Everybody told us that when we graduated from high school all of the friendships we had developed would lose their importance. They were right. Some of my best friends from high school and I have gone months without communicating, and even years since we last saw each other. On the other hand, the friends we make when we first move away from home are those that will be present for years to come. I finished my second year of studies a few months ago, but it was only until this last week that I really felt like I had reached the half way point.

Over the weekend I went to see a wedding between two friends of mine in North Bay, Ontario. I became fully aware that the people I will remember most are those whom I have met at the Church I joined in Kingston two years ago. Perhaps this is a common feature of small-town Americans, but I often have trouble telling when people are being sincere or when they simply are going through the motions of a friendship. Perhaps that is why I feel so humbled by the beauty of Christ’s Church. At the core of every Christian’s soul is the belief that even as man spirals into self destruction, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. While such a belief may come across as escapist, and indeed many Christians use it as a justification to destroy the environment or disregard the liberties and rights of others, it unites us beyond ethnic, racial, or political boundries.

I’m taking a year off from school starting this September. I’ve applied to do work with an oversees Christian missionary organization known as SIM (serving in mission). My Church here in Honeyville NY supports a couple in Uruguay whom, Lord willing, I will be joining. The ministry that they do combines humanitarian work with evangelism, thus fulfilling Christ’s call for us to preach the good news and serve our fellow man.

Until that time and starting on Tuesday, I will be working as the challenge course instructor for the Adirondack Mennonite Camping Association. I hope to use this blog as a way to stay in touch and report on my adventures over the course of the next year. For those of you who live in Kingston, I look forward to seeing you again a year from now.

Take care and God bless!

-optionaltoaster

Keep an eye on New Mexico, West Virginia, Virginia, Missouri, New Hampshire, and Michigan.

But we all know, as goes Ohio…

Long since past are the days when Edward R. Murrow courageously stared down Senator McCarthy, when Dan Rather reported from within Mujahadeen strongholds in Afghanistan during the country’s Soviet occupation, or when Walter Cronkite managed to embody both the shock and willpower of the American people just minutes after the Kennedy assassination. The recent news that CBS, once the gold standard of television journalism, has been considering negotiations that would lead to outsourcing its news broadcasting to CNN is perhaps the final nail in the coffin. In honor of their memory, I present my list of the Top 5 Worst Newscasters Ever.

(EDIT: The allegations that CBS is outsourcing its news to CNN have not been confirmed by either party)

5. George Stephanopoulos (ABC News – This Week)

ABC has been shoddy ever since Peter Jennings passed away. Now ABC has George Stephanopoulos fronting the national news. However, for most of his career he has not defined by a lack of integrity, but an inability to define himself at all. The reason he is on the list is because of a recent debate between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton he hosted with Charles Gibson. While the debate drew in a record audience for ABC, it was crammed with commercials and unsubstantial accusations directed towards Barack Obama. Issues discussed included Obama’s former pastor Reverend Wright, the fact that he knows William Ayers (a former member of the Weather Underground), and (I’m not making this up) an appearance he made several months ago when he was not wearing a flag lapel pin. Stephanopoulos lacks the kind of gusto that defined Peter Jennings and will forever prevent him from distinguishing himself as a newscaster.

Best line ever (to Senator Barack Obama): “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”

4. Lou Dobbs (CNN – Lou Dobbs Tonight)

Every weekday evening between the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Andersoon Cooper 360, CNN subjects us to a few hours of nonsensical ranting from one of the grumpiest men ever to grace the television airwaves. While I do not believe he willingly incites anti-Hispanic xenophobia, the effects of his class warfare/”pro-America, anti-everybody else” rhetoric are permeating and divisive. While he is best known as being a voice of opposition to American involvement in multinational councils, his summations often border on the absurd. Every time President Bush meets with President Calderon and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the fictional North American Union rears its ugly head as a talking point. Dobbs is always encouraging his listeners to register as independent voters, apparently because he believes that the best way to fix a broken system is to retreat from it altogether. This self-described “champion of the middle class” makes upwards of $10 million a year and easily qualifies as number four of the Top 5 Worst Newscasters ever. By the way Lou, I like NAFTA. Now watch as I give you the cold Canadian-American shoulder.

Best line ever (In response to a comment made by Condoleezza’s Rice): “Not a single one of these cotton…[stammering]…these just ridiculous politicians should be the moderator on the issue of race.”

3. Keith Olbermann (MSNBC – Countdown With Keith Olbermann)

Liberalism in the media has a name, and that name is Keith Olbermann. While normally MSNBC ranks in the top tier of national news outlets, Countdown is little more than a pathetic attempt by the network to create a left wing version of the O’Reilly Factor. Recent antics include imitating Walter Cronkite by counting down the days since major combat operations ended in Iraq, imitating Edward R. Murrow by ending his broadcasts with “good night and good luck”, and imitating the fictional Howard Beale in a poorly done interpretation of his “Mad as Hell” speech from the film Network. Not only did he once depict Bill O’Reilly with a cardboard cut-out giving the Nazi salute, but he has included him sixty times in his “Worst Person In the World” countdown, which paradoxically changes with every new episode. Keith Olbermann is unoriginal and his juvenile antics will forever guarantee that his viewer audience share is less than 1/3 that of Bill O’Reilly.

Best line ever: “I’m not a liberal, I’m an American”

2. The Entire Fox News Morning Team (FOX News – Fox and Friends)

Stephen Colbert once described Fox News as a cartoon about the news. You can always count on Gretchen Carlson, Steve Doocy, and Brian Kilmeade to provide the quality of newscasting one might expect from SpongeBob Squarepants, Scooby Doo, and Invader Zim. Starting off your mornings with the unholy trinity of Fox and Friends is an unhealthy way to live. Since 2007, they have been repeatedly claiming that Senator Barack Obama attended a Muslim school when he lived in Indonesia (he didn’t), which has not only been denied by Obama’s campaign, but was proven to be inaccurate by a CNN investigation. Most recently, Steve Doocy claimed to be offended by a comment Barack Obama made in a speech on race regarding Obama’s own grandmother’s prejudices towards African Americans. When Doocy asked if Brian Kilmeade would take offense at Obama calling him a “typical sports-guy” (as opposed to “a typical white person”), Kilmeade in a rare display of human frustration, walked off the set. If you enjoy shouting and unsubstantiated claims, Fox and Friends is for you. If not, than turn off the TV.

Best Line Ever:

Brian Kilmeade: “When you’re in an unscripted interview with sports guys sometimes you’re not measuring every word”

Steve Doocy: “If I said you’re a typical sports guy would you take offense at that?”

1. Tie: Bill O’Reilly (FOX News – The O’Reilly Factor) and Arianna Huffington and her fellow bloggers (The Huffington Post)

The number one spot was something of a no-brainer. Bill O’Reilly is a god to many, and a demon to many more. While Arianna Huffington does not occupy a spot on network news, her influence is just as pervasive. The reason that O’Reilly and Huffington share the number one spot of the Top 5 Worst Newscasters Ever is because they exemplify every single stereotype associated with the ideologies they so passionately defend. O’Reilly, the conservative, has been a passionate apologist of the Bush Administration since he first took office. He has often been lampooned by satirists, most notably Stephen Colbert who in many respects is a parody of O’Reilly. One of the more interesting segments of his show covered him taking a trip to Harlem to have lunch with Rev. Al Sharpton. O’Reilly was astonished to find that the restaurant they were at operated just like a white restaurant, saying (Note: this is O’Reilly’s best line ever) “There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, ‘M-Fer, I want more iced tea”.

Arianna Huffington was a gubernatorial candidate several years ago during the California recall election which ultimately put Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Governor’s Mansion. She operates a well known blog known as the Huffington Post, which contains articles written by well known Americans on the political left such as Chris Dodd, Alan Dershowitz, John Zogby, and Robert Kennedy Jr. However, the blog has also become a stomping ground for people who exhibit everything that has held back the Democratic Party for the last thirty years. Contributors such as Bill Maher, Alec Baldwin, Larry David, and (I’m not making this up) George Clooney epitomize the false stereotypes of liberals in America as people who pay large sums of cash for coffee, drive hybrids around the 90210 but take a private jet to anything more than 100 miles away, and host rock concerts to raise awareness about popular causes, whether it be “saving” Africa or finding means to make poor people better. They ultimately keep pushing the silent majority of Americans to the right of the political spectrum because they have become deluded into thinking that everybody who presents an opinion different from their own is conservative and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to contribute to public debate. This is best exemplified by Arianna’s most recent article condemning CNN for hiring Tony Snow as a political consultant calling him an “unabashed propogandist” because of his conservative views.

Best Line Ever: “What is it with these media outlets? Have they been so cowed by the Right’s relentless branding of them as ‘liberal’ that they feel compelled to show they’re not sleeping with the enemy? And make no mistake, Rove, Kristol, and Snow are the enemies.”

O’Reilly and Huffington have polarized those voters whom are best connected with the media and current events by demanding that we take sides. He has called her a Nazi, and she has called him a man “who spews hate as readily as he breaths”, calling it “his lifeblood”. Their most recent petty tirade was over comments on each other’s websites posted by anonymous readers. O’Reilly’s contained posts threatening the life of Hillary Clinton while Huffington’s included sexually inappropriate comments directed towards Senator John McCain’s 23-year-old daughter Meghan. The conclusion of the matter is this: as long as we continue to empower these people they will keep continue to tear this country apart.

The problem with the game is that it takes about as much getting used to as playing the real instruments. If you think you can pick up the guitar, drumsticks, or microphone without any musical experience you are wrong. Dead wrong. In fact, if you play the songs incorrectly or if you can’t sing on pitch, the crowd on the screen starts booing (I am not making this up) and you are eventually kicked off of the stage. The embarrassment is only compounded by the presence of your friends who will inevitably hold a grudge against you by blowing their one chance of “making it big”. Despite its flaws it is incredibly addictive, so out of gratitude for the game and my house mates who insist on playing it stone drunk at 4am in the morning, I present my top five variations to Guitar Hero/Rock Band:

5. Barbershop Hero

Some of us weren’t raised listening to Smashing Pumpkins and Guns N’ Roses, so for us there should be something geared more towards our own special tastes. The game will include four microphones and maybe a tuner (for the rookies) and will pit quartet against quartet in a free-for-all take-no-prisoners contest to see who can most accurately reproduce “Bye Bye Blackbird” or any other song enjoyed by your great-grandparents, whom you have probably never met.

4. String Quartet Hero

For those with sophisticated tastes, there should be a more complex (albeit more expensive) variation that captures the subtle beauty of the string quartet. Two plastic violins accompanied by a fake viola and cello will make this the hardest Guitar Hero variation ever conceived. You will begin in the Baroque era playing Bach and gradually move forward in time, playing for the Emperor himself (ala Amadeus) before inevitably meeting your end: impoverished, rejected, and buried beneath the weight of your own genius. The training tutorial will involve you playing for an elementary school band conductor who gets more agitated every time you miss your entrance. That ought to be enough to send any music student into an epileptic fit.

3. Jet Li’s “Hero” Hero

The premise of this game is simple. One guy sits on the ground playing a Chinese Guqin (7 stringed zither) while the other players sword fight.

Blindfolded.

2. One Man Band Hero

This variation will only be playable by one person (thus defeating the purpose behind Guitar Hero ONCE AND FOR ALL). Don’t be mislead, this game is anything but easy. You will be forced to play with all four controllers: one will be hooked to the bass drum and cymbals on your back, another to your harmonica, one to the accordion in your hand, and the final one registering how much you are smiling (I know it is impossible, just bare with me). The game will take you through the streets of Manchester or York as you eek out a meager wage from the sympathetic bourgeoisie who see nothing wrong with laughing at your expression of artistic ability. The game will be one of survival as you attempt to make enough money to receive treatment for any number of poverty-related industrial age diseases (cholera, anybody?). Nobody wins at this demeaning game. It is all about SURVIVAL.

EDIT: I just had a revelation. Forget about the controller that measure how much you are smiling. Instead, it should be wrapped around your friend who will pretend he is a monkey on a leash.

1. Boy Band Hero

This little idea will combine the challenge of singing with the fun of synchronized dancing. The game will come with four of those “Dance Dance Revolution” platforms that the players will stand on, hitting the correct squares with their feet for points. You can create your own Boy Band member personalities (should I be the sensitive one, or the “tough guy” with the goatee?) and get in fights with paparazzi. In the end if you were able to build up enough name recognition, you can go solo and create music that rips off of Michael Jackson (before he went insane). The best part about Boy Band Hero is that you will never actually have to sing, you can just lip sync to a different person’s voice. Now THAT is what I call art!

-optionaltoaster

As of today, I have four of my five term papers completed so I now have time to focus on more important matters, like presidential politics (ha!).

With the Republican nomination all but wrapped up, the attention of the media and the voters has shifted to the race for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. The fact that there was little doubt that the nominee of the party would either be a black man or a woman made this presidential nomination groundbreaking. However, what began as an historic race has spiraled into absurdity amidst an atmosphere of race baiting and race card playing. The very nature of the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is tearing the Democratic Party apart and giving the Republicans a shot at something that seemed just months ago to be an impossibility: holding the White House.

I should start with a disclaimer. I am not a Democrat, in fact I am a card-carrying member (minus the card) of the Republican Party. I am the only Republican in my family (among a Democrat, an Independent, and a Canadian Citizen) and I have been since I reached voting age in 2006. However, I would like to emphasize that I am of the North Eastern variety of Republicans (As opposed to the Texas, California, and seedless varieties). We believe that the government exists to preserve the liberties of the citizens while providing only that which the free market fails to supply. Likewise, what goes on in the home (unless the welfare of an individual is threatened) is not the government’s business. I also believe that though we should not shy away from the responsibilities characteristic of being the world’s only superpower, the best military is the one that never has to be used. The man who first made me want to be a Republican was Arizona Senator John McCain. In 2000 he ran a spirited campaign for the GOP presidential nomination against then Texas Governor George W. Bush. At a time when the economy was booming and our international reputation was unparalleled, McCain ran on a moderate platform based more on personality than ideology. He was the American hero once shot down over Vietnam, now vigorously fighting high spending and special interests, regardless of whether they took the form of greedy multi-billion dollar corporations or exploitative labor unions. His appeal to moderate Democrats and Independents propelled him to success in the New Hampshire and Michigan primaries, but caused him to suffer in the closed GOP primary in South Carolina. As we all know, Bush went on to secure the nomination and become President of the United States in the closest presidential election in American history. Now Republicans are hitting their heads against the wall for not nominating McCain eight years ago. I didn’t support him this election cycle partially because of his rhetoric on national security issues, but moreso because I didn’t think he had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting his party’s nomination. Now that McCain is in fact the party’s presumptive nominee, he has the difficult task of convincing America that he is qualified to be president, even after eight years of poor governing by the Bush Administration.

Thanks to recent events in the Democratic presidential race, it may not be as difficult as he thought. On the eve of the South Carolina Primary, Bill Clinton made a remark comparing Obama’s success in the South to that of Jesse Jackson. Just a few days ago, Geraldine Ferraro, who ran in 1984 as Walter Mondale’s Vice President against Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, made a comment saying that Obama would not be in his present position as the presumptive front runner for the nomination if he was a white man. She added that she never would have been on the ticket in ’84 if she was not a woman. While all of the Republicans were silently thinking “no duh”, the Democrats and liberals in the media cried foul. Ferrara was accused of being racist by people within the Democratic Party, despite the fact that her whole life has been one committed to fighting for civil rights for women and minorities.

I like to think that I am an impartial observer to the Democratic race. Neither Obama nor Hillary have done much to convince me that they deserve my vote, so I really don’t care which one gets the nod of the party. However, what I have observed has been an absurd war of personalities between these two influential Senators and their surrogates that is causing those outside of the Democratic Party to wonder what the heck is going on. I find it ironic that whenever Obama makes a jab at Clinton, he is praised for taking a tough stand against the “establishment” but when Clinton’s campaign goes on the attack (3am phone call?) she gets tagged as being a neurotic, nagging woman. Never mind that Barack Obama’s pastor is a demented racist*. I am not arguing that one side is more guilty than the other, I am only saying that the nature of a political campaign that has been thoroughly castrated by the SS of political correctness will seizure whenever the fact that Barack Obama is black is even mentioned. Nobody doubted that Mitt Romney did well in the Mountain States because of their large Mormon populations. He won the state of Utah with 90% of the vote and we didn’t kid ourselves why. Barack Obama won 91% of the African American vote in Mississippi, which was an accurate reflection of states across the South where he has consistently held huge double digit leads over Clinton among black voters. Yet when a Clinton surrogate says that Barack Obama is doing well because he is black, nuts like Keith Olbermann and Jack Cafferty cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.

My advice to the Democrats is this: Stick to the issues. You need your candidates to stay on message and escape from the polarizing scorched-earth stalemate that they are in. The Republicans knew full well that they could not possibly win on the status quo platform, which is why this November either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton will be campaigning against a man best known as a decorated war hero whose greatest life accomplishment was refusing to be returned home by the North Vietnamese Army until he was assured that his fellow POW’s would go with him. Let’s face it, John McCain is a lousy Senator. No matter how beautiful your family is (Obama) or how good you are at tearing up (Clinton), if you allow the campaign to be about personality rather than issues, John McCain will trump you every time.

One more piece of advice: Tell Michigan and Florida** to stick their delegates where the sun doesn’t shine.

End of rant.

-optional toaster

EDIT: *Barack Obama’s pastor has come under increasing media attention in the last 48 hours.

EDIT: **The Florida Democratic Party has since voted not to hold new elections. It will not contribute delegates to the convention.

Coming from a small town where nobody locks their doors or windows, I was stunned by this insensitive thievery of that which I considered to be rightfully mine and the possessions of my house mates, none of whom had done anything to warrant this crime. I have been unable to conceive what could have been on the person’s mind as he walked from room to room taking what he wanted. What was even more distressing was the breach of privacy we had been subjected to. There was somebody in our house and our rooms without our permission. The drawer where I had hid my money was still open, the contents visibly moved around. All of the doors to our rooms were left open and debris from the door that was smashed in lay on the hallway floor:

I was just waiting for Jack Nicholson to stick his head through an axed hole in the door and say “Here’s Johnny!”.

You can’t tell from the photo, but there is a big crack on the molding next to the door where it was kicked. Even the one guy with the sense to lock his bedroom door fell victim to the covetousness of a thief.

He left his flashlight here (not a smart cookie) which we promptly turned over to police. We were told that the odds of them catching the guy were small, which is understandable but underscores the failure of law enforcement to act as a deterrent when resources are stretched thin, like they are in Kingston. Getting past the initial shock didn’t take too long and I’ll get by alright without the money. If something is to be learned from this whole fandango it is not that there are people in the world who are willing to take what is not theirs, or that we should be more careful to provide for out own security (both of which are perfectly valid lessons) but that the true test of a Christian is how one responds to situations where we are confronted with injustice. By all practical standards I have every right, nay, an obligation, to prosecute this guy to full extent of the law. However, Christ preached a doctrine of “turning the other cheek”, that is if a man strikes you, turn so that he might strike the other side of your face (Matthew 5:38-42). One of the first emotions I felt when I realized I had lost money was rage-not a very Christian emotion. I imagined myself hitting the guy on the head and then duck taping him to a chair, if only I had been home when he had broken in. Although realistically, if somebody broke into my house it probably would have played out more like this:

That’s me hiding under my covers with the only weapon at my disposal.

Back to the issue of forgiveness. I have been questioning my own morality by asking myself whether or not I would let the guy keep the money. I tried to answer this by saying that it is irrelevant since he will not be caught. Nonetheless, I am not excused if in my own heart I would not forgive him and show mercy just as God showed to mankind. Had the break-in been done by an unemployed father trying to feed his family, mercy would not be difficult to give. However, if it was a teenager with nothing better to do or who was too lazy to get a job, forgiveness without justice feels totally unnatural. Living up to the Biblical standard in this case, and all situations, requires a suppression of human morality and a surrender of the benefit of the doubt to God.

One of the parables that Jesus told was of an unmerciful servant who was forgiven of a large debt he owed his master but refused to forgive a small debt that was owed to him by one of his own servants (Matthew 18:21-35). The grace that the master showed was meant to be an example for his own servant. Likewise Christ’s sacrifice should set an example to all people and teach us a valuable lesson in forgiveness.

-optional toaster

PS: 226 hits in less than one week=awesome .

Over the summer I went to a 5th of July celebration in Carthage, NY with some friends from the my workplace. After a nighttime fireworks show, we went for a walk down one of the scenic streets. A few minutes later we approached a park bench where a well-dressed older gentleman was sitting. He asked if we enjoyed the firework show. We told him that we had and then proceeded to ask him why Carthage celebrates Independence Day on July 5th. Apparently it is to make sure that everybody who might be away is back in town to celebrate. It’s also nice to attract some people from the surrounding area, which we were a testament to since none of us are actually from Carthage. The man asked us to give him a bag of circles to which we responded that doing so is impossible (a circle is an idea, not an object). We asked him what he did for a living and he made us guess. Eventually we found out that he had studied at Villanova University and from that, correctly established that he was the priest at the local Catholic Church. What followed was a philosophical discussion about faith, love, and politics from the perspectives of a half dozen college students working at a Mennonite summer camp and a wise religious scholar whose life had been devoted to the service of God and his parish.

Last month my maternal grandfather passed away at the ripe age of 90. We knew it was coming for a while so we weren’t shocked. Since then my family has been going over his personal effects and as a result, I’ve gained a greater appreciation for what Tim Brokaw called “the greatest generation”. My grandfather grew up in Nova Scotia and attended Dalhousie University before receiving the Rhode Scholarship to study at Oxford. However, the year was 1939 and the war in Europe had just begun. Like many young men at the time, he put his education on hold to enlist in the RCAF. He was soon transferred to the Royal Air Force, flying on board a piston-engine PBY Catalina as a navigator in the African Theater. For those few terrifying years, Great Britain “the island fortress” stood alone as the last bastion against Nazi aggression. The efforts of him and thousands of other British and Commonwealth airmen meant that the fascists could never sleep easy or achieve their goal of total European conquest. Sir Winston Churchill stated in 1940 in reference to the RAF that, “never has so much been owed by so many to so few”.

We recently discovered some of his personal effects from both the war and his civilian life. For my birthday, my parents gave me a folder they had dug up which contained every article that my grandfather had cut out and filed from the New Yorker on President Lyndon Johnson from their Annals of Politics series. This is the Holy Grail for an American political history junkie. They also found numerous photos of my grandfather and the other men from his air crew.

I was usually shy to talk to my grandfather about his life. He clearly preferred to know more about what I was doing. I wish that I didn’t have regrets now, but if I said that I was satisfied with everything I allowed him to teach me, I would be lying. Still, the fact that he remained an enigma to me even up to his passing suggests something wonderful about his character. From the pieces of his life that I’ve recovered and am only now putting together, I have come to the conclusion that he was a man of humility, kindness, and frugality despite leading a very successful life in the business sector and his own home. My mother often recalls a story from her childhood when she and her parents were in the American South. At one point, they walked into a restaurant in order to enjoy a dinner together. Upon seeing a sign with the words “WHITE ONLY”, my grandfather politely stood up and walked out with his wife and daughter in tow. Such an act of protest says something about a man’s heart and should serve as an example to all people who desire to stand up against injustice.

On a more humorous note, I recently saw an episode of Mad TV with a character by the name of Mrs. Leona Campbell, played by the brilliant Stephnie [sic] Weir. Mrs. Campbell, clearly a woman outside her natural environment, points out the absurdity of young people through her unintentionally ironic questions and suggestions.

Mrs. Campbell asks the types of questions that we ought to ask ourselves. Do I really need an ipod? Do I really want to have another drink? Do I really need to check facebook every fifteen minutes or text message somebody that I will be talking to after class anyways? (The answers are all “no”). Let’s try to pick up where our grandparents left off. That way we’ll give our descendants something good and wholesome to write about.

-optionaltoaster

Picture: William F. Buckley in 1969, the wink that brought down Noam Chomsky.

The day before yesterday marked the passing of William F. Buckley Jr. He was 82 years old. Though few probably know much about him, his influence on American politics is undeniable. While I do not condone all of Mr Buckley’s views, political or otherwise, I believe that the movement Buckley created was essential in helping the United States to come to grips with many of the failing domestic policies of the 1960′s and 1970′s. His doctrine of pragmatic conservatism is the one which modern leaders such as Sarkozy and Harper take their lead from and the members of the current American presidential administration should have had tattooed on the palms of their hands from day one.

In 1955 Buckley made his first mark on history by founding the National Review, a nationally syndicated conservative magazine that now has a circulation of over 150,000. He stood in stark contrast to his intellectual colleagues, who during the mid-twentieth century were rushing to the Democratic Party which was undergoing a progressive revolution in the north east. At the time, the conservative movement lacked a scholarly voice to communicate its ideas. Mr. Buckley and the National Review were more then happy to fill that void.

1964 marked the first time that the Republican Party nominated a presidential candidate whose ideas outweighed his political ideology. The nominee was Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. Goldwater was seen an intellectual philosopher-politician whose famous quote, “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” became the rallying cry of the Republican Party. In typical fashion of nearly all academically driven people, he lost in a landslide to President Lyndon Baynes Johnson of Texas. Goldwater’s defeat created the space necessary for Richard Nixon, the anti-communist ideological Neanderthal, to rise again to dominate his party during the 1970′s.

Pragmatic conservatism finally found its standard bearer in a handsome Californian actor turned governor (I know who you’re thinking of, it’s not him), by the name of Ronald Reagan. After narrowly failing to defeat then President Gerald Ford for the Party Nomination in 1976, he succeeded four years later in riding on a tidal wave of discontent that Americans had with the stagnating economy, high oil prices, and seemingly incompetent presidential administration (sound familiar?) of Jimmy Carter. Reagan was part of a larger movement, along with Margaret Thatcher and Brian Mulroney, that took the west away from the welfare state and towards the neo-liberal laissez faire economic policies that continue to have a strong bearing on politics today. Though admittedly, Reaganomics exacerbated the outsourcing of jobs from the United States and hurt millions of working class families, it put the United States on the right track by reviving the nation’s entrepreneurial spirit thus leading to the tech boom of the 1990′s.

Like a nasty cough syrup, Buckley’s brand of conservatism tasted awful but succeeded in ending the disease of stagflation. As for today’s world, until the Republican Party can reject the ideologues, warmongers, and corporate interests that have dominated Washington politics in the last seven years, it will fail to fulfill its mandate, which is to serve conservatives in the United States of America (and not the other way around). There is little doubt in my mind that the Republicans will get shelled in this upcoming election (you heard it here first) and will continue to lose support unless the leadership agrees to follow the lessons of pragmatic conservatism that Buckley taught them.

-optionaltoaster

PS: Happy Leap Day

First, a Civics lesson. In the United States, the governments of the individual states operate for the most part as microcosms of the federal government. Power is split between the executive (President/Governor), legislative (State Legislature/Congress), and judicial (Supreme Court/State Supreme Court) branches. In New York, the State Legislature is split between a Senate and an Assembly, not at all dissimilar to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, respectively. Demographically, if New York were to be divided into halves, it would be split between the largely urban liberal Democratic downstate and the more rural conservative Republican upstate. The small area between Dutchess and Suffolk Counties comprises about 60% of the state’s population, most of whom live in Yonkers, New York City, and Long Island. I come from Jefferson County which is a stone’s throw from the Canadian border on the eastern bank of Lake Ontario. To understand where the 48th Senate District is, you should take a highlighter and draw a thick line from Ogdensburg down to Fulton. Everything that is yellow is part of the “Fightin’ 48th”.

Our last State Senator, Jim Wright (R-Watertown), has held his seat uninterrupted for fifteen years. According to AP, the seat has been held by a Republican for over a century, maintaining the fragile control that the Republicans have had over the State Senate since the 1960′s. Barclay’s loss means that the Republicans hold a 32-30 majority in the Senate, while the Democrats maintain their 106-42 (out of 150) super-majority in the Assembly and control over the Governor’s mansion. Governor Elliot Spitzer and the New York State Legislature rose briefly to the attention of the national media (and by that I mean Lou Dobbs) when they began issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. Barclay’s firm opposition to Spitzer’s decision was praised by his fiscally conservative, libertarian leaning electorate. Given that Barclay and Aubertine were nearly identical on all of the issues (low taxes, more jobs, better schools) this and the mere fact that his name is followed by an “R” (Republican, for my Canadian friends) should have made him a shoe-in with the largely Republican North Country voting bloc. This was not so, however.

My conversations with voters in the 48th Senate District reveals that they were mostly turned off to the prospective of electing Barclay due to his choice of campaign tactics. From the very beginning, Barclay was running attack ads against Mr. Aubertine despite the endorsements of State Sen. Wright and United States Congressman John McHugh (R-Pierrepont Manor). In American politics, there are three rules that one should always adhere to, the second of which Barclay should take a lesson from:

1. Do not call your opponent a liar.

2. Do not attack your opponent if you are the front-runner.

3. Do not say anything bad about John McCain or Barack Obama (Goodbye Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton).

I did not vote in this election. The entire time I was home my absentee ballot application sat on my desk. I was torn between my frustration with Assemblyman Barclay and my desire to maintain the balance of power in Albany. I’ll admit though, when I read the results my first emotion was a positive one, so maybe Aubertine’s victory was what I wanted. Whatever.

Anyways, what we should learn from the lessons of this election is that the very nature of a campaign can have a huge impact on the results. Aubertine will no doubt be challenged in the future so he should take advantage of these next few years to build up his own name, all the while not being afraid to stick one to Albany and the downstate machine in the name of dairy farmers, steelworkers, and squirrel-eaters district wide.

-optionaltoaster

One of Mr. Barclay’s early attack ads:

Umm… Hello? Is this thing on?

Good. Here I am. I have a half an hour before I need to leave so I am going to use this time to outline what purposes, goals, and aims (three words that mean the same thing) I have for this blog. I have had too much on mind in the last year and not enough time to verbalize it all. Usually when I start talking it is with purpose and conviction, though the former quite often gets trumped by the latter and I find myself in awkward situations where people are staring back at me or avoiding eye contact all together. Just yesterday I decided that I want to form a running club here at Queen’s University. This happened while I was walking to class and thinking about how poorly I had been paying attention to my physical well-being since graduating from high school. If you are a former runner you know exactly what I mean. As soon as you quit, you actually start to see your body physically change from a lean, low-BMI, carb burning string bean into a butternut squash. Nobody was around to here my idea so I resolved to go running that evening as a compromise.

However, telling somebody your ideas is often fruitless unless that person cares about what you have to say at that given moment in time, rather than crushing your dreams with some sort of rebuttal. When a monologue turns into a true dialog, we witness that which separates us from nature: the exchange of ideas for the betterment of the individuals. In those rare and sweet instances where a dialog turns into a discussion, you can see into the other person’s soul. Discussions usually occur unexpectedly and with the people we don’t try to hold close to our hearts, making them all the sweeter.

I was never the kind of person who did things for the sake of doing them. I don’t go to rallies, write poetry, or take my laptop into public places so people can see that I know how to type. I don’t pay money for other people to make my coffee or feel like I should be ashamed of my nationality. I have no desire to create a blog because it is hip or because it is expected of a white protestant middle-class American university student like myself. Instead I see the purpose of this as a conversation starter. I promise that I will not hide behind my LAN line. What you read here will be exactly who I am, what I believe, and what my convictions are (three phrases that mean the same thing!). The highest goal for educational institutions should be teaching people how to think, not what to think. Likewise, the purpose of a web log (a “blog” if you will) is not to be a means for discussion, because that is impossible. Rather it should provoke people to speak face to face. If I write something objectionable or noteworthy, confront me on it. This is how we make ourselves into better people. Disallowing ourselves to be numbed by the anonymity of the internet is a worthwhile goal. However, whether or not this leads to anything is up to me and you, but it’s worth my free time.

Thirty minutes are up. Time to go.

-optionaltoaster