The Brown University Spectator:A Journal of Conservative and Libertarian Thought

Archive for the ‘national’ Category

Libertarians and McCain

By Peter Catsimpiris • May 8th, 2008 • Category: national

The outlook of the 2008 presidential race is hardly a dream come true for libertarians. Then again, we haven’t really had a viable candidate (other than maybe Reagan and Goldwater) in post-FDR Amerika. While the prospect of one of three great luminaries who’ve made their names and fortunes squabbling over how worst to spend your [...]



Barack’s Preacher Problem

By Keith Dellagrotta • Apr 17th, 2008 • Category: national

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.” These words, the first in the United States Constitution, were likewise at the beginning of Senator Barack Obama’s (D-IL) recent speech regarding Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr.’s comments. It is fitting that Obama, the presidential candidate who is supposed to be above racial politics, [...]



Our Potential First-Lady? Race Warrior-in-Chief

By Kristina Kelleher • Mar 21st, 2008 • Category: national

The Vast-Right Wing Conspiracy and Republican Attack Machine may have thought that they “beat the bitch,” but it appears likely that their sights were pointed in the wrong direction. While Hillary Rodham Clinton has endured the bulk of criticisms from stalwarts of the Right from Pat Buchanan to Robert Bork for nearly two decades, it [...]



Shooting Back

By Andrew Kurtzman • Mar 21st, 2008 • Category: national

In “Gun-Free Zones: The Latest in Suicide Pacts” (Spectator VI:3), Kristina Kelleher ’09 noted that the Virginia Tech, Columbine, Beach, Jonesboro, Paducah, Connetquot High, Killeexn, Orange Park, SuccessTech, and West Nickel Mines school shootings all took place in so-called “gun-free zones.” This argument would, most unfortunately, presage another horrendous act of campus violence: the February [...]



Healthcare that Hurts

By Keith Dellagrotta • Mar 21st, 2008 • Category: national

As the general election draws ever closer, it is time for Brown students and the United States public in general to get down to the nitty-gritty. It is time for you as a voter to examine each political issue in detail so that when you vote for a presidential candidate and his or her platform, [...]



Ordered Liberty and the right to arms

By Brian Bishop • Mar 21st, 2008 • Category: national

Drawing its seminal inspiration from the William F. Buckley, Jr., of the 18th century, Edmund Burke, the conservative movement might be thought to have all but foresworn revolutionary intent. Although known for his stinging critique of the French Revolution’s abandonment of civil protections for life and property, Burke was, nonetheless, a philosophical supporter of the [...]



The Clemens Effect

By Bryan Smith • Mar 21st, 2008 • Category: national

On December 13th, 2007, Senator George Mitchell (D-ME) published the much anticipated Mitchell Report. This report was the conclusion of a twenty-month investigation regarding the use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball (MLB). For approximately the last fifteen years, there have been rumors and whispers around baseball about the use [...]



A Body Politic No More: On the emergence of a moribund political society

By Sean Quigley • Feb 20th, 2008 • Category: national

It hardly needs to be proven, beyond the years of personal experience which we each possess, that human beings are creatures of habit, that we often prefer the humdrum of daily bourgeois life to the uncertainties of political activity and civic action. The present writer is no exception to this general trend – it would [...]



The Case for Waterboarding: Not nice, but not torture

By Anish Mitra • Feb 20th, 2008 • Category: lead, national

On October 18th, 2007, during day two of Michael Mukasey’s Senate confirmation hearing, the prospective Attorney General refused to label waterboarding as torture. Although he was criticized heavily by the media, Mukasey hesitated to allow public opinion to guide his conscience. On January 30th, 2008, now-Attorney General Mukasey continued to deliberate on whether or not [...]



Hanging Up Racism

By Joshua Unseth • Feb 20th, 2008 • Category: lead, national

Last year, as a group of black students were put on a very public trial in a case known as the Jena Six, we saw a reemergence of the often sugar-coated race debate. For those of us who do not come from towns where there is a high amount of racial tension, we have no [...]