Gun Control (late)

Should guns be banned? Or not? Some say yes and some say yes, and some say no. It depends on the person and the reasons they come up with. It was on October 30th, that a group of three armed people attempted to rob a Pizza Hut in Charlotte, North Carolina. Sadly one of them was shot and killed by an employee during the process. The guy who was shot was Michael Grace Jr.. The question then comes back to, should guns be banned? Or not? Yes if there were no guns then Michael would not have been shot and killed. But you also have to think about all the other items the employee had a choice of using. If guns should be banned then so should all other things that could be used to kill or seriously harm other people. If we are going to out law guns then we should do the same to knives, shovels, rakes, bats, forks even. The list could go on and on. Also we should not ban guns, we should just ban certain people from buying guns. The people are doing more harm than the guns in some ways. Or another way to keep it under control is to just ban certain guns. There are guns like a fully automatics that we really don’t need to sell in public stores. 

Public Policy

Public policy is created from a wide range of different people. Actors, interests of different people, institutions, and a variety of processes for policies. Our students should know that the bureaucracy and the courts are all stages in the policy process. Also, students should investigate on policy and issue networks of the domestic and foreign policy areas. 

It is when the government decides to resolve a social problem that a public policy is made. There are five steps that are taken to make a public policy: 1) defining the role of government; 2) agenda setting; 3) policy formulation; 4) policy implementation; and 5) policy evaluation. In American history, the most important area in public policy has been economic policy. Our policy makers have always been debating on which idea they should support, laissez-faire free market principles or redistributionist interventionist policies. Laissez-faire free market principles are believing that the government should intervene as little as possible in the direction of economic affairs. Also, the United States has joined international trading organisations like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). We had done that in order to raise our business with the rest of the world. It was before FDR that our federal government did not want to be a part of domestic policy making. But since we have gotten involved in domestic policies we have seen a rise in programs like Social Security and Welfare. 

American Creation (late)

In the book American Creation, the author, Joseph J. Ellis, he talks about how the majority would lose to the minority. Also that a new plan of government that has never been tried before would become so successful. It was in the year of 1783 when the War for Independence was ended that George Washington would have written his last Circular to the States. Washington saw it as the American Revolution. It was the continued battle for the eastern third of North America. Two signed treaties would ensure that the newly founded Unties states of America would stay just that uncontested. The Peace of Paris in 1763 had eliminated France and the Treaty of Paris in 1783 had eliminated Great Britain. Afterwards, Washington had proposed an American tour of the “New Empire.” That proposal was a breathtaking imperial vision that would late become to be known as “manifest destiny.” Washington later wrote, “We have indeed so plain a road before us that it must be worse than ignorance if we miss it.”  

Electoral College not about Democracy, but about Power

Electoral College not about Democracy, but about Power

Hillary Clinton blames the FBI for her losing the election. She thinks it’s because the FBI reopened the investigation into her emails. Also everyone was stunned by Trump’s big win in the election. Nobody thought that he was going to win. Now all the sore losers of the 2016 election are getting angry at the Constitution. these liberal officials have a point. The Electoral College is not democratic, if by democratic they mean rule by simple majority. But the Electoral College’s exaggeration of the power of the states is not some bizarre mistake or a constitutional version of the appendix. The very existence of the Senate, where the Constitution allocates two Senators to each state, runs directly counter to the idea of popular representation. And yet the Constitution requires the agreement of the Senate, where the majority of the people have no voice, to most of our most important decisions. In most of our democratic allies, such as Great Britain, Germany, and Japan, the majority party in the legislature selects a prime minister, who becomes head of the executive branch as well. 

Many people have been asking is Donald Trump going to be a good president. Trump is a business man and he is going to run this country financially. He does know what he’s doing in that area. As for the political ways, Trump is going to have trouble. A man that says he is going to build a wall dividing Mexico and America, is a crazy man. If he is that crazy, then you can bet that he will not think about it twice if it comes to pressing the red button. Trump believes that he would be able to create twenty-five million jobs for this country. And when he says this he wants to cut all the taxes on the rich and raise them for everyone else. How much further is he willing to go? What other outrageous ideas, or laws, or anything else you can think of will Trump come up with.

America's Election or the Worlds?

Even though to some it may seem like the presidential elections would only affect Americans, it in facts plays a huge part on how the world gets along. Within the past century, our American land has been hit with the horrible Pearl Harbor and then 9/11. And the only thing that ended up changing was the world order. The article American’s election or the Worlds? by Simon Kuper says: “Even if the Red Army had rolled across western Europe, life in Alabama or Ohio would have been almost undisturbed.” This is saying that when Donald Trump had launched his campaign he had to come up with some sort of made up foreign creature. Which was the Mexican rapist. Our president has the power to do one if three things. One, to help and protect the rest of the world. Two, to mess up everything. Three, just simply ignore and not care at all about the world.

For the past eight years, Barack Obama was trying to get rid of the global policeman’s baton. If Trump wins the election there is a very, very high chance that we could be isolated from the rest of the world. One other thing that is scary for foreign countries besides America being isolated from the world is American irresponsibility. In one poll for Donald, the Lincoln Leadership Initiative, 22% of his supporters believed that Donald would start a nuclear war.

Is Freedom of Speech a Weapon?

Is Freedom of Speech a Weapon?

Life at American colleges these days are viewed as campus hotbeds of narrow-mindedness for freedom of speech. However, there is a new report that questions that as well as warning of a different risk. The report by PEN America states: “a growing perception among young people that cries ‘free speech’ are too often used as a cudgel against them.” This report that is titled “And Campus for all: Diversity, Inclusion and Freedom of Speech at U.S. Universities” will go over a bunch of triggering topics. These topics are trigger warnings; microaggressions; safe places; and controversial campus speakers. This report also includes a very apparent difference of viewpoints between advocates and activists for free speech. This is because of a conversation that would dismiss a students’ demand for fairness and inclusion. 

This report warns us of the possibility that a new generation will rise and turn against free speech. Suzanne Nossel, the group’s executive director, says otherwise. She says that the report will end up promoting more diverse voices through different projects such as PEN’s annual World Voices Festival of International Literature. There was a poll that was taken last spring that showed most college students were in favor of free speech on campus in general. The only thing was that college students also favored some restrictions on “intentionally offensive” speech. “From an old-fashioned free-speech perspective, it strikes one as contradictory,” said Alberto Ibargüen, the chief executive of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a sponsor of the poll. This PEN report also ends up running its self into some contradictions. It looks at cases for and against requests of safe spaces, and the report looks at campaigns against so-called microaggressions. 

“It’s a very smart and thoughtful and avoids caricature. They are fully committed to robust, uninhibited speech. But they also recognize words matter,” said Jerry Kang. Jerry Kang is the vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a legal scholar who has studied implicit bias and was interviewed for the report. He said that he appreciated PEN’s efforts to understand the college students’ point of view.