The hour badly spent

Shortly after the election, feelings ran high on both sides of the political fence. Some of us were all, "suck on that, red-staters." The others reverted to the same tactics that cost their side the election in the first place. Case and point: freshman Josh Rodrick attempted a call for unity in a letter to the Collegian. But since he could not resist the chance to take a baseless swipe at the president-elect, he comes off as being divisive.

…To say people should unite under one president because it brings change is asking much of a society in which people cannot even respect or agree with their neighbors.

For this American society that voted for a president that flies a flag other than the American flag over his name, where is the unified organization?

The "Obama’s not really American" meme is like a bad neighbor who simply will not trim his encroaching weeds no matter what happens to everyones’ property values. Time and time again, people keep repackaging the old message with shiny new bullshit. There goes the neighborhood.

Our first black president will be the first and definite change, and while he coerced much of the United States to vote for him, we will see come January 2009 how much our nation will change.

There you have it. It’s unthinkable that our first black president would win in a fair, free democratic election. Rather, he "coerced" a majority of the population and the electoral college.

Do not unite under a president; unite together, unite under the American flag and the principles this country was founded on; find some middle ground or cooperation and let your voice be heard.

In making a worthwhile claim, Rodrock resorts to pettiness that undercuts his own message. Neocon doublethink was already rejected by the voters. It insults our intelligence and has no place in a democracy that requires honesty to function. Bitter red-staters should leave the calls for unity to someone who actually means them.

[K-State Collegian]

Mark Erbacher believes that memorizing Revolutionary War documents makes one person more American than others.

As U.S. citizens, we feel we are well versed in our nation’s history and knowledgeable of its laws and practices. However, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute recently found - for the third year in a row - that a great number of Americans know very little about this nation’s history and government workings.

According to americancivicliteracy.org, of the over 2,500 randomly selected Americans who took the 33-question test, 1,700 failed. The average score was a depressing 49 percent. Possibly even more frightening is the average score of the elected officials that were surveyed: 44 percent. That means, of course, that the average person, according to this quiz, is actually more versed in American history and the government than those they have chosen to speak for them.

Eh. Once the "No Child Left Behind" generation grows up, those test scores should fly as high as a bald eagle. Of course this means once we have enough smarties we can take them off the endangered species list and hunt them in defense of our 2^nd Amendment rights.

Some of the results are simply awe striking. More than twice as many people knew that Paula Abdul is a judge on American Idol than knew that the quote “government of the people, by the people, for the people” is taken from President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, that, coincidentally, President-elect Barack Obama quoted in his acceptance speech.

Is this surprising? Paula Abdul has been fine since the 80s. "Of the people, by the people, for the people" has not characterized government in at least eight years. God damn America.

Almost 40 percent of people surveyed believe that the president has the right to declare war, when he or she doesn’t. Of those elected officials who took the quiz, 30 percent were unaware that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are inalienable rights referred to in the Declaration of Independence. Also, 20 percent of these same elected officials thought the Electoral College was established to supervise the first presidential debates.

That’s quite a bit of information. Gee, I wonder where he’s going with all this.

I might be biased; I am, after all, a political science major and have studied a lot of these things more than most, but these results absolutely terrify me.

Part of me thinks my life would be much easier if Mark Erbacher was the standard by which my intelligence was measured. Think it’s tougher than going up against a fifth-grader.

So America, do us all a favor: pick up a newspaper, or a book for that matter, and learn something.

Whatever; books are for coastal liberal elites, like Erica Hateley. Presumably, many of us are reading your column. It might be helpful, therefore, to explain in an entertaining way, what your field of study (lol political "science") actually is and what sort of interesting useful reaganisms you learned in civics this week. Conversely, supercilious gasbaggery really won’t do us any good.

[K-State Collegian]

Months ago, when Brett King first ran an article about Indiana requiring voters to produce valid ID at the polls, the issue seemed a bit strange, and I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why. Requiring IDs to vote seemed like a benign enough idea, but why, exactly, was it necessary?

I can’t imagine Indiana has a huge turnout of illegal aliens sneaking by pollsters in droves, causing severe upsets in the makeup of school district boards or whatever. And most of the time, when I hear about election fraud, it’s less likely to be "Mr. Worthington paid 8,000 fake constituents to show up and vote" — which is properly called voter fraud — and more probably along the lines of "Mr. Worthington bribed a single official to toss out 8,000 ballots" — which is more properly called election fraud.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Justice John Paul Stevens said that Indiana’s desire to prevent fraud and to inspire voter confidence in the election system are important even though there have been no reports of the kind of fraud the law — backed overwhelmingly by Republicans — was designed to combat.

So I was kind of puzzled as to why we would focus the crackdown on the electorate, when the angle of entrenched-power cronyism seems more likely and more pernicious. Then I ran across some new information:

The Indiana law was challenged in separate suits filed by the Indiana Democratic Party and by another group of plaintiffs that included elected officials and community groups.The plaintiffs argued that the state had failed to justify a requirement they said would place a special burden on thousands of eligible voters in Indiana who lack driver’s licenses, a group that disproportionately includes the poor, the elderly and people with disabilities.

Writing for the 2-to-1 majority at the appeals court, Judge Richard A. Posner agreed with the plaintiffs that the law would have the greatest impact on people who were “low on the economic ladder and thus, if they do vote, are more likely to vote for Democratic than Republican candidates.”

I guess it always comes back to red vs. blue. Therefore, Brett’s column this week welcomes us to the New World Order; in which the poor and the undesirables don’t have a say, just like in the Old World Older. As long as we’re getting all regressey, why not just do it exactly the way we used to, where you had to be a property-owning white male in order to vote?

The problem with his argument, though, is the fact that Indiana provides free IDs to citizens who do not have a driver’s license.

Fair enough. I guess this is just like that time conservatives insisted that the government which governs best, governs least, except apparently under certain arbitrary conditions.

After the Democratic Party’s claims of voter fraud in many elections - including the 2000 presidential election - any individual with at least a small amount of common sense would think helping to curve voter fraud would be a good course of action.

Having eligible citizens voting in elections is essential to the progress of our republic, but to encourage participation, voters must feel their vote matters and won’t be canceled out by those attempting to commit voter fraud.

Yeah, a little perspective on that whole Y2K Florida debacle: the problem was NOT that non-citizens were voting. It’s that electoral authorities and the police were removing people from the poll lines and stopping them from voting, and that this took place only in overwhelmingly Democratic neighborhoods. It was pretty clearly NOT voter fraud and SO election fraud. And it wasn’t just the Democratic party making those claims: local newspapers told the stories of a pretty fair number of individuals who were there to witness democracy inaction. I can’t help but wonder if Brett King’s equivocation was accidental right-wing cluelessness or purposeful right-wing malice.