I humbly submit that Joe Biden has no idea what he’s talking about.

This April 15^th, true American patriots (3,000 of ‘em) met at Lafayette Square across from the White House to protest unprecedented levels of government spending, taxing, and control. The protest was a peaceful demonstration that not all of America is willing to lie down to a centralized government with the hubris to think it can spend our money better than we can. Despite a few hiccups, the protest proceeded smoothly in the freezing rain. Speakers spoke, “Don’t Tread on Me” flags flew, and horns honked in support as participants held up signs saying things like “Taxes ‘r Theft,” “Legalize Capitalism” and “If you tax more, I hire less.”

More than 800 such Tea Parties took place nationwide, involving more that 250,000 people. Started as a grassroots reaction to the “porkulus” bill, and spurred on by Rick Santelli’s now famous call for a “Chicago Tea Party in July,” the movement picked up steam as an avenue for increasingly outraged citizens to show what they thought of government intrusion into the economy. Though the Tea Parties were a bi-partisan appeal to reason, many on the left have denigrated them as Republican events backed by corporate interests and K Street lobbyists. That such leftist criticism has turned so shrill, so quickly, is evidence that supporters of big government are scared. They’re scared that these protests might not be simply Republican “rah-rah” demonstrations.

And, in fact, they’re not.

Several conservative Democrats got up to speak at the event in DC, calling for common sense in government spending. As Michelle Malkin observed at the Sacramento protest: “[Tea Party organizer] Meckler said he heard that California GOP chair Ron Nehring was in the audience. Meckler invited him to say hi to the crowd — and then ripped him for waffling on the massive tax hike ballot measures (particularly Prop1A – $16 billion tax hikes). Massive boos from the crowd of thousands here against the Calif. GOP establishment.”

As to the assertions of Tea Parties being connected to corporate interests; that’s an intellectually disingenuous argument. Any politically active group can be linked to “corporate interests” (a la ACORN, Code Pink and the rest of the lefty protestosphere). Saying the Tea Parties have tenuous connections to vague, disembodied “corporate interests” is the same as saying that many of the people who attended them have hair: true, but vacuous.

Just because some political groups helped organize and coordinate protests does not mean they “co-opted” them or even initiated them. Correlation does not imply causation, and simply because FreedomWorks and AFP were involved does not mean that they were manipulating the message of the thousands of grassroots participants (like myself) for some sinister, undefined “corporate” aim.

Additionally, the fact that Fox News was covering these protests and giving them air time, even allowing individual anchors to promote them is by no means a reflection on the actual events themselves. Sean Hannity et al are not the “Fair and Balanced” part of Fox News. That leftist commentators allude to such a conclusion is an indicator of just how biased (and manipulative) they are. It would be like saying Kieth Olbermann is an objective reporter of facts: comically absurd.

All that said, the participation of such people and groups has as little to do with the actual message of the Tea Parties as logic does to Obama’s economic policy. Saying that big, evil corporate interests are behind protests attended by hundreds of thousands of disgruntled Americans nationwide is a red herring, intended to discredit Americans who have legitimate grievances. There were three thousand people at the DC protest alone (this, in a city which went 98% Obama) and I doubt Halliburton bused all of them in from their secret headquarters deep inside a volcano.

In fact, I know they didn’t because I talked to many of the protesters. I spoke with several small business owners, an employee of a construction company, some students, a public school secretary and a high powered consultant, among others. They were a mix of Republicans, conservative Democrats and libertarians (like myself) who had as much bad to say about Bush as Obama. Their message was overwhelming: bring accountability back to government, stop taxing us to redistribute wealth to those who don’t deserve it, and stop spending on massive entitlement and bureaucratic programs which don’t work, harm the free market, and saddle future generations with debt and inevitable tax increases.

Maybe our government got the message, but if not, there’s always July 4^th…

Although a direct demand for lowering the drinking age cannot be found anywhere on the Initiative’s website, the goals outlined make it clear that this group does in fact want it lowered. Two paragraph titles on the Initiative’s Statement–“Twenty-one is not working” and “How many times must we relearn the lessons of prohibition?”–illustrate the group’s direct attack on the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which denied 10% of federal highway funding to any state setting its drinking age lower than 21.

Predictably, the Initiative faces significant opposition from many angles, but most notably from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the original force behind the 1984 Act. MADD cites the current drinking age as a reason for declining numbers in drunk-driving deaths, even saying that 900 lives are saved every year because of drinking age laws. They certainly don’t want the drinking age lowered.

But it should be lowered. This may sound strange–coming from a social conservative and a complete abstainer–but my inner libertarian wants for people who can vote and join the military to be able to consume alcohol. Just because I choose not to drink it doesn’t mean that no one should be allowed to do so. I also really do want to curb binge-drinking. Not only is it dangerous for those actually consuming, it is often dangerous, and certainly irritating, to all those around them. For example, I would really prefer not to be woken up at 2.30am on a Thursday by someone shouting “I’m being disruptive! I’M DISRUPTING YOU!”, after a night at Fish Co. I wish I were kidding, but that actually happened; I am ready to jump on board for something that might reduce that kind of behavior, which is what the Initiative is trying to do.

Outside of their feud with the Initiative, MADD has done plenty of research into the reasons why the drinking age is a good thing. MADD reminds us that drunk-driving deaths as a whole have decreased since the 1980s, and since alcohol-related fatalities have declined more than have non-alcohol related fatalities, they argue that this is proof that their efforts brought about change.

While MADD has obviously done its research, it needs to do a bit more. First, car safety features overall have improved since 1984, and most likely have contributed to the decrease in fatalities as a whole. Second, the way MADD responds to the Initiative makes it clear that they do not understand what the Initiative’s goals are. The Initiative is clearly equally concerned about young people consuming to the point of impairment, and their goal is to reduce dangerous binge drinking. In fact, they actually agree on one point: both groups want to help young people make “responsible” (Initiative) or “safe and smart” (MADD) decisions about alcohol.

The way MADD phrases their arguments, you would think every president on the Initiative’s list wants to personally hand each student a 40oz. The national president of MADD actually said that those colleges whose presidents had signed the Initiative had “waved the white flag on underage and binge drinking policies.” They are not waving any flags and hate binge drinking as much as you do. They too (perhaps especially) have to deal with the consequences of overconsuming.

Of course, this is not to discount every argument MADD has made. Clearly overconsuming is a serious problem, and each group has a different way of dealing with it. Perhaps we can compare the two movements: MADD generally considers all alcohol consumption by young people to be a bad thing, while the Initiative feels alcohol consumption can be done responsibly. I find myself on the side of the Initiative, and although my peers regularly fail to live up to the “responsible” part of the Initiative’s goal, I know that it can be done, and hopefully getting rid of the “forbidden element” of alcohol (by removing the drinking age) will help.

However, I do have several issues with the Initiative. The first is simply semantics, but the actual name of the group may turn out to be very important. “The Amethyst Initiative” in itself sounds very pretentious, and it’s completely unclear why they would want to call themselves that until one reads the description on their site (unless you have a background in ancient history). The word “amethyst” is apparently derived from two ancient Greek words which, when put together, mean “not intoxicated.” Additionally, in ancient Greece, jewelry and drinking vessels were made out of the semi-precious stone in order to ward off drunkenness. This is all good background, but if the Initiative is looking to convert people, what are they thinking?

My last criticism — which goes beyond semantics — is more of a wish: I hope that these presidents created the Initiative for the right reasons. While all of their arguments that “twenty-one is not working” are true, it hasn’t been examined if the drinking age is not working because they aren’t trying hard enough. While the Presidents may be supporting the initiative in order to stop binge-drinking, it is undeniable that, if the Initiative’s desires are met, the presidents no longer have to worry about so-called underage drinking. Everything from hiring and training public safety officers to enforcing rules about parties would become significantly easier for all of these presidents with a lower drinking age, and so I hope that the Initiative didn’t arise from the laziness of the Presidents

Hopefully the Amethyst Initiative will be able to open a true debate on an issue that’s been untouched for far too long, and although I hate to question its founders, I truly hope they have their students’ best interests at heart.

“Unique” because, unlike Christmas, or Ramadan, which are celebrated and observed, respectively, and in unison, by billions of faith-keepers worldwide, May Day means different things to different people. A Brit and a Mexican and a Vietnamese all relate to the day differently.

The English are perhaps the least sentimental – May Day is a banking holiday – but they have plenty to celebrate. On May 1, 1707, 299 years ago exactly, the Kingdom of Great Britain became the United Kingdom, as Scotland was annexed into England.

France and Germany celebrate the holiday, as well as German youth in rural areas.

And across the Communist and post-Communist world – not to mention in the hearts and minds of socialists worldwide – May Day is International Worker’s Day, a day of remembrance for those killed (and, according to sympathizers, those unfairly punished for the deaths of several Chicago Police officers trying to break up the demonstration) in the Haymarket Affair in Chicago in 1886, and indeed for every worker “exploited” under capitalism. Even countries like the increasingly-capitalistic Vietnam still hold the day in high regard. South of the border May 1 is Labor Day; we keep ours in the second half of the year for the sake of distinctions – recognizing worker contributions to America is different than agitating for a Marxist Worker’s Paradise.

In 1971 May Day seeped into America as anti-war demonstrators marched on the Nixon White House to “shut the government down” for a day in their protestations against the Vietnam War (except the protest happened on May 3, a Monday, rather than May 1, which would have been a Saturday. 1971, of course, was in the time before the 24/7 news cycle, and weekend coverage would’ve been a relative wasted effort).

TIME Magazine of May 10, 1971 recalled the effort: “Determined to bring the Government to a halt for at least one day, they are bent on carrying out a meticulous plan that is a model of guerrilla ingenuity. The theme: stop the blood and you stop the heart. Stop the heart and the “monster” — the war machine — dies. The means: block the city’s bridges and roads with thousands of protesters.”

It didn’t work. Adding injury to insult, not only did the government not shut down, but it worked effectively enough to lock up 7,000 conspirators hoping to disrupt “business as usual.”

In America, a testament to the diverse and sundry groups that compose our people May Day takes on multiple meanings. It is Holocaust Remembrance Day, to be solemnly recognized by all but occupying a special currency with Jews.

It is a day for Patriotism, at least it has been since 1958, when President Eisenhower, hoping to challenge the socialist tenor of May Day, designated it as Loyalty Day.

But, just as American flags appeared on car antennas and buildings after the 9/11 attacks and disappeared once the coast was deemed clear, Loyalty Day just doesn’t mean as much to people when there’s no bad guys on the other side to inspire disloyalty. Though Europeans visiting America are routinely aghast at the flamboyance of American patriotism, a closer look reveals that American mass patriotism is, for the most part, a very reactive sort, that emerges in the face of threats and retreats under the calm of security. You might be more likely to find an American who’ll fly the flag in their office (I do) than a Spaniard or a German or a Frenchman who would do the same with their respective flags, but it still takes tragedy to move the spirits of most of us to overt acts of patriotism.

After the Soviet Union entered the ash heap of history, so, too, did the need to proclaim one’s self capital-l Loyal, let alone dedicate an entire day to it. Besides, with 9/11 designated as Patriots Day – a tradition that hopefully won’t go away no matter how calm things may seem – and the last Monday in May as Memorial Day, Loyalty Day occupied no unique novelty.

In 2008 May Day is also the National Day of Prayer. But as a spokesperson for the National Day of Prayer organization explained, the link is coincidental. “The National Day of Prayer is on the first Thursday in May,” she said, tersely, rejecting its falling this year on May Day as pure – and, frankly, not all that deep or meaningful – chance. Still, it’s better to “react” to the calendar than to wear your patriotism on your sleeve, or not, based on how unsafe or safe the nation is perceived to be.

And the altmodisch (or, just plain “old”) among us still regard May Day as the day of blooming romances. On May 1, tradition dictates, a girl drops off a basket of flowers at the door of the man she admires. Then she rings the doorbell and runs away. The man receiving the flower basket is to give chase and, upon catching his admirer, show his appreciation with a big, wet kiss.
As flower shop owner Karen Medlin explained to Kansas State Collegian reporter Eric Brown for his 2007 story on the old tradition: “That’s why you didn’t always run very fast if you were taking one to a cute boy’s house. But honestly, it’s kind of a tradition that has faded. It was something I always enjoyed as a child, but I don’t think kids these days, or even adults for that matter, get into it as much.”

Ahh. Just as well. With so much to celebrate and remember and protest on May Day, who has the time for petty romances anyway?

James David Dickson is the Collegiate Network Fellow at The Detroit News.


]]> http://www.campusmagazine.org/2008/05/may-day-the-most-celebrated-day-of-the-year/feed/ 0 http://www.campusmagazine.org/2008/04/the-cost-of-protests-tree-sitting-and-marine-bashing-at-berkeley/ http://www.campusmagazine.org/2008/04/the-cost-of-protests-tree-sitting-and-marine-bashing-at-berkeley/#comments Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:33:52 +0000 CAMPUS Archives http://www.campusmagazine.org/?p=452 For many of the protests taking place on and around campus, it’s time to see the writing on the wall. While their aims may be genuine, the protestors have cost both the city and the university at a time when neither Berkeley nor UC can afford these publicity stunts. And the chances for these demonstrations to succeed are slim, to say the least. The UC Regents will not budge on the BP deal, which brings valuable funds to our university. The new stadium and athletic center will be built. And the Marines, if anybody, will never retreat from Berkeley.

In response to the Marine protest, Move America Forward, a conservative activist group, is now running television ads lambasting Berkeley by name. Is this what Mayor Bates and Code Pink wanted? Probably not, but their stubbornness and refusal to grant the Marines their rights to recruit from the best public university in the country have cast shame upon themselves and, by extension, our city and university. According to the Contra Costa Times, the city of Berkeley spent $93,500 on overtime police officers at the recent protests.

Another protest erupted, as an individual named “Fresh” climbed into the tree across Dwinelle Hall. Refusing to leave, the police barricaded him in with a fence, and posted two officers and a squad car on him every hour until he came down. Most people probably didn’t even know why he was up there. Did he even know? His laundry list of complaints included the war in Iraq, Native American remains, and the UC Regents. For approximately two weeks, he berated passers-by, making noise, not change. The financial costs of keeping him and passers-by safe are at press time unclear.

The tree-sitters still up by Memorial Stadium are no better. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that $367,000 has been spent by UC Berkeley to protect the protestors with fences and guards. That, by the way, is more than three full-ride scholarships to Berkeley. And this report came out three months ago in December 2007. It’s anybody’s guess how much it is now. So it’s acceptable to protest against education budget cuts, but squandering three full rides is no big deal. Is that progressivism in action?

I would expect most students to share in my indignation. But, as one friend recently quipped, the major political movement on campus is apathy – not progressivism or conservativism. That is evident in distribution of The Daily Californian, the low turnout in campus elections, and in the very demonstrations draining our financial resources. Rest assured once the city and campus have to cover the costs with a tax or fee increase, you’ll see the creation of a bipartisan coalition railing against “greed” and “wasteful spending”. Couldn’t we nip this in the bud now, and avoid having to go through this later?

To be fair, UC Berkeley has a rich history of free speech and of broaching controversial ideas. This is true on the right (Islamo-fascism Awareness Week) and on the left (the three aforementioned demonstrations). Such a legacy shouldn’t change, and will not change after these protestors cease their activities. But these protests bring little but ridicule to our community. Where we were a city of tolerance and ideas, we are now a city of obnoxious tree sitters and of contemptuous Marine-bashers.

A major “leadership deficit” is also at play here. Our public officials are failing to serve our interests as citizens and students. Major Bates and Chancellor Birgeneau have been remarkably quiet about the costs of these demonstrations, the former probably on account of his tacit approval of Code Pink’s actions. Nevertheless, their silence on this issue is deafening, given how loudly they complain about Governor Schwarzenegger’s recent budget cuts, or about reductions in federal assistance to local communities.

Of course $400,000 and a 10% across the board cut are on completely different financial
scales, but cutting costs should be a priority for both men. The ASUC raised little attention to the subject, squabbling over Fresh’s motives instead of protesting against the financial strain he was putting on the campus. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara Miller was expected to make a ruling on the Memorial Stadium two months ago.

Lambasting Berkeley’s Marines was offensive, considering their selfless service to their country. And draining valuable funds to protect protestors is harmful to all of us. Cal’s “progressive” community needs to organize their demonstrations in a more respectful and organized manner, so that Berkeley’s free speech legacy lives on in a way that benefits, not harms, its intended audience.

Thomas D. Owens was a Staff Writer for The California Patriot, the Collegiate Network member publication at University of California Berkeley. This article originally appeared in the April 2008 issue of The Patriot.

Last month’s teach-in was the University’s latest attempt to force its own opinions upon students. For over a month, Bucknell was inundated with emails, flyers, speeches, and “chalk talk” touting this nationwide event against global climate change.

Hailed as an opportunity to discuss solutions to global warming, the teach-in was nothing more than an excuse for professors and the University to impose their views on climate change upon the student body.

A true liberal arts education has always been held as the means to cultivate intellect and spread new ideas. By exposing students to numerous viewpoints and ideas, the liberal education – in the traditional sense – ensures that students become well-informed, critical thinkers.

However, instead of fostering debate and exposing students to numerous viewpoints on the issue, the University clearly laid out its position and forced it on students in an unequivocally illiberal fashion.

At Bucknell and other colleges across the country, Focus the Nation was just another opportunity to even more freely inculcate the student population. For an entire day, professors expounded on the need to “do something” about global warming. Only unrealistic solutions and moral obligations were the topics of the day.

Instead of serving as a day of lively, diverse debate, the Focus the Nation teach-in only served as another dismal reminder of the disappearance of true debate on college campuses.

If the purpose of a liberal arts institution is to “liberate” students’ minds and expose them to different ideas, then all facets of the global climate change debate should have been discussed. A presentation of various beliefs allows people to form their own opinions on the issue and truly understand the complexity of the debate. Professors only addressed the side of the debate they believed to be relevant and argued for a specific position, effectively indoctrinating Bucknell students.

A political call to action, the teach-in was a pretense, allowing professors and administrators to impose a dogma upon Bucknellians and students across the country. The purpose of a liberal arts university is not to motivate students for a particular end.

The nature or theme of the teach-in is irrelevant. Teach-ins on any subject, such as the immorality of abortion, the merits of universal health care, or the need to stay in Iraq should not be acceptable in the university environment.

Such a blatant display of issue advocacy in a so-called liberal arts university is reprehensible. The shameless political lobbying of our University and some of our professors does not belong in any institution of higher education, much less a liberal arts university. Rather, Bucknell should be fostering critical thought within its student population.

Hosting such a teach-in is contrary to the stated liberal purpose of our University. College should be about learning how to think, not what to think. Then, through the skills we have learned, we should be able to form our own opinions on issues, rather than having them impressed upon us. It is the simple fact that a university is doing all that it can to persuade students to think a certain way that is dangerous.

Supposedly bastions of free thought and diverse discourse, universities across the country – including ours – are instead becoming strongholds of close-mindedness and insular visions. Rather than encouraging the development of multiple opinions in the marketplace of ideas, Bucknell is jeopardizing its academic integrity by adhering to prescribed orthodoxies that exclude certain viewpoints and promote a particular agenda. The University has effectively forced its students to stop thinking outside of the box.

Hosting the Focus the Nation teach-in was antithetical to the declared liberal nature of Bucknell. More dangerously, it means the University has pronounced an end to the debate over climate change. Such dogmatic thinking is a threat to freedom of opinion.

Sarah Schubert is the former Editor in Chief of the Collegiate Network member publication, The Counterweight, at Bucknell University. This article was originally featured in the February 19, 2008 issue of The Counterweight.

Smoking, once a common habit in American society, has become a lightning rod for controversy in recent years. Smoking sections in restaurants were rare 50 years ago, but now places like New York City have implemented blanket bans for indoor public places. Some places have even extended bans to outdoor space—and UNC’s campus might be next.

UNC already has a ban on smoking in administrative buildings and classrooms, and it extended the ban to residence halls and their breezeways in 2004. UNC Hospitals went tobacco-free and the School of Medicine and Campus Health Services went smoke-free in July. Now, there is talk of extending the ban on campus to areas within 100 feet of buildings. This would leave very few areas where smoking would be allowed, which include a narrow strip in the middle of Polk Place near the flagpole, the Davie Poplar, and the middle of the field in Kenan Stadium.

The crux of this issue is rights. Is it an infringement on smokers’ rights to ban them from smoking outdoors, or is it an imposition on nonsmokers to give them no protection against secondhand smoke? I believe it is the latter. I am a strong advocate of protecting the rights guaranteed to all Americans, but the key component of any right is that it is only preserved when it does not infringe upon the rights of anyone else.

An extreme example is in the case of murder. If murder did not infringe upon others, it would be a protected right. However, the very definition of murder involves infringing rather heavily on the victim’s right to live, so it cannot be protected.

Smoking is the same type of issue. It is difficult to understand why smoking bans are so controversial when there are similar laws in place that are universally accepted. Americans over the age of 21 have the right to consume alcohol if they choose, but the moment they get behind the wheel of a car, their choice ceases to be individual and can infringe on others.

It is for this reason that laws prohibiting driving under the influence of alcohol or other mind-altering substances are in place. No one is claiming “drinkers’ rights” in protest of these laws.
I fully support the right to smoke if one chooses to do so, but I equally support the right to breathe fresh air in a public place. The very characteristics of smoking are what make it so difficult to reconcile the rights of nonsmokers and smokers.

The smoke emitted into the air from smokers exhaling and from the tip of cigarettes is undeniably unhealthy for anyone who inhales it. According to the National Cancer Institute’s website, secondhand smoke contains at least 250 harmful chemicals, 50 of which are known carcinogens. These toxins include arsenic, a heavy metal toxin; benzene, a chemical found in gasoline; polonium-210, a chemical element that gives off radiation; and cadmium, a chemical used in batteries. The U.S. Surgeon General has classified secondhand smoke as a known cancer-causing substance; it is responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths in nonsmoking American adults each year.

Other substances such as smokeless tobacco and even many illegal drugs do not share this problem. I would go as far as to support the right to do heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine or any other drug on campus, if it were legal. Someone under the influence of heroin is not emitting anything into the atmosphere that is endangering my health—so I would fully back his or her right to consume any substance they choose.

UNC is a public institution, and therefore has the obligation to protect the rights of all of its students, staff and faculty members—nonsmokers as well as smokers. Something must be done to reconcile the rights of the two. The 100-foot radius rule is ludicrous. Smokers would be clustered together in the middle of Polk Place, but most of UNC’s population walks through the middle of the quad at some point, nullifying the entire idea.

The only fair solution is a blanket ban with designated smoking areas. The smoking zones should be away from building doors and highly-populated campus areas, but not so far away as to alienate smokers and force them to trek long distances to comply. The area behind Davis Library is a possible location—it is centrally located, but not in a place where most of the campus population regularly ventures.

Liz Gregg, a graduate student and a smoker, supports the idea of a ban with designated smoking areas. “I would support a ban if there was a place to smoke that wasn’t a mile and a half away,” she said. “I don’t want to bother people (when I smoke) and feel like a jerk.”

Cigarette smoke is harmful to everyone who comes in contact with it. The problem with smoking outside on UNC’s campus is that smokers choose to breathe in the fumes, but nonsmokers are never given a choice.

A blanket ban with designated smoking areas would protect everyone’s rights; smokers could have a place to indulge their habit as is their right, but bystanders would not have to suffer as a result of it.

Kelly Esposito is a Staff Writer for The Carolina Review.

Smoking Bans Unjustly Grant Precedent to Some Rights Over Others

If one were to poll the administration here at UNC regarding their opinion of which were the most maligned minorities on campus, or in society, it is likely reasonable to assume that ‘smokers’ would not even cross their mind. Long past the racial minorities, and the sexual orientation minorities, and women, when the campus official was still searching for groups on which to bestow pity for their struggles, for which he could blame society, the notion of that particular group joining that class is still exceptionally foreign.

This is not to directly compare smokers to a race; the two are distinctly different in that smoking is purely choice. But when looking for evidence of a mass societal subjection of a race or a gender that is largely due to the fact that we either consciously pass or have been conditioned to pass judgment on that group as inferior, it might be useful to consider that that is precisely what we have done to smokers.

UNC, already a campus laden with a considerable number of smoking bans in public places, has as its most recently proposed plan a prohibition on smoking within one hundred feet of a building. As the column directly to my left observed, that leaves small sections in the middle of Polk Place, McCorkle Place, and Kenan Stadium. There are maybe a couple of parking lots on campus the middles of which are more than a hundred feet from a building.

The counterpoint sufficiently criticized the practicality of the plan; clustering all the smokers together in hoards where people walk anyway is insanity. I am going to focus on the principle of the plan and demonstrate that smoking bans in public outdoor areas are unjust in any circumstance.

It is true that the question is one of the reconciliation of rights; the rights of the nonsmoker are pitted against the rights of the smoker because the nonsmoker wishes not to inhale the hazardous smoke emitted by the cigarette of the smoker. To what degree second hand smoke actually affects the health of a nonsmoker is a separate debate, and it is one that is irrelevant to this argument; therefore it will not be addressed.

Smokers inherently have a right to smoke; it is a positive action on the part of the smoker that requires a negation by the institution, either public or private. In its most basic form, when smoking is taking place in the privacy of one’s home, smoking in no way affects the rights of any other being; therefore it is a right.

In this manner in is fundamentally different from other actions of the sort that require negation by the institution, such as murder. In the simple act of performing a murder one’s own existence, the locus of one’s inviolable property and rights, is taken.

In smoking, however, there is no direct violation of that locus; one is not coerced into standing next to a smoker, or even to walk by one. To grant one individual the right to breathe clean air while walking through a public outdoor area over the right of another to smoke in that same area is to presuppose that the nonsmoker has a greater right to the land than the smoker. The mindset that would lead someone to believe that someone smoking on the land on which they walk can only logically derive from a view that one owns that land; which is of course not the case.

This form of superiority complex, where nonsmokers have come to believe that their nonsmoking lifestyle is somehow better than that of a smoker, and therefore justifiably enforced by institutions of the state and federal governments in this country, can be seen manifested across the United States. In several states, such as New York, a private restaurant business owner cannot allow smoking in his private restaurant. In cases as these two assumptions are made: that private citizens are coerced into visiting restaurants where smoking is allowed and that smokers practice an inherently inferior behavior to nonsmokers. An American citizen ought to understand both that the first is certainly not true and that a behavior cannot be negated in this country simply because a majority of the citizens deem it inferior.

I do not smoke; I never will smoke. To me, smoking is idiocy. However, what smoking is to me is an irrelevant question in the United States’ political system. Our Constitution, generally in theme of limited government and specifically in the Ninth Amendment, protects a person’s right to be an idiot, and no one can presume that their rights take precedent over that right of another.

Smoking bans on public outdoor property of any kind, therefore, are counter to what used to be one of the most supreme American political ideals, and are arguably unconstitutional.

They should certainly not be tolerated at a university which prides itself on tolerance.

Bryan Weynand is Editor of The Carolina Review, a Collegiate Network member publication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. These articles were originally featured in the October 2007 issue of The Carolina Review.

We admire his elegant writing as much as his A-list group of friends, his lifestyle of travel and hobbies. We marvel at how a man so busy finds the time, not to mention the drive, not to mention the ability, to pump out almost a book a year, for 50 years — and his son who is even more productive than the icon was at his age.

It’s easy to forget that things weren’t always this way. Not even for William F. Buckley, Jr. Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription, a collection of outtakes from National Review’s popular “Notes & Asides” column featuring non-traditional letters to the editor, reminds you of this.

It’s also easy to forget just how far conservatism has come since chilly November 1955. Just earlier that year, it had been declared dead. Wrote the influential Lionel Trilling in The Liberal Imagination, “In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation.” Fifty-two years later, and not only are conservative (and libertarian) ideas “in general circulation,” but liberal is a four-letter word in the political lexicon. William F. Buckley Jr.’s fortnightly correctly receives a lot of credit for that.

It’s easy, then, as an admirer, to forget that Buckley is a man, too. A man who, 50 years before he retired from day-to-day work at National Review and was widely hailed as the “godfather” of the conservative movement, had plenty of critics and naysayers himself.

Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription reveals Buckley as his contemporaries knew him, not the saintly, agree-to-disagree type he’s portrayed as in the mainstream media.

Buckley himself has noticed this trend, and he doesn’t like it. As he said in a 2005 interview with the New York Times, “When generations go by and you get fresh players, people are prone to say, ‘Well, he isn’t as civilized as that other guy.’ And it’s opportunistic,” Buckley continued, “because one has the feeling — at least I do — that they’re trying to give an authenticity to their criticism, which is more easily done by making comparisons of that kind.”

In short: it’s disingenuous to compare the present day disfavorably to the time of men who are leaving the debate, whose voices no longer influence the debate. Said more bluntly, as Buckley’s nephew, Brent Bozell III, did when I asked him about how the mainstream media has changed its tone regarding his uncle, and “[to liberals,] the only good conservative is a dead one or a retired one.”

How things have changed. Wittingly or not, Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription plays the role of counter-history to the narratives portraying Buckley as the sterling example of Conservatism Done Right. We see this best in a conversely humorous and heated exchange between WFB and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., when the latter declined an appearance on “Firing Line,” unwilling as he was to do anything to “help” Buckley or further his worldview.

When Buckley published his rejoinder, Schlesinger responds, gruffly. “I do not see National Enquirer or National Review or whatever it is called, but I understand you ran your silly letter to me…in a better world I might have hoped you had the elementary fairness, or guts, to provide equal time; but, alas, wrong again.”

Buckley responds in kind: “Now, suppose I had begun this letter “Dear Arthur, or Dear Barfer, or whatever you call yourself.” Would I do that? No; and not merely because it’s childish, but because it isn’t funny.”

When Schlesinger sheepishly counters that “the reason one confused National Enquirerand National Review is because they have comparable standards of wit, taste, intelligence, and reliability,” Buckley goes in for the kill: “it is obvious to me that only someone who had difficulty in distinguishing between National Enquirer and National Review could have written such works of history as you have.”

When Newsweek prints a story claiming that National Review and the head of the hateful and racist Liberty Lobby “agree on about 90 per cent of their positions,” Buckley doesn’t miss a beat.

“This is about as illuminating as if National Review were to report that Newsweek and the Soviet Union agree ‘on about 90 per cent of their positions’ (health care, Social Security, educational opportunity for all…),” he begins. “What is distinctive about Liberty Lobby isn’t its love of the American flag or its belief in the free market. The outstanding contribution of Liberty Lobby to the public discourse is its concern…for the “niggerfication” of America, and its discovery that the Holocaust was a Jewish hoax.”

And when the New York Times makes the same mistake and hails National Review and the Liberty Lobby as “two organs of the conservative movement,” Buckley’s acid tongue re-emerges: “Think what you will of American conservatism, but pray do not confuse it with that pestilential sheet.”

By the time of the last Notes & Asides column, on December 31, 2005, the feature had begun to receive too few fitting correspondences to continue regularly, and disbanded after a 40 year run, retiring from regular appearance at the same time as its creator and prime contributor.

Casual readers will enjoy seeing WFB “let his hair down,” so to speak, not to mention the famous names that grace its pages. Buckley’s command of the language itself makes his every contribution a worthwhile endeavor, but Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription has something else to offer young writers, artists, and journalists, and that’s that one must trust his own voice. Anyone who tries to do anything worthwhile in life will come up against his fair share of detractors; it’s those who keep pushing forward anyway who have the most success. If Buckley had taken his intellectual ball and gone home after any of the insults contained in Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription, not only would we have lost a unique voice among the chorus, but conservatism itself may well have been the worse off.

The Buckley who gives as good as he gets is the Buckley that America has come to know and begrudgingly respect — and a different man from the Buckley that mainstream America has come to mythologize. Conservatives who know the difference, and prefer the former, won’t be disappointed by Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription — even if they decline taking its editor up on his advice.

James David Dickson is the Collegiate Network Fellow at The Detroit News.

For the sake of “fairness” and “equality,” the Bucknell administration recently deprived students of an excellent and experienced professor.

In the Chemistry Department’s search for a new tenure-track biochemistry professor, the administration only consented to interviews with two of the three candidates who had been short-listed by the Department’s search committee. The third candidate was not allowed to interview because he has more experience than the other candidates; the administration felt it was “unfair” to compare him to the two other short-listed applicants.

Ranked second on the Chemistry Department’s short list of candidates, the potential biochemistry professor had five years of full-time teaching experience. Neither of the other two short-listed candidates had any such experience. When reviewing the applicants for the position, the Department search committee easily chose this candidate as one of their two preferred choices. The remaining candidates were less qualified, and the committee had difficulty choosing a third candidate for the original short list from the applicant pool.

If hired, the candidate would have left a position at a largely graduate institution for Bucknell. His interest in the position indicated a strong desire to teach in the less illustrious undergraduate environment. Although the position was advertised as “entry-level,” this particular candidate applied anyway, despite already having a tenure-track position at another university.

Not only that, but the candidate would have brought a $250,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue his research here at Bucknell, largely with undergraduate students.

With such a willing faculty member and large grant, many students could have pursued meaningful research. Yet, the administration chose to dismiss this opportunity for its students and denied the applicant an interview.

Applicants for entry-level faculty positions at Bucknell may not have more than three years of full-time teaching experience. Even though this applicant had more than three years of such experience, he was willing to accept an assistant professorship. As an assistant professor, he could receive two years of credit for his more than five years of full-time teaching experience.

His acceptance of the assistant professorship would have meant that he would receive a marginally higher salary – because of the two years credit – than those with no full-time teaching experience. Bucknell could have hired a more experienced professor for essentially the same salary.

Yet, the administration felt it would be unfair to the other candidates to compare them with this more experienced applicant. After the initial rejection of the candidate, the search committee immediately appealed the administration’s decision. The chair of the committee even requested to speak with President Mitchell if the decision to reject this candidate ultimately lay with him.

Nonetheless, the administration of the College of Arts and Sciences – in consultation with President Mitchell and other senior administrators – again refused the candidate an interview. The search committee was directed to find another interview candidate – one with less experience as a full-time professor.

Consequently, the search committee was forced to choose not one but two candidates from this largely mediocre pool when the administration rejected their second selection for the sake of “equality.”

Chris Zappe, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, maintains that the University is strictly enforcing its “efforts to promote fairness” in the hiring of new faculty members. This translates into passing over highly-qualified applicants simply because they do not satisfy the arbitrary “less than three years experience” requirement.

More experience is generally regarded as a positive aspect of someone’s résumé. And, as the search committee said in their appeal to the administration, “Teaching experience does not contribute to or correlate with the potential for long term excellence.”

While Bucknell prides itself on providing the “premier undergraduate experience in the nation,” University administrators apparently do not believe this experience is contingent on their hiring the best faculty. Although Zappe emphasized the University’s commitment to providing its students with the best education, these senior administrative officials have decided that fairness to inferior applicants is more important than providing a superior education.

The administration’s rejection of this initial candidate clearly demonstrates the lack of importance it places on Bucknell students’ education. Having professors with such prominent research grants would undoubtedly attract other highly qualified professors and students. Hiring outstanding professors should be one of the University’s primary goals – both for its students and its own reputation.

Even more troubling is the fact that the administration has reacted similarly earlier this year. Evidently, the administration – including President Mitchell and other senior administrative colleagues – has not permitted two other departments to interview certain applicants. Only until all of the less experienced candidates have been interviewed or deemed unacceptable will applicants with more than three years experience be granted interviews.

If Bucknell wants to hire the best faculty to provide the best education, then the University must hire the best applicants, regardless of their experience. Not hiring inexperienced candidates as faculty members only encourages those candidates to get more experience and improve their résumés.

However, the only objective Bucknell promotes is the employment of less experienced faculty in the place of more qualified candidates. The decision to approve or reject candidates should be based on their merits, or lack thereof, rather than on the equality of their résumés. Nothing should be more important than an applicant’s proven ability to do his job well. Candidates with more experience should receive even greater consideration because they have proven themselves as professors.

It is this system of meritocracy that directs societal achievement. Without being rewarded for accomplishments, people would not strive to improve.

Hiring is an inherently biased process. Without it, the best candidates would not be hired or adequately compensated for their efforts. Not hiring lesser qualified candidates encourages them to improve their qualifications and gain more experience. There will always be a disparity between job applicants. Bucknell should accept this fact and do its utmost to ensure that it provides its students with the best.

Thus, Bucknell’s hiring practices contradict everything we hold important as rational human beings. Simply for the sake of “equitable handling,” the University is willing to forsake its academic integrity. Bucknell’s actions effectively glorify mediocrity, condemn excellence, and negate the very principles which drive human industry and ingenuity.

For an institution supposedly dedicated to providing the best education for its students, it is difficult to imagine how we can be deprived of some of the best faculty merely because it is “unfair.”

Sarah Schubert is the former Editor in Chief of The Counterweight, a Collegiate Network member paper of Bucknell University. This article was originally featured in the December 2007 issue of The Counterweight.

Following North Korea’s testing of a nuclear weapon last fall, and in light of Iran’s unceasing nuclear ambitions, the U.S. announced in January 2007 its desire to place ten missile interceptors in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic in order to provide Europe with a missile defense shield and add another layer to its own defense capabilities. Although the United States has agreed to foot the bill of over $750 million for the radar system, political problems immediately arose, placing the fledgling proposal in jeopardy. Various constituencies led by the opposition party Social Democrats and Communists began raising concerns that the radar would make the Czech Republic a terrorist target, as well as the target of Russia, which has opposed the plan with increasingly bellicose rhetoric.

All of these factors combined so that Czech public opinion polls have consistently showed opposition to the radar plan hovering around 60%. The Social Democrats and Communists are calling for a national referendum the system’s deployment, and the center-right Civic Democrat president Vaclav Klaus, known for a typically pugnacious personality most recently displayed with his remarks deriding global warming alarmists, recently conceded in an August 3 interview with Radio Free Europe that “I think this opposition should be respected. It is real…No one is faking the polls that are being taken.” Yet, Klaus is not willing to give up on the program, saying that Czech politicians need to explain to Czech citizens “what the threat level is” and “indicate the reason for expressing our loyalty to the USA.”

In other words, politicians must not only clearly explain the seriousness of the Iranian threat, but also why deterring this threat is of greater importance than incurring the wrath of Russia. This is no easy task. Many Czechs do not see radical Islamism as a grave threat since the number of radical Muslims in the Czech Republic is miniscule. Prague did face the possibility of a terrorist attack when Radio Free Europe, located in the heart of the city, was cased by Iraqi diplomat and likely spy Samir al-Ani. But whatever impact these events had on Czech public opinion, concern about terrorism was deflated after initial reports that al-Ani was connected with 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta were disputed by many in American and Czech intelligence circles (although the reports were never proven to be false).

With the Czech populace relatively unworried about Iran’s nuclear threat, the red-hot rhetoric emanating from Moscow in opposition to missile defense has made many Czech citizens apprehensive about cooperating with the United States. In a May 10 speech celebrating the end of World War II, Russian president Vladimir Putin implicitly compared the United States to Nazi Germany, referring to the new threats today that are similar to those “during the time of the Third Reich,” which embodied “the same contempt for human life and the same claims of exceptionality and diktat in the world.” Later that month, Russia tested an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile and threatened to aim its missiles at European cities if the missile defense system is deployed. The United States insists, however, that the proposed system would be incapable of defending Europe against a Russian attack. The U.S. would only place ten interceptors in Poland, hardly capable of stopping or stemming the damage of a Russian nuclear attack, since Russia is permitted to keep 1,700 to 2,200 nuclear warheads under existing treaty. Furthermore, defenses in Poland would be incapable of thwarting a Russian attack on the United States since the flight path of Russian missiles is beyond the interceptors reach.

Russia’s most realistic concern is that the U.S. is simply trying to get its foot in the door, which would make it much easier to deploy more advanced missile defense systems in the future that could completely neutralize Russia’s missile capabilities. Major-General Vladimir Belousov of the Russian Academy of Sciences World Economics and International Relations Institute recently said that “as the potential of the missile defence system is extended, the danger will only grow.” The U.S. would likely have a much easier time placing more sophisticated missile defense systems in Poland once the initial interceptors were there. Yet, Russia has demonstrated that it is more concerned about losing its ability to threaten and intimidate other nations than it is about protecting itself. When Putin suggested in June that he would favor a U.S. missile defense system in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, the U.S. responded that it would be willing to cooperate, so long as deployment to Azerbaijan was in addition to installing the system in Poland and the Czech Republic. But Russia quickly countered that it would not agree to missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic, even though these are the only locations that could protect Europe from an Iranian missile attack.

While the United States has demonstrated the political will to place the security of its allies above appeasing Russia, it remains to be seen if the Czechs will stand up to their hostile neighbor to the east. Vaclav Klaus chalks up concerns about missile defense in part to the historical Czech experience with occupying Soviet forces. “People have their own historical experience and will always be against having large military bases nearby,” Klaus told Radio Free Europe. But Czech experiences with communism should have proven that the American army is in no way morally equivalent to the imperial Soviet force.

If anything, the Czech experience with the Soviets demonstrated an uncomfortable historical fact that the Czechs have been less than stalwart when standing up to their enemies. Douglas Lytle, an American ex-pat living in Prague following the Cold War observed quite bluntly that “Poles will fight and lose, Serbs will fight endlessly, Russians will attack, but the Czechs will lie back and have the crap kicked out of them, despite attempts by Czech leaders to promote a stronger national identity.” It is that sense of national identity that Czech politicians must cultivate today in order to secure the liberty and independence that nation has enjoyed for the past two decades.

Czech politicians looking to history as a guide for the future would do well to make a pilgrimage to the memorial to Patton’s army at Plzen and recall not only that the American military has a tradition of being used as a force for good, but also that its efforts at liberation have fallen short only because of a lack of political will—not a lack of military power. While Patton wanted to march forward and liberate Prague, U.S. appeasers at Yalta had offered up Prague to Stalin. Today, the U.S. is willing to devote the money, men and political capital to march forward and defend Czech liberty. But the Czech people must decide for themselves if they will appease Russia or stand with their allies in America.

John McCormack was a participant in the Collegiate Network’s 2007 Geostrategic Journalism Course which takes place in Washington D.C. and Prague, Czech Republic. John recently graduated from George Washington University where he served as Editor in Chief of The GW Patriot. He is currently deputy online editor at The Weekly Standard.

This is the manner in which Georgi Georgiev, who lived under communism during his childhood, described his experience to CNN in an interview a few years ago.

The world was much different when Georgiev was a boy. The threat of nuclear holocaust loomed large as the world’s two superpowers were locked in a battle of will that would shape the course of history. And while there were beacons of freedom shining out through the dark, far too much of the globe was shrouded in the pervasive darkness of totalitarianism.

Life in communist countries was disrupted, the normal affairs of its citizens irrevocably altered during this time. One of the many aspects of life that was shattered was the operation of a free and unencumbered press. Although this was just one of many institutions mangled in the wake of communism, it was an essential one. As countries have set out to repair their homelands from the corrosive effects of totalitarianism, well trained journalists have proven to be an essential tool to shape their growth.

Moreover, the lessons learned in the process are of special importance in an age where forms of communism and its repressive echoes still haunt the world in far too many places. Those who have fought to refashion the fourth estate, a vital element of any free society, in their countries must become role models for others around them and around the world who have set out to do the same.

Throughout history, communism has consistently used subterfuge to achieve its means. It has always attempted to present itself in an innocuous fashion. Most often it attempts to enact its destructive ideology as a remedy to the ills of the modern age. Indeed, this was exactly the tactic that communists took in the Czech Republic. Communists used the anger towards the agreements reached after the close of World War II to fashion itself as the party which cared about the plight of the common man. Jiri Grusa, head of the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna, said in an interview to the Czech News Agency in 2005, “We’re a specific country, we actually voted for the [installation of] communism in 1946. In this respect, we resemble the Germans who elected Hitler in the same way in 1933, therefore we have nothing to reproach each other for.”

With the worldwide fall of communism, many countries struggled to reestablish themselves as a sovereign state. In that effort, people attempted to reassemble the institutions that are a hallmark of any democratic state including, of course, a probing, free press corps. But the path to a vibrant fourth estate has been a difficult one for many post-communist governments. Chief among the roadblocks is a cultural impediment honed after years of communist oppression.

One such cultural impediment is the blind acceptance of the government’s rhetoric. Under communism, the only version of events was the “official” version, the version proffered by the government. Therefore, it is understandable that the skepticism of authority that is natural among the American press, fostered after years of open and often combative relations with the US government, would take awhile to cultivate in former Soviet bloc countries.

A related phenomenon is the adjustment to work ethics. Although much progress has been made on this front, many suggested to the students attending the Geo-Strategic Journalism course that this was still an issue for the Czech Republic. During communism, there was a general attitude of anger towards the failed system of government. As such, stealing from the government was looked upon as a normal, even accepted behavior. During one of the sessions for the Geo-Strategic course, a young executive from Skoda Auto explained this sentiment. “Under Communism,” he related with a half-smile, “we had a saying that he who doesn’t steal from the state, steals from his own family.” This account is echoed by Henry Danziger, a Duke alumnus who moved to Prague during the in 1993. Frustrated by the lingering attitude of communist-era labor, Danzinger explains that “theft from the company is a huge problem.” Expounding on the saying offered by the Skoda executive, Danzinger explains that “the company was equated with the state, and it’s been tough to get them [the Czech populace] to think of it as their own. People don’t believe that if you work harder, you’ll benefit more.”

This phenomena was described most eloquently by President Havel in a New Year’s Address to the Czech Republic.

“The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. We learned not to believe in anything, to ignore one another, to care about ourselves. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their depth and dimension. Only a few of us were able to cry out loudly that the powers that be should not be all-powerful.”

With all of these growing pains from the long road from communism to democracy, it is no wonder that Western style journalism has been slow to develop.

But despite the changes that have taken places in countries like the Czech Republic, many are concerned about the pace of progress being made, as well as the creeping threat of totalitarian resurgence in a number of countries. And, unfortunately, such worry is not unwarranted.

James Greenfield, former foreign editor for The New York Times, founded the Independent Journalism Foundation in 1991. The organization was created, according to the group’s website, to “help fellow journalists in post-Communist countries upgrade their reporting skills, technology and business practices.” The coalition has been successful in training aspiring journalists, as well as hosting lectures and workshops around the world. But even this expert group of seasoned journalists was uncertain of the prospects of returning democratic-inspired journalism. According to an article in The New York Sun, “one of their [contributors] asked Mr. Greenfield, ‘How long is the long haul?’ Mr. Greenfield thought at the time that his foundation perhaps needed to stay in business for four or five years. ‘It’s now 16 years later, and we’re still in it for the long haul,’ he said.”

As if the sluggish pace of journalistic renewal wasn’t bad enough, there are also some signs that there is a resurgence of state control of the media in many countries.

One prominent example, of course, is Russia. Although the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, many critics say the oppression that typified that power has not been significantly lessened by the emergence of the Russian state, especially as it applies to the operation of a free press. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, roughly 44 reporters have been murdered since the fall of the Soviet Union and around 14 have been killed since Vladmir Putin’s ascendancy to power in 2000. One of the most notable examples is that of Anna Politkovskaya, who had extensive coverage on war crimes in Chechnya. According to an article from Reuters shortly after her murder, “Politkovskaya, 48, was shot in her apartment building as she stepped out on her way to fetch shopping bags from her car. The killer first fired in her chest, then finished her off with a shot to the head.”

In June of this year, media representatives from around the world traveled to Moscow to show their solidarity with members of the Russian press who have been oppressed, threatened, and all too often murdered for their independence and criticism of the Russian government. As this group points out, the loss of editorial independence was slow but steady. According to a New York Time editorial in May of this year, television stations were among the first to lose their editorial control. Print and radio news, explains the author, followed shortly thereafter. As the piece concludes, “polls show President Putin’s popularity has soared. No wonder. Fewer and fewer Russians can see or hear from anyone who opposes him, his policies or his government.” Nina Ognianova, of the Committee to Protect Journalists, concurred, stating, “The process of squeezing critical journalism out of the public space is now near complete.”

Another example is Cuba. Although repression of media is nothing new in Cuba – it’s been a continuous factor for the almost 50 years – it is noteworthy for the attention it has received. Unfortunately, the coverage is not to bring to light the abuses of this tyrannical dictatorship, but rather all too often it is to fawn over Castro’s “accomplishments”. In fact, the Latin American Federation of Journalists (an organization affiliated with the United Nations) recently awarded the Cuban dictator a medal for “his dedication to truth, his understanding of the importance of journalism’s role in society, and his fight against falsehood, disinformation, and media manipulation.” As Bree Nordenson in the Columbia Journalism Review correctly pointed out, Castro is deserving of none of those laudable titles. Indeed, Cuba under Castro is described by Reporters Without Borders as one of the “worst predators of press freedom.”

One needn’t look far for proof that Castro’s regime is unfriendly to a free press. The Cuban Constitution states, “Citizens recognize freedom of speech and press conform to the needs of the state.” But as the truism goes, actions speak louder than words. In 2003, Cuba jailed 28 journalists, who were all found guilty of “working with a foreign power to undermine the government” which carries sentences up to roughly 30 years in jail. In 2005, the number of jailed reporters was up to 32. But yet, Western media has continued to praise the Cuban system. Tom Korski, writing for the Canadian Hill Times, compiled some of his favorite descriptions of Castro. During his tenure, the island’s despot has been described in all the following ways: “remarkable”, “heroic”, “superman”, “Herculean,” “visionary”, and even “brilliant.”

It is this alleged lack of distance and perspective among Western journalist that many find disconcerting. Say such critics, such exuberant praise of areas where free press has been choked off is much worse than simply ignoring the situation, because at least in the latter, Western journalists don’t serve to further the propaganda of dictators. “Why is Cuba our pet police state?” writes Korski, “Perhaps it reflects a northern fascination with Latin culture and media’s pulse of anti-Americanism.” At one point in his article, Korski quoted an Amherst Daily News article which stated that Cuba “is not as badly off as some other nations.” As Korski quipped, “Many Cubans don’t think so; 2,834 fled the island on rafts last year.”

It is absolutely imperative for the future of a strong and, most importantly, an independent news media, that the lessons of the past not be forgotten. Unfortunately, there is disconcerting evidence that this is not the case, even in countries where the stale odor of communist oppression should be the most pungent.

In 2005, a group of Czech artists banded together to create the “T-Shirts Against Communism” campaign to highlight the repressive dangers of communism and the frighteningly naïve and superficial knowledge of the philosophy among many youth. “There are situations where we should recollect why we [Czechs] were hit by communism. Many people have forgotten it already. They cherish a sentimental, nostalgic feeling of having been young at the time; therefore it must have been better [than the present regime]. It is necessary to stem this nostalgia,” said Jiri Grusa, who was presented with one of the T-shirts.”

But this is not a problem local just to the Czech Republic. Even Russia, which was at the epicenter of the Soviet Union is also suffering from collective amnesia about the dangers of its past. According to a November 2005 edition of the Ottawa Citizen, “What Mr. Putin and Russians have done is create a useful past by selectively forgetting, says sociologist Boris Dubin. “We now live in peace with our past, but excluding the Communist ideology and all the negative things that happened then. We just know that it is our past now.”

For many, this is a troublesome development. As the article continues, the author brings Germany into the mix. “There is no amnesia in Germany, we know. Awareness of Germany’s Nazi past is near absolute and Germans overwhelmingly accept that horrible crimes were committed. There are no Hitler T-shirts for sale under the Brandenburg Gate.”

This is a perfect example of something that a dogged media would be responsible for fighting. However, many media critics cite poor training for many of these nations’s youngest crop of journalists. Livia Thova wrote a piece for the Slovak Spectator entitled, “What Happened to All the Good Journalists?” in which she discussed this very dilemma. “Newspapers, news agencies and TV stations are full of people who claim to be journalists,” she writes, “but the truth is that only a few of them are really good.”

According to Matus Korstolny, an editor of a Slovak paper who was featured in the article, the problem is essentially that “we lack a really good journalism school in this country.” There is a lack of finances and adept professors to teach the material which results in an increased return of stagnated classes.

Although the media coverage in much of the former Soviet Union-dominated countries has the potential to continually improve, a concerted effort must be made. Current journalists must be the mentors that the younger generations so desperately need. After all, the older journalists should be much more cognizant of the signs that repression is growing, as it was not too long ago that they felt the stings of government censorship. And it is these tools, along with an increased tutelage in the practices of Western media, as well as a constant vigilance with which real change can be accomplished and cemented. With this done, the final words of President Havel’s New Year address can ring out without any contradiction: “People…your government has returned to you!”

Brandon Stewart was a participant in the Collegiate Network’s 2007 Geostrategic Journalism Course which takes place in Washington D.C. and Prague, Czech Republic. Brandon graduated from Wabash College and is currently a program associate at FIRE.