy are going completely unreported, unnoticed, or just plain ignored in the face of the giant Obama image that has been constructed.

It’s completely unbelievable to me that more Americans are not upset and in uproar over the William Ayers relationship and connections to Obama, and that the public has apparently forgiven Obama for his relationship with Jeremiah Wright. I know, I hear the groans and eye rolls of liberals every time I utter those names too, but this is a fundamental problem I have with Obama, and I would have with any person who dared to associate with those types of individuals.

One is a home grown terrorist that Obama allotted millions of dollars to from money he requested from the senate, and we all already know and remember the infamous YouTube documentaries and Wright’s hate filled speeches about our country.

How are these unforgivable associations forgotten? Where is the hope and change here? I fail to see the hope in a candidate who has not achieved much as a senator from Illinois, who at best is an orator and word manipulator, and a good salesman (he’s somehow campaign financing millions in loopholes to the point that the World Series has been delayed a half hour to showcase an Obama ad).

He refuses to answer questions about his past and family (while the press and media have a field day with the Republican candidates). Another thing that bothers me is that Obama has been quoted as saying that when he is confused or doesn’t know something, he seeks information from his wife Michelle. GREAT, go to the most liberal, biased woman who was quoted as saying that the first time she was proud of her country is when Barack was nominated.

(Speaking of Michelle, why hasn’t the New York Times done on expose on her life? Why haven’t people written scathing reviews on her life and practices? Oh wait, it’s because if they did that, Michelle and Obama would cry foul to protect their privacy and family, and then play the race card, as they did with the New Yorker magazine cover scandal). And who could forget Barack refusing to put his hand over his heart and not saying the National Anthem!

Has hell frozen over? Are Americans just that desperate for a change (which, has yet to be defined, has yet to be explained how it would be paid for, because to explain that would mean to be honest about the fact that taxes will skyrocket) that they are fooled by a smooth talking Democrat? Regrettably, I almost wish now that Kerry had won in 2004, so that the Democrats would’ve been blamed for the economic mess and McCain could’ve trounced in the election. That’s just how bad Obama is for America–that I’m wishing that Kerry had been elected-- to avoid the catastrophes that Obama’s socialist, unAmerican and unrealistic policies will inflict on America.

2008-10-20T08:42:00.000-07:00

Howard Stern interviews Obama supporters

2008-10-20T08:41:00.001-07:00

Interesting Youtube video. Howard Stern interviews Obama supporters who, get this...have no idea what they're talking about!

Check it out: http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=194983

Fordham should rescind its Ethics award to Justice Breyer

2008-10-18T17:51:00.000-07:00

By Brendan O'Morchoe
Omorchoe@Fordham.edu

Every year, Fordham University Law, through their Stein Center for Law and Ethics, presents the prestigious Fordham-Stein Ethics prize. According to its charter, the prize recognizes an individual who "exemplifies outstanding standards of professional conduct, promotes the advancement of justice, and brings credit to the profession by emphasizing in the public mind the contributions of lawyers to our society and to our democratic system of government." This year, the prize will be given to Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer.

However, Justice Breyer is a long-time supporter of abortion rights. In 2000, he wrote the majority opinion in Stenberg v. Carhart. In stating “this Court…has determined and then redetermined that the Constitution offers basic protection to the woman’s right to choose,” he struck down a Nebraska state law banning late-term, or partial-birth, abortions, where a physician partially delivers the baby, kills it, then completes the delivery.

There are many legal and ethical objections to this case, especially on the basis of federalism and the morality of abortion. These are compounded by the fact that a Catholic, Jesuit school is awarding Justice Breyer an ethics award. In my opinion, no person who supports abortion should be awarded an ethics prize of any kind, much less from an institution that is “guided by its Catholic and Jesuit traditions,” as Fordham University’s mission statement proclaims.

The Catholic Church has long since spoken out against abortion. The Catechism, or teaching, of the Catholic Church states that “since the first century, the Church has affirmed that” any abortion or cooperation therein, constitutes a “grave offense” against “moral law.” In 2004, the United States Catholic Bishops stated that “the Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”

New York Archbishop Edward Cardinal Egan has said, of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, a pro-choice proponent: “Anyone who dares to defend that [children in the womb] may be legitimately killed because another human being ‘chooses’ to do so or for any other equally ridiculous reason should not be providing leadership in a civilized democracy worthy of the name.”

In a 2004 interview, Avery Cardinal Dulles SJ, the Laurence J. McGinley professor of Religion and Society at Fordham University, stated that abortion is not just a “Church” issue but is “governed by the natural law of God, which is binding upon all human beings. The right to life is the most fundamental of all rights, since a person deprived of life has no other rights.”

The awarding of the Fordham-Stein Ethics prize to Justice Breyer is a clear violation of Fordham University’s mission statement and guiding principles. It is immoral and in direct conflict with the teachings of the Catholic Church. The decision to give this award to Justice Breyer is inconsistent with the award’s purpose of recognizing the “positive contributions of the legal profession to American society.” Fr. Joseph McShane and Fordham University must rescind this award to maintain the ethical and moral standards that they preach.

*Note: To sign a petition urging Fordham to rescind this award, please visit http://www.cardinalnewmansociety.org/OpenLettertoFatherMcShane/tabid/392/Default.aspx

2008-10-16T13:11:00.001-07:00

The Real Paper Tiger

2008-10-16T13:07:00.000-07:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

Russia is an enigma wrapped in a riddle and shrouded in mystery. Much of the world is up in arms with angst about the resurgence of the legendary Bear. But what is Russia today? Is it making a serious and competent attempt to restore its former place in the world? Is it truly an emerging market as envisioned by Goldman Sachs? The answer to most of these questions is an emphatic no.

Russia is a country in static, constant decline, lashing out as its neo Nazi fringe distorts its politics, rampant abortion distorts its demographics and oligarchs swallow up the vast majority of its wealth.

First we must look at demographics. When the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the future of the Russians as a people. In 1992, Russia had 148 million people. Today, in 2008, it has under 142 million. The Russian birthrate is paltry and its abortion is at a level unprecedented in human history. 64% of all pregnancies in Russia are aborted. Russia has by far the highest abortion rate in the world.

What does this say about the former superpower? Not only is a moral outrage and wanton disregard for human life, it says much about the Russian psyche. It is a litmus test. The ultimate statement of belief in a bright future is to have a child. Russia, clearly does not believe in its future. Even the most Liberal pro choicer would see this is a horrible reflection on a society. Combined with high rates of alcoholism and drug use (half of all of Russia’s premature deaths are alcohol related) clearly shows this is not a functioning society.

That being said, Russia could still cause many problems in the world. Their economy, as with the economy of the Soviet Union, has been given steroids due to the high price of oil. But what is this really but fleeting wealth? Vladimir Putin himself once stated ‘if you can start a business in Russia you deserve a medal.’ I guess he would be the one to know. This is not a real economy. Russia has very little long term strength in every aspect of its existence.

We also have to be aware of Russia’s history. There is no question that the United States completely mistreated this historically great and powerful nation. We made grave errors in moving our NATO based empire up to Russia’s borders. Russia must have its sphere of influence and there is nothing the United States can do about it. For 45 years we spent all our energy avoiding a shooting war with the old Soviet Union. Why should we now risk one with Russia when we can really just wait out the price of oil and let their demographic crisis remove them as a serious threat?

2008-10-16T12:58:00.000-07:00

The Case for Attrition

2008-10-15T12:11:00.000-07:00

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

As anyone well knows, America is being very nearly overwhelmed by illegal migration and uncontrolled borders. While certain numbers of immigrants greatly enrich our country, being overwhelmed by monolithic and culturally confident blocks of immigrants is not only a drain on resources and a potential security threat, but also puts our very culture at risk.

The most obvious historical comparison that one can draw is that today’s illegal migrants were yesterday’s Visigoths entering Rome. The Visigoths originally came into the Roman Empire, not as conquerors, but wanting to share in the fruits of being part of the greatest civilization of the age. Ultimately, the Visigoths were too culturally alien to be properly assimilated into Rome, went into open rebellion and eventually helped engineer the collapse of the Empire.

Overall, this is a wholly depressing picture. But there is great hope that the situation is improving.

Today’s illegal migrants are in much the same position, having flouted American law they now live underground and it is impossible to even count them properly. Estimates range from 12-20 million with practical solution in sight.

What can be done?

The answer is to muddle through. The answer is attrition. There are many new technologies available that are starting to have an impact on the situation. Using the internet, employers now find it possible to screen nearly everyone who comes to work for them to make sure they are citizens. In poll after poll of the illegal migrants that we can locate, the word of the day is fear. They are now living in constant fear of having the authorities find them, are finding fewer job opportunities (not just because of a poor economy) and a general atmosphere of hostility. 2008 is the first year since 2002 that the ‘official’ number of illegal migrants has started to decrease.

This is attrition. It is impractical to have one massive roundup of illegal migrants and deport them all at once. It would also lead to an unnecessary humanitarian crisis. Gradually tightening the grip, with small busts of smuggling rings and punishing employers will do the trick. It will take time but there are signs it is happening. Patience is of the utmost importance in dealing with this situation.

We also must put some of the problem of immigration into perspective. We will always have to cope with some level of illegal migration, though none of it should be openly tolerated. The wall and better border enforcement will help but it would not be a cure all. The wall is not going to cover the entire Mexican border. For the wall to be effective it would need two layers and several large towns would have to be destroyed for the wall to run through it. This would be prohibitively expensive and logistically impossible.

For more perspective on the situation, we need only look at immigration in Great Britain. Britain is an island nation that finds in its midst thousands of illegal migrants from as far away as China and Southeast Asia. It is impossible to stop all of it, though with proper awareness and better enforcement, it can be reduced from today’s overwhelming problem to a minor inconvenience.
As of right now, this immigration problem could prove to be a fatal illness; however, through patience and proper policy, it may be reduced to the equivalent of a chronic ailment.

Never Fear, The Bottom is Here!

2008-10-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

By Devin Velnoskey
Velnoskey@Fordham.edu

After yesterday’s explosion of 936 points on the Dow it seems as though the worries of last week’s bloodbath throughout the world markets is all but a distant memory. The Dow posted its largest percentage point gain since March of ‘33, giving investors hope that a 10,000 point Dow Jones Industrial Average was still attainable by the conclusion of the fiscal year. To close within striking distance of 10,000 points after touching below 8,700 points and being down 21% last week is something truly unprecedented.

But what’s new considering Friday’s market had a 1000 point swing before it closed down 128 points Friday afternoon? Anything can happen these days when the opening bell rings, the previous two weeks prove it. Volatility is the buzz word on the Street these days but after the Bulls stampeded the Bears on Monday many people think the bottom is in and the worst may soon be behind us if it is not already.

The problems of the credit crisis have mostly dissipated in the minds of many traders and investors. The government’s $700 billion bailout, their backing of inter-bank loans and increasing FDIC insurance, and buying stock in the US banks has, in coordination with similar policy actions throughout Europe, contributed to soaring world markets yesterday.

But not so fast my friend, while all this government action was needed and has eased frozen credit markets, and seems to have solved the crisis, there is still reason to be concerned.

Last week’s triumph of bears was due to more than just uncertainty in the market or the bailout. Deleveraging, coupled with hedge fund redemptions and margin calls, all created the blood red boards seen around the world. And Monday’s stampede of bulls was a result of traders and investors not being able to pass on valuations and bargains throughout the market.

The lack of volume in yesterday’s session means that just as last week there were no buyers, yesterday there were no sellers, so everyone was trying to catch the rising tide for it lifts all boats. Both instances come down to one word: fear. Fear has been driving the markets for the past two weeks, if not longer. When markets were down big last week the fear was centered on what more the government would or could do to ease the crisis.

Monday’s fear was if you didn’t buy you would miss out on the rally and a chance at big money. Markets run by fear are concerning. Whether or not the stock market rises or falls right now is not as important as knowing what fear is driving investors and traders at any given moment. Find the fear, trade it and make the fast money. Miscalculate and you could be taken out in a body bag. The credit crunch may very well be behind us, but there is still the impending recession for monetary and fiscal policy makers to worry about, that is the fear driving markets for the next few weeks.

Election 2008 Poll: Expect the Unexpected

2008-10-13T07:53:00.000-07:00

By Eric Goncalves
Goncalves@Fordham.edu

Fordham University’s College Republicans recently ran a political poll on the Rose Hill campus to survey the political inclinations and electoral views of the University’s students. The simple four question poll asked students to list their political views, the issue they believed was most influential in the upcoming election, the candidates that they were considering voting for, and if they were familiar with Larry Kudlow.

Upon analyzing the results, there were many unexpected numbers. Ruling out the outliers who were voting for Al Sharpton or Chad Ciocci, the numbers were actually quite surprising. Out of the fifty-two students surveyed, a majority of which viewed themselves as Moderately liberal (about 30%), more than half were voting for McCain/Palin while Obama/Biden fell short with just over 40% of the votes. On a considerably liberal campus in a blue state, it is surprising to see such a result. With Obama leading the national polls, it gets people to think: How much do these polls really reflect the people taking them?

If they do show something, the poll taken by the Fordham College Republicans depicts that not all is lost for John McCain, and despite the deficit he is facing in the national polls, there are some liberals who know that although Barack Obama can make great speeches he may not be the best candidate to lead our great country.

Just don't call us neo-cons!

2008-10-09T13:46:00.000-07:00

By Chadwick Ciocci
Cciocci@aol.com

Let’s be clear: LF is NOT neo-conservative! Please, please, please- we are anything but. Neo-conservatism is the philosophical inheritance of Woodrow Wilson and FDR and inherently liberal with its lofty ideals and militarism. True conservatives are non-interventionists and believe in an American foreign policy that protects our vital interests first and doesn’t pursue an idealist goal like spreading democracy worldwide.

Please, just don’t call us neo-conservatives!

The Free Market can save the U.S.

2008-10-04T08:11:00.000-07:00

By Sean Radomski
SRadomski@Fordham.edu

It is impossible today to pick up a newspaper without reading about the apocalyptic financial crisis and the bailout bill that will supposedly prevent a second Great Depression. Not surprisingly, the media has been quick to assign blame to President George W. Bush’s economic policies. While attacking Bush’s policies may be a good way to score votes this November, it does not address the fundamental cause of this financial crisis. The current economic slowdown has been fundamentally caused by excessive government intervention into the economy, dating back to the Carter Administration.

That fact that the origin of the problem is the Carter Administration, which is notoriously known for long gas station lines, high inflation, and even higher interest rates, should not come as a surprise to free-market advocates. In an effort to further so called “economic justice,” Carter signed into law the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) in an attempt to promote “affordable housing.” The CRA forced banks to make loans to minorities and consumers with poor credit and allowed regulators to impose fines on the banks if they did not meet these standards.

Fast-forward 26 years to 2003, the year when mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were found to have committed accounting fraud. In an attempt to sidestep Congressional criticism, Fannie and Freddie offered to increase loans to low income, poor credit consumers in accordance with the CRA. This move was political music to Rep. Barney Frank’s ears who believed that Fannie and Freddie were “not facing any kind of financial crisis,” and that “the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

His Senate counterpart, Sen. Christopher Dodd also praised the mortgage giants for “riding to the rescue” and believed that they “need[ed] to do more” in terms of “affordable housing.” Conversely, while Democrats in Congress were praising the call for more “affordable housing,” Treasury Secretary John Snow was urging for the creation of a new agency to monitor the mortgage giants. In fact President Bush publicly called for reform of Fannie and Freddie 17 times before this year, but his call fell on the deaf ear of the Democrats in Congress. It should be noted that Sen. Dodd, Rep. Frank, and current Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama have received $133,900; $40,100, and $105,849 in campaign contributions, respectively, from Fannie and Freddie since 1989.

To add fuel to the fire, from 2003-2005 the Federal Reserve kept the federal funds rate at 1%. The Fed kept the rate low in an attempt to stimulate economic growth after the “dot com” bubble had burst. Low income consumers with bad credit (yes, the same ones targeted by the CRA, Fannie, and Freddie) saw this as an opportunity to take out a subprime mortgage and buy a house. The rapid increase in home ownership fostered by the 1% interest rate drove up home prices and created a housing bubble. However, once the Fed raised interest rates and those with subprime mortgages could not keep up, the bubble burst.

The bursting of the housing bubble has led to the failure of many financial firms, such as Bear-Stearns and Lehman Brother, that had mortgage-backed securities on their balance sheets. Their failure has led to the call for a massive $700 billion bailout bill that will enable the Secretary of the Treasury to buy these securities, thus removing them from the firms’ balance sheets. The theory is that with now clean balance sheets, the firms will draw capital, thus unfreezing the credit market which will allow Main Street consumers to receive much needed loans.

This bailout bill is flawed and is bad for the American economy because it fails to remember the key principle of capitalism: reward those who perform well. Instead, the bill does the complete opposite and rewards the companies that made poor investments.

If passed this bill will set a frightening precedent that encourages bad investing with the knowledge that if you fail, the government will save you at the expense of the American tax payer. The bill’s logic is also flawed in assuming that once these toxic assets are off balance sheets, capital will flow to the firms. Why would anyone risk investing his hard earned money in a company that has so recently shown poor judgment?

Excessive government intervention into our countries financial system in the triple threat of the CSA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Federal Reserve has led to this crisis. The last thing we need is $700 billion of more government. The fastest way to fix this mess is eliminate the mark-to-market accounting rule that has artificially lowered firms’ asset values.

Mark-to market accounting requires firms to value their assets at the price they could fetch on the open mark right now. If this rule is eliminated, firms will be able to value the assets at an estimated future market price; thus increasing the value of the balance sheets. If mark-to-market were eliminated earlier this year, Washington Mutual and Wachovia would not have been sold and Lehman Brothers would not have failed. As for the firms that still cannot make it: let them fail. This will weed out the poorly managed companies, making sure they are not around in the future to make the same mistakes. This will allow stronger, well run firms to gain market share and protect the future of the American economy.

LF Available in McGinley Center soon!

2008-09-30T18:50:00.001-07:00

Keep an eye out for an LF distribution table. It should be in McGinley at the end of next week or near that time!

Also, if you are not a Fordham student but would like a copy of LF, please send a check with a minimum suggested donation of $5 to the following address:

Liberty Forum of Fordham University
P.O. Box 1394
441 East Fordham Road
Bronx, NY 10458

Official National Language is a No-go for Obama

2008-09-27T13:59:00.000-07:00

By Michelle Hardy

(Note: This article appeared in the print version of LF but was unfortunately cut off at the end. It appears in its entirety here. Enjoy.)

It was a rare moment in history when a Barack Obama’s speech caused worrisome ‘uh-oh’s’ instead of the usual ecstatic joy and optimism. “Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English… you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish!” declared the Illinois junior senator in Powder Springs, Georgia. Thankfully, the finely tuned public ear caught the resonant undertone in Obama’s statement that assimilation ought to be conciliatory, on the part of the native citizens of this country.

After substantial criticism, Obama assured the public his comments merely intended that it is time for Americans to branch out and become bilingual, trilingual, etc. And that’s a great idea. Yet the glaring flaw in this speech was not that Obama wants Santa to leave some Rosetta Stone software under the holiday tree this year. His comments implied that, although he acknowledges the need for immigrants to learn English, it is not a top priority issue for him.

According to polls, Americans recognize the threat of losing their bond formed by having one language, while letting an assortment of languages fight for attention, creating cultural barriers between natives and newcomers. This is not an unlikely scenario, considering that the Hispanic population will have nearly tripled between the years 2000 and 2050 according to the US Census Bureau, reaching 102.6 million and radically shifting America’s cultural climate.

That’s why the 2007 Zogby poll reported that 83 percent of US citizens would like to officially name English the country’s national language. Three-quarters of Hispanic Americans within the survey, an unexpected and astounding number, favored a national language as well. While the decision would help maintain unity as the nation’s Spanish-speaking population skyrockets, Obama voted against such a move in 2006 and again in 2007.

America is actually the most multilingual country in the world, considering almost every world language is spoken on its soil. We learned in kindergarten that the reason our wide array of ethnicities can co-exist peacefully is the unifying American melting pot: living under one common language and one common culture while every ethnic group or nationality adds a unique flavor to the recipe. School House Rock metaphors aside, when immigrants arriving in large droves are not adequately encouraged to, or are implicitly encouraged not to, assimilate into mainstream culture, primarily through language, a destructive disunity arises.

This is already happening in cities like Miami, where the Hispanic and Latino population composes 80.3 percent of the city’s people, and English speakers are a minority. It’s now extremely difficult for those who don’t speak Spanish to find jobs in the city - even simple minimum wage jobs. As a result, many English speakers are moving out.

Canada decided to embrace two national languages - English and French - but the results have been a bit less than impressive. Residents of Quebec, a French-speaking province, continually argue they should secede from the nation because their culture is so distinct from the rest of Canada.

And that’s in a country much less linguistically diverse than the US. What’s protecting us from similar cultural incompatibility in our future? Will we make Hispanic immigrants more comfortable at the expense of other immigrants? Will Indian or Arab immigrants seeking jobs have to learn English and Spanish on top of their native languages? Will distinct areas of the US become virtually inaccessible to English speakers?

It is undoubtedly important that US children do learn a second or third language in an age of globalization, and in all fairness, Spanish is extremely beneficial, considering it is the second most spoken language in the world. But a language should be acquired as a personal goal for professional or travel purposes - not to make living without English easier on any one immigrant group.

“While bilingualism is something to which more Americans should aspire in today's global economy, the skill is certainly not a civic duty, rather, something extra to be lauded upon its achievement,” said Fordham sophomore Ryan Vale.

The US has had non-English-speaking immigrants for as long as it has existed. Not until the current porous border crisis have we ever found logic in adopting immigrants’ languages so that English isn’t a necessity. New Yorkers in the early 1900’s did not campaign for Italian to be a vital part of their children’s curriculum. Italians fully integrated, linguistically and otherwise, and we can now go to Little Italy right outside Fordham and communicate with every waiter in every restaurant on Arthur Avenue (save for a bit of embarrassment at how we pronounce, or more likely mispronounce, the menu).

“I believe that to promote unity we need not only a national language but also a law that requires immigrants in the naturalization process to learn that language after being in the country for a certain amount of time,” says Fordham senior James Scalera. “In order to interact with other individuals in society and in order for the economy to function properly, each of us must be able to speak one common language. If we make exceptions for one ethnicity we must make an exception for all ethnicities, something which is obviously not feasible or at all realistic.”

So why should an official language be the first step in encouraging the United States to unite? With this move, all government business – including public documents, meetings, legislation, hearings, and government ceremonies – would be conducted solely in English. This would encourage fluency in English so that immigrants could participate in the democratic process and fully assimilate.

Opponents ironically argue this shows racism and intolerance, yet without English, immigrants are isolated linguistically and culturally from other citizens. Rumors that English would be forced upon immigrants in healthcare and judicial matters are blatantly incorrect. The official move to a national language would be the first step in closing the cultural gap between new and old Americans, connecting them by means of a universally spoken language.

If learning English takes the back seat in national politics, there is a great chance it will take the back seat for immigrants as well. Declaring a national language is not a priority for Obama, and showing leniency on this vital need, “instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English,” cannot be afforded in coming years. More than ever before, it’s an issue we most definitely need to be “worrying” about.

America’s diversity is admirable because a variety of ethnicities can stand together under one common language and culture, not because its diverse cultural groups exist interdependently, factionalized in their varying comfort zones. Voting against a unifying national language as ethnic demographics in America rapidly transform is just not logical. ¡Es ilógico, Obama!

US Must Maintain a Top-tier Nuclear Arsenal

2008-09-27T13:54:00.000-07:00

By Chadwick Ciocci

This past summer I had the opportunity to participate in an interview on US nuclear weapons policy with a public broadcasting company based out of Nagasaki, Japan (essentially the Japanese equivalent of PBS). My Japanese friends sought to understand American reasoning and opinion on its current nuclear weapons policy in this new age of global terrorism and moving threats.

They had a difficult time understanding why I would support maintaining a top tier nuclear weapons arsenal when I readily acknowledged that nuclear weapons are not a deterrent to terrorists like Osama bin Laden. I admitted that at first this may seem like a contradiction in threat and response, but that in fact one has nothing to do with the other.

You see, nuclear weapons are a deterrent to rational, normal governments- not radical, Islamic, and state-less jihadists. They are a deterrent to nations like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, not al-Qaeda, Islamic Jihad or any of the other terrorist groups who seek to destroy the lives of innocent civilians.

Why maintain a nuclear arsenal then when terrorism is the main existential threat against the USA? Because terrorism isn’t the only threat against the USA.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that the Soviet Union collapsed into Russia and China is becoming increasingly capitalistic, these two nations pose a very real threat to the USA, especially in the long term. Russia is not only dramatically rebounding economically but is becoming more and more aggressive on the world stage, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin and his successor Dmitry Medvedev. Likewise, China is becoming a major economic powerhouse which will eventually translate into a major military powerhouse.

But Russia and China are not the only two long-term potential adversaries we face. In the shorter term, North Korea, Iran and Syria pose serious potential nuclear threats. Emotions in the Middle East continue to be (?)aflame as the USA gallops around nation building.(?)Unfortunately it may come to the point where sultans and Muslims alike feel the only way to get on equal footing with the USA will be to develop nuclear weapons of their own.

A cursory overview of the United States’ current and future threats (all which involve nations that currently possess nuclear weapons or ones which are actively seeking them) makes it abundantly clear that it would be quite foolish for the US, in any way, to make itself vulnerable to these nations by weakening its own nuclear arsenal.

Why then do some people advocate the abolition of the United States’ nuclear weapons cache? I believe such advocacy is powered by several factors:

1. A lack of understanding of the threats against our nation.
2. An unrealistic and blinding (but very respectable) idealism.

In the case of my Japanese friends, it seemed as if these were the two most prevalent reasons they supported American abolition (when considering the fact that they are from Nagasaki, it is easy to understand their short-sided impracticality.)

One will note that I label such blinding idealism as respectable, and I do not do so facetiously. I truly believe such idealism is respectable, as I share in the belief that the end goal of American and international policy should be the total abolition of nuclear weaponry- I merely want to pursue this goal in a way that ensures the safety and security of the USA.

If we contend that the primary responsibility of government is to protect its citizens against threats foreign and domestic, then to disarm ourselves in a way that would give Russia, China or some other nation a nuclear tactical superiority would be not only foolish but irresponsible, and represent a failure of American government.

Pain at the Pump

2008-09-27T13:51:00.000-07:00

By Barbara F. Delo

Tuition, books, food…..gas.

The 2,500 students who park their cars in Fordham’s parking lots every day will have to dig deeper into their pockets this year. For many of the students who drive daily to Fordham, the price of commuting far exceeds the price of books and is inching up on the cost of room and board. Gas prices, in particular, have reached such high levels that both presidential camps have put forth plans to help ease the burden of high gas prices.

In January of 2007, the average price of a gallon of gas nationwide was $2.27. In July of 2007, the average was a record high $4.16 a gallon.

What does this mean to the typical Fordham commuting student? A recent fill up of a midsize car at a Mobil Station in Nanuet, New York cost sixty-six dollars, and the round trip from there to Fordham used a quarter of a tank of gas. It would cost a minimum of $1908.00 for a Fordham student from this area to drive to classes four days a week for an entire school year. Add to that amount $450.00 a year for tolls, $440.00 a year for a parking pass, higher gas usage when the traffic is bad, and an occasional trip for a football game and the price tag for a commuting student from Rockland County is above three thousand dollars a year. Gas expenses for a student from Monroe or Yorktown Heights would be a little higher, for students from Yonkers and White Plains, a little less.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the price of foreign oil on the world market is far and away the biggest culprit in the increase in gas prices. America imports 66% of the crude oil used in this country primarily from Canada, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Iraq, and Mexico. As countries like China and India put more cars on the road, the demand for gasoline world wide increases and drives up the amount oil producing countries can charge. These higher prices are then magnified as the oil moves to the United States because of the recent devaluation of the dollar.

Taxes represent the next highest portion of the price of gas. In 2007 the national average for combined federal, state, and local taxes represented 24% of the total price of gasoline.

Other contributing factors, like natural disasters, that affect the oil infrastructure and investment in the oil supply by speculators have a smaller impact price of oil.

What will our next president do?

Democratic presidential hopeful Barak Obama’s proposal for dealing with the current energy crisis focuses on reducing America’s oil consumption. He proposes to achieve this through an “Apollo like commitment” to new technology that would provide alternatives to oil as our primary fuel and add efficiency to our cars. According to his official campaign website, an “Obama Administration would invest 150 billion government dollars over ten years towards the development of biofuels, plug-in hybrids, and renewable energy.” He also proposes to send government checks to low income families to help defray the cost of higher fuel prices.

Obama’s current plan leaves in place existing bans on new development in either the oil rich Anwar region of Alaska or in our nation’s numerous offshore oil deposits. This plan is, therefore, acceptable to even the most stringent environmentalists. However, it still leaves foreign oil as a significant source of our nation’s fuel until technological breakthroughs succeed in changing the face of the automobile industry. Recently, Obama has shown signs of wavering on this environmental commitment.

Republican presidential candidate, John McCain has a more vigorous plan to alleviate the present gas crisis. His plan would approach the problem on a number of different fronts. Named by his campaign the Lexington project, his goal is to address both short term prices and to make America free of dependence on foreign oil by the year 2025.

Short term, McCain proposes a gas tax holiday that would bring relief from federal taxes to all citizens. He also supports lifting the ban on off-shore drilling increasing domestic oil production within two years. Lower prices could be realized even sooner as anticipated new supplies would decrease the need for holding back large reserves. “We have trillions of dollars of oil and gas reserves in the US at a time we are exporting hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas to buy energy,” he explains.

As part of his overall plan, McCain would also encourage research on new energy technologies, including biofuels, renewable energy sources, and battery technology. To do this, he would offer tax incentives and bonuses to companies for breakthrough technology. Finally, McCain sees controlled nuclear power and development of clean coal technology as part of a long term plan to free America from dependence on foreign oil.

Both the Obama and McCain plans oppose irresponsible oil speculation.

As the politicians debate the issue in Washington and the presidential candidates argue their policy positions, Fordham commuting students are left battling the higher gas prices here at home. Students adjust their schedules to fit needed classes into as few days as possible. They check websites to find the lowest gas prices and they look for carpools. Some students detour across the George Washington Bridge to Jersey for cheaper gas. A few daring students even park on Fordham road, a risky endeavor as campus security reports a significant number of car break-ins off campus each semester, to avoid the recently increased parking fees. But be wary of this. A better course of action might be to use the new parking plan offered by the school that offers a lower fee and pay-per-usage coupons.

Even our teachers are not immune from the higher price of gas. And for Fordham graduates who nab prestigious jobs in The Big Apple, the pain of commuting may be just beginning.

America's Past Obamas

2008-09-27T13:48:00.000-07:00

By Pearse Lenz

Barack Obama’s all-inclusive message of “Change” and the dashing good looks that come with it have attracted millions of Americans as they face the challenging current political and economic climate. Available jobs are harder to find today than before the credit crisis of the summer of 2007. Food and energy prices are soaring, and giant corporations have collapsed. Even the New York Times has written about the attempts of the mega-wealthy to cut back on their purchases.
In addition to the present turmoil, President George W. Bush has not met the expectations the American public held prior to both his election victories, and opinion polls suggest that the nation, as a whole, feels dissatisfied with his performance. Times are dire and the nation needs a messiah: someone we can trust to support us through the unknown trials ahead and help us escape the awful reality America is experiencing.

According to the popular media, the only man worthy to take up the challenge is Barack Obama. The popular media’s disproportionate focus on Obama has turned him into a “celebrity” of sorts, according to the McCain campaign. Not to withdraw credit from the Obama campaign staff’s efforts (they have produced a brilliant campaign thus far), but most of the attention drawn to him comes from his charisma. It is an important aspect for every presidential candidate in any election to have, considering that many people will vote with their hearts and not according to a candidate’s policies. The charismatic candidate is an attractive one, however not necessarily the best.

History has shown that the ideal candidate with the “Presidential Look” has not always performed up to expectations. This is not to say that every personable presidential candidate that lacks experience will perform poorly, but instead the history of the Harding and Carter Administrations display vivid examples of how voting based on a candidate’s message and image are misleading.

A rather eclectic duo of Presidents, Harding and Carter shared a common trait, in that they “seemed” to be capable of steering the country on the right course, despite their lack of experience in government affairs, yet America instead showed their opinions of both presidents by not re-electing them for a second term.

Before Harding entered the Presidential race in 1920, the Republican Party believed that the gregarious Harding was the ideal candidate. The tall, dark, handsome U.S. Senator held an unremarkable and short legislative career (sound familiar?) before being elected. He promised to calm the chaos and redirect the nation following World War One, and instead brought about the Teapot Dome Scandal and died two years into his term. He has been ranked as being one of the least effective and worst Presidents in history.

Ever the philosopher, Jimmy Carter won the 1976 election on part of his ideals for a better America and providing rhetoric to assuage the pain that followed the Watergate Scandal. Carter entered the office with a disarming Southern charm and only four years of executive-level experience as Governor of Georgia. Past his response to the 1970’s energy crisis, Carter’s ideals did little to help America during the difficult times of that decade.

The economy experienced double-digit inflation, high-interest rates, and stagflation. Carter’s lack of experience in foreign affairs did little to improve the Iran Hostage Crisis, a national crisis that continued after the American public showed their disapproval for Carter, ousting him in the 1980 election.

Both Harding and Carter won their election with their rhetoric to “change” America following trying times for the American public (WW I for Harding, Watergate for Carter), and the public image of the two candidates helped propel them to the Oval Office. Despite these promises and messages and seemingly trustworthy image, Harding and Carter left America in arguably worse shape than when they entered.

The President bears the responsibility of the actions of the entire government and every employee and agent; hence, the chances that someone will make a serious mistake and put the nation in a challenging position are high. A President must have the confidence to take that responsibility of every mistake, a confidence that must be forged through victories and defeats performed on a large scale.

Unfortunately for Obama, a few victories in a Chicago neighborhood and the Illinois State Senate will not make the cut. Senator John McCain has sponsored 31 bills that the Senate has enacted in the fifteen years he has been Senator of Arizona, which is an extremely high number relative to his peers’ ability to pass their bills into law. To his credit, Obama has shown that he can also propose bills and see them through the entire legislative process- twice. Obama’s confidence seems almost undeserved when this fact comes to mind.

If further interested in learning about McCain’s or Obama’s Senate voting record or Bill Sponsorship, go to the Library of Congress website, http://thomas.loc.gov/. If interested in the effects of the Carter Administration, look at Iran.

The -isms bringing down the Obama campaign

2008-09-24T07:42:00.000-07:00

By Rachel Ring

Throughout recent election coverage, I’ve been hearing a few re-occurring themes since the McCain- Palin surge. I find these views to be not only contradictory, but a priceless example of how elitist and condescending the Obama campaign actually is, and demonstrates their panic that America is slowly waking up from the “Obama spell” as I like to call it, and coming to their senses. Logging onto Yahoo the other day, one of their top news headlines was that Obama is losing ground because of Americans “deep seeded” racism. Wait a minute!

How presumptuous that the AP would just assume that Obama is losing because of his race. I’ve said this from the beginning, if it was Colin Powell running for office, or Condoleeza Rice, they’d have my vote. This isn’t about race, it’s about the fact that Obama is proven by his voting record to be the most liberal senator on record, and many Americans aren’t comfortable with some of his votes and choices.

Is the press implying that Americans should just get used to Obama’s views and vote for him because if not, we’ll look racist? No, on the contrary, we’d look stupid, for voting for a man because of his race, and not because we agree with him and want him as our president. Furthermore, Obama has not done himself any favors.

That grandiose spectacle at the Democratic convention of giving a speech on stage as if already in the Oval Office was simply unsettling. If we don’t vote for Obama, it’s implied us simpleton Americans must be racist, we must “cling to our religion and our guns” we must just be so ignorant as to not see the greatness that is Obama.

To the Obama campaign, voters could not have possibly made a critical thinking process and decided that Obama’s far left and sometimes downright scary votes just don’t fit with their views. No, they’re insisting that Americans must just be racist and short sighted if they cast their vote in favor of McCain.

As a woman, the most infuriating theme that I’ve seen out of the election coverage is the Democrats anger over the switch that white women in America have made by swinging largely in favor of the McCcain-Palin ticket. Let’s flashback to Hillary’s primary run, where it was just fine with Democrats if white women supported another woman when it was in their favor.

What has been such a disappointment for me is that women such as Gloria Steinem (who I respected and admired) have gone and just made themselves look worse than any misogynist man I’ve ever seen by completely ripping apart Sarah Palin’s life and views. (What would have been the reaction had the Republicans done that to Hillary? There would have been cries out against the Republican Party being old and out of touch, but when the same happens to Sarah Palin, the same reaction is not had).

This is where feminism has lost its grip on reality. This is why women still have to deal with glass ceilings and why women have not made as much progress as they should have. Feminists, and Democrats, expect their women to be these bra burning, Roe v Wade supporting, rejecters of religion and men in their lives in order to be “progressive” women.

However, they’ve clearly completely missed the mark on most of the women in America, who hold middle class values in high regard, are juggling work and family life, and admire a working mother. Why aren’t fellow women at least respecting Palin, a working woman who clearly is the main breadwinner in her marriage, raising 5 children and one with special needs? It’s because she does not fit in the with the feminism role of the sixties and seventies.

She’s an unapologetic Christian, she’s attractive, and she can hold her own in such unbalanced interviews as the Charlie Gibson ABC debacle. The meltdown of some of these feminists against Palin has actually set women back: it’s a classic example of middle school girls in the schoolyard. Because Palin does not agree with the democratic feminist majority, they’re going to rip her apart in a brutal group mentality, and this trend has clearly turned voters off and in favor of McCain-Palin 2008.

That, compacted with the false racism accusations of the Obama campaign and the Democrats, will continue to hurt them in the upcoming election.

The Liberty Forum is out!

2008-09-03T07:40:00.000-07:00

Stop by the College Republican table at the club fair today to pick up an issue of The Liberty Forum- Fordham's only conservative publication.

Read about the high cost of oil and gas, America's past Obama's, the US' nuclear weapons policy and more.

The club fair is from 2:30-4:30 on Eddy's.