Take away columnist's voting rights
(In response to Friday's column by Jamey Sackett titled "Democrat voting Republican … again")
Jamey Sackett's op-ed in the March 21 edition of The State Press is a scary look into the mind of the American voter. He tells us that he will vote for John McCain if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee even though McCain's positions on a broad range of issues are essentially indistinguishable from those of George W. Bush's, who Sackett thinks "will undoubtedly go down as one of the worst and most corrupt presidents in U.S. history."
What reason does Mr. Sackett offer to justify his (potential) vote for someone who will extend Bush's tragic legacy? Obama = Hilter! No, Mr. Sackett doesn't quite put it that way, but that is clearly the conclusion that we are supposed to draw. So, let me get this straight: McCain says "100 more years in Iraq" and "bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran," but Obama is the war-mongering fascist? Do The State Press editors ever call their writers on this sort of crap and make them rewrite it?
Obama often speaks of "hope" and "change," and this is very frightening for our intrepid columnist. I think that everyone can agree that "hope" and "change" are definitely horrifying concepts. Mr. Sackett would rather have us "stay the course" and with "more wars, my friends." That doesn't scare him at all.
Well, that's just stupid. Mr. Sackett's column is the most convincing argument I've ever seen for restricting the right to vote in this country — people capable of torturing logic like this shouldn't be allowed to make important decisions that affect the lives of their fellow citizens.
I am personally offended that the value of Mr. Sackett's vote is equal to mine. People who think that an American president who "started wars, killed untold thousands of the citizens in this world and lined the pockets of the rich" did "not cause serious damage" should have their heads examined. People who voted for George Bush in 2000 should not be advising the rest of us on whom to vote for in November.
Mr. Sackett, please do this country a huge favor on Election Day: Stay home!
Jeremiah E. Scott
Graduate Student
A shot in the arm
(In response to Thursday's column by Brandon Menc titled "Gun bans should be history")
I found Brandon Menc's article on gun bans uncommonly refreshing. After a nearly two-decade-long school career of hearing how the Bill of Rights "grants" this right and that right, I'm happy to finally find someone who understands what the whole idea was about.
Over the past seven years, our government has mostly confirmed my suspicion that Americans don't understand the idea of inalienable rights, much less welcome it. Most of my countrymen's hollow chants of "freedom" are drowned in ever-louder cries for more laws restricting liberties from privacy to expression, leaving nothing untouched in between. I fear that many Americans, like the ancient Romans, have tired of a free Republic and now long for a safe, orderly Empire.
Hopefully, Menc and I aren't a minority, but it will take everyone like us to speak up and say to the rest, "If you can't take the Freedom, then get out of the States!" There are many dozens of countries that place safety over liberty, so we don't need to.
I close with a verse of my own: "It's a noble birth to be of this Earth, and our birthright to be free. / I am of this land, but my brother man has turned it strange to me."
Ian Scott Montgomery
Alum
