Letter to the Editor: Part Two

Yah! I got published in the University Daily Kansan! Here's my Letter to the Editor, which was a response to a guest editorial. I've heard incredible range of reaction from "a slamdunk" to "dumbest letter to the editor ever." Here it is:

I would like to expand upon the analogy offered in an editorial comparing socialism and capitalism. The idea was that if student grades were averaged out, the best students would stop trying, thus proving socialism makes society lazy. But socialism isn't about taking away the rewards of the successful. Socialism is the allocation of public resources so that everybody will have a more fair chance to compete, or even survive.

To use the classroom analogy, socialism would be like giving every student a syllabus on the first day of class; and if a student misses that first day of class, they can still get a syllabus at another time. Capitalism would be giving the first three or four students who show up to class a syllabus and ignoring everyone else. Real world example: government funding for suburbs in the 1950s, which helped create property appreciation for homeowners. The funding ignored minorities who were red-lined out of home loans.

As a future millionaire myself, I'll have no problem paying more than my fair share of taxes for fire departments, libraries and health care because I know that having my neighbor's house burn down doesn't help me, having illiterate people doesn't help me and having sick people doesn't help me. Even if I'm a fire fighter, librarian or doctor, these don't help because I could have used that time or money on something new (see: Broken Window Fallacy).

As a last note, America can implement socialist policies — and has for centuries —without being socialist; much in the way that I can drink a beer without being an alcoholic. So stop looking for the simplest answer, because more times than not, it’s simple.

Heavy Drinking, Not Thinking

This was a newspaper article I wrote in high school, which was than butchered by the editing staff. Here is the draft that was meant to be read:

From the rolling hills of Dublin to the prairie flats of Kansas, people will be celebrating their favorite 4th century British Christian saint on March 17. That day, of course, being St. Patrick’s Day, also known as Paddy’s Day.

St. Patrick’s Day is an Irish national holiday, though not actually an official American holiday. In fact, last Saturday Aggieville was festively green in celebration. The fun times were held a week before the actual holiday because this year St. Patrick’s Day falls on the first Saturday of spring. But there will still be Irish-related entertainment in Manhattan tomorrow.

“I’ll probably go to the parade,” senior Peter Tatarko said, referring to the town parade on Pontz Avenue.

Brought to America in the 1730s, St. Patrick’s Day is a Christian festival celebrating the title saint. The story goes that St. Patrick was kidnapped by Irish raiders at young age and was forced to work for six years before escaping back home to England. A couple years later, he became a Catholic bishop and went back to Ireland to convert people to Catholicism.

Now legend has it, St. Patrick got rid of all the snakes on the island of Ireland when he went back. Some people believe this literally, while modern scientists give the ice glaciers that covered Ireland thousands of years ago credit for clearing out the snakes. In either case, St. Patrick did go to Ireland and tried to get rid of the metaphorical snakes of sinfulness.

But St. Patrick’s Day isn’t all about Christian conversion and snake killing, it’s also about wearing green to bring out the Irish-ness in everyone. Failure to wear a green article of clothing isn’t tolerated and results in pinching galore.

“It’s traditional. A custom, cultural thing to wear green,” senior Felix Wang said.

Other students feel wearing green goes past embracing Irish culture for a day.

“I wear green because it’s the law,” senior Stuart Watts said.

But there’s several ways people have celebrated March 17, the supposed day St. Patrick died. New York City has a parade watched annually by about 2 million people. The city of Chicago actually dyes the Chicago River green. And in 1780, General George Washington let his troops have a holiday break on March 17.

Whatever the motivations and actions of celebration, it’s good to celebrate Irish heritage in America because of the rich history they’ve had in our country’s development and the inevitable existence they’ll always have in American cinema.

Conversations of the Week

"She could set sail to a thousand ships."
"Is he talking about Helen of Troy?"
"Well he sure as shit ain't talking about Gertrude of Troy!"

-------------

"You don't dance enough."
"I don't dance in public."
"We're not in public, this is our living room."
"Our living room is public for me."

--------------

"How'd the basketball game go?"
"Good; we won."
"Anything interesting happen?"
"We were up by so much Bill Self put me in the game."
"Really?"
"Yeah, I was dunking on everybody."
"So you were drinking during the game?"
"Well...yeah. Still, pretty awesome."

For the Love Of!

Love is kind of like the diet menu at Taco Bell, in that it doesn't make any sense. Also, I suspect trashy people try to sabotage my experiences. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I need to work on my metaphors.

Where I At

I'm going to take a break from this blog to work on my first novel. It's called "We Service What We Sell" and it's about a group of reunited friends on the cusp of turning thirty years old accidentally making a wacky video that becomes an Internet phenomenon. Like all overnight sensations though, by the next morning they have been reduced to their original obscurity, none the richer. From there, the story deals with characters--young, old, forgotten and historic--trying to understand, recover from and fantastically escape their instant-entertainment, culturally-amnesic society.

I'll still post periodically, but just not daily.