A couple of thoughts from this week’s Minnesota Daily.
1. SCHIP was a good idea, when it was first formed. And that idea is still a good one. But people need to learn more than just, “Oh, isn’t that the insurance for poor kids.” It is no longer for poor children when the requirement is allowed to increase to 25 years old (not a child) and the monetary limit can raise as high as in the $80,000 range. These changes change the fundamental principle of the bill. Oh, and then some states (cough Minnesota) use some of the funding for SCHIP in different programs. Um, not the idea people.
2. Yes, Burma/Myanmar might need help. It’s the same with Darfur and a couple of other places around the world where people are being oppressed and denied democracy and civil rights. But wait, wasn’t that what we said about Iraq just a couple of years ago? Maybe we should just do as the first George Bush did to Iraq, and instead of trying to solve a problem (successfully or not), just bomb the crap out of them and wait until they get really pissed off.
Look, America either needs to help people out around the world and finish what it starts, or leave them alone. When you try to ride the fence, you just mess stuff up. Imagine if we went into Burma/Myanmar or Darfur only to realize that it was harder than we thought it would be to fix things. Would the same people crying out for us to help now be crying for us to leave then?
It’s just common courtesy to finish what you start and try not to leave a bigger mess in the place than what you found. By the way, for those interested, you should participate in this week’s Darfur events.
3. The First Amendment is of incredible importance and should be protected at all costs. You know, “Give me liberty or give me death.”
But, The First Amendment covers five different rights. The Second Amendment just covers one, maybe two. Generally when a person writes a paragraph and includes five things in it and then continues to the next paragraph and just focuses on one similar thing, he is showing what he thinks is more important. I’m not saying that one right is more important than another, but all of our rights are pretty much equally important, at least as far as the Bill of Rights goes.
4. This is a commendation rather than a complaint; too bad the opinion article came from Arizona rather than from here. In “The greening of the market,” the author makes some very valid points. A large number of “new green people” are really in it for the image more than anything else, even if they still do have some good intentions. Nobody should at the same time complain about poverty and buy $200 jeans; they lose all credibility, kind of like John Edwards, unfortunately. Buying locally produced and organic produce is fine, but is it really great if it increases the overall cost of healthy food and makes it harder for the poor to eat anything that is not fried in oil and slowly killing them? I’d just like to say that increasing production so we can ship food, etc., to Africa and other places to help is more important than the possible health effects that are remedied by producing produce at much less efficient rates.
5. The Minnesota Daily writes some good stuff when it tries to actually tackle issues rather than spew liberalism. Come on guys, I know you can do it. Good job on Friday, editorial staff.
Calder Huntington is a law student at the University. Please send comments to [email protected].
