To the Editor:Why is everyone trying to suppress Nader? Have they forgotten that the freedom to do whatever you want is what makes America great? It’s always the same argument as to why he shouldn’t run: He stole the 2000 election from Al Gore. There are so many things wrong with that statement.
First, he didn’t steal the election from Gore; George W. Bush stole the election from Gore. No one seems to remember the popular vote over all and that sketchy business in Florida, where his brother just happens to be the governor.
The popular vote, the most important tool of any citizen in a representative democracy, was trampled aside by the Republican Machine. Second, who’s to say that just because I am a liberal person opposed to the Republican Party, I have to automatically vote for the Democratic candidate? If I was of age to vote in 2000, I wouldn’t have voted for Al Gore. He doesn’t deserve my vote. I’m sick of choosing the lesser of two evils; I’m sick of the two-party system. America is a melting pot of races, creeds and ideas, and that variety is one of its most appealing attributes. There are not just two kinds of people in the U.S. So why are there only two parties?
I’m glad Nader has the guts to stand up to everyone, including the party he propelled into the spotlight of American politics. He has my vote.
Patrick M. Barry
WCU Student
To the Editor:
Most of us on this campus long to be like the “Jones family.” We covet everything from material items to glamorous lifestyles. “I’ve got to get that new Kate Spade purse and a camera flip-phone!” “I can’t live on campus anymore because all my friends live off campus.” I’ll be the first to admit that I see things my friends have and want them for my own. If my mom heard you, she’d say, “Don’t try and keep up with the Jones’.” I’m sure others have also heard the phrase, “keeping up with the Joneses.” It’s a clich that has to do with wealth, and wanting wealth.
Ah, the illustrious Jones family. They are that elusive family (or person) that has everything you desire. The Jones’ are the object of envy. Don’t feel bad, though. We’re only human; we’ve all felt jealous at one time or another.
But it is time that we as college students looked at the Jones dilemma from a different slant. We are the Jones’! People are envious of us! Most of us are under 25 and going to be graduating in a year… or two… or three. According to the Census Bureau’s March 2000 survey (and Dr. Lordan), only 26 percent of Americans aged 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree or higher. We are in the educated minority. When you get your degree, you’ll become part of the Jones family, per se.
The other 74 percent of Americans over the age of 25 look upon us as the Joneses. Possibly not for our sense of style or the 1989 clunker we drive around, but because of the fact that we are getting a college education. There are millions of Americans who went into the working world right out of high school and then, admirably, returned to college to obtain their degree. They are the ones who know exactly how important that college degree can be. It can be the difference of thousands of dollars a year in salary, or the difference between a managerial position and a sales associate.
All of us won’t step into six-figure jobs right out of college and be running a Fortune 500 company by the time we are 30. Many of us will never know the satisfaction of making a cool million in a year. But, we can all hold our heads high and know that we did accomplish something great before we turned 25. We graduated from college.
So, when your alarm rings at 10:45 for your 11a.m. class, groan, roll out of bed, and remember that you are on your way to becoming a Jones. A lot of the over-25 American population has been up and working for hours, wishing they were lucky enough to be living the high life in college.
Comments can be sent to SR576427@wcupa.edu
Sara Randall
To the Editor:
In the “Reflections” editorial of Mar. 2, 2004, it is written: “If the Democratic party (and independent groups like moveon.org) enjoy spending millions of dollars on Bush-whacking, then that’s their perrogative.” I am the President of the College Democrats on campus. I can say, confidently, that none of us enjoys fighting the man who pursed his lips and said, “Please, don’t kill me,” mocking Faye Tucker, whom he put to death.
“Like it or not,” Tony, we don’t enjoy the No Child Left Behind Act, which is an unfunded mandate get used to that phrase. We didn’t smile when the Medicare Modernization Act was passed in December after the voting was held open for over two hours later than any vote in the history of the U.S. Congress. It had actually failed when the first count was taken. And your third point, about Bush telling the United Nations what he was “going to do and doing it?” That is why we call him the Mad Cowboy, which is meant to be as slap-stick as watching a cow with a deteriorated nervous system slip on the concrete.
It is funny that you write we are in the business of “enjoyment.” It is funny in the “peculiar,” “bizarre,” “perplexing sense,” not the humorous, enjoyable one. Earlier in the piece, you say John Kerry’s record is “really interesting” and “fascinating.” Funny because when I am fascinated and really interested, I am actually enjoying myself.
Now, I know you don’t like the French (and maybe this is why), but they have a word in their language called jouis-sance. It is loosely translated as “enjoyment,” but it also has a sexual connotation, similar to “orgasm,” that the English word just doesn’t have, so most of the time it is left untranslated. I would love to hold forth on how jouissance is understood in Lacanian psychoanalysis, and applied to the Hegelian dialectic of the master and the slave, but let me just say that it is this obscene jouissance which I find so disturbing in the purely ideological, Fox News American neo-conservatism which you espouse, Tony.
Bush “sticks to his guns.” He “stands his ground.” He has opened new areas in Iran and gotten Lybia to drop their guard and allow inspections. All of this was achieved through intimidation, not diplomacy. How is this really any different from imperialism and colonialism? It’s not even “compassionate” colonialism.
Kerry “waffles.” He “equivocates.” He “tergiversates.” He “prevaricates.” He “pussyfoots.” Not so fast, Anthony Maalouf.
Kerry is willing to admit when he is wrong. Kerry changes his mind. Bush dillydallies.
This is the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. We are willing to admit when we are wrong when we are dead wrong: when we have betrayed your trust. We don’t enjoy it, but we are accountable. We repent. That is our prerogative. Republicans are just more of the same.
Erik Anderson
President,
WCU College Democrats
WCU Sophomore