~Government~
Our government should be small without a lot of power. I personally think the citizens of the United States are capable enough of doing things for themselves without much aide from our government. The government shouldn’t always be in our faces trying to protect us from everything. I have a sound mind and I should make my own decisions without the government in my face. The government obviously should be there for it’s people for certain things, but it’s powers and influence on my daily life should be limited. Also, some things are better allocated to the ruling of the states rather than the national government. I think my state knows better about what we need in my state rather than the national government. I live in Ohio, and I rather have the elected officials in Ohio make the decisions that specifically affect Ohio rather than the federal government because those who live here know about our state better than anyone else. I think Reagan was a great president because he wanted to keep the powers of the national government mild. I think he stated it best when he said, “It is not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work - work with us, not over us; stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.” What an incredibly brilliant man!
~Military~
I believe that our military should be strong. We should be able to defend ourselves in a time of war, as well as help fight for our allies. There are so many psycho countries out there that have such twisted views – they would love to see the US crumble. Those same psycho countries are jealous and afraid of our nation’s power, influence, and greatness. Those countries can’t be trusted. Many of these types of nations take up arms and are always on the offense. Their leaders have sick and twisted minds – how can we trust them not to attack us? We simply cannot! We should always be on the defense of our foes, but nowadays we don’t have the resources or power to be properly prepared.
I have heard that the military wishes to always have enough resources to be able to fight at least two different wars on different fronts at the same time. But guess what - we simply don’t have the means to fight in this hypothetical situation anymore! We aren’t that prepared for this kind of battle. Our military is at its weakest state ever. Does this not frighten you? It definitely scares the crap out of me. Other countries must realize this fact – you’d think they would know about it. They could use our weakness to our disadvantage.
As much as we would like every country in this world to live in harmony and get along with each other, that just can’t happen. Every nation has a conflict of interest with at least one other nation, and these conflicts can spark violence. Decreasing our spending on the military and destroying our influence and power is not going to deter wars. If anything it will make us more prone to violent conflict. If we aren’t equipped enough to fight for ourselves, how strong is our country anyway? Being able to avoid conflict by working out your differences with other nations by using non-violence is definitely good in some cases, but do you think that will work in every situation? Heck no! And if that is the only ammunition that we have, we are a sitting duck. We desperately need a strong military. This is the greatest nation in the world, and our military should be able to fight for us!
~Social Security~
I don’t really know a whole bunch about this issue so I don’t really have a lot to say, but I personally think that it is really stupid for the government to take out money from your paycheck to set aside for when you are old. If you were able to keep that portion of your paycheck, you could invest it and make so much more money than the government gives you back. The government shouldn’t worry about my saving habits because I am a big-time saver and I can do it by myself. Maybe Social Security might be good for some people, but it shouldn’t be something that everyone has to do. Plus, it is a vicious cycle because when I am older and doing the whole career thing, the people that will be using social security will be those baby boomers and there are just too many of them for people my age to support! They will be taking so much money out of our paychecks – more than what those people had taken out of theirs. It’s not fair for them, and it isn’t fair for us. If social security never started, we would be in much better shape.
~Capital Punishment~
I have always believed that if someone murdered another person, they should be punished for their actions by death. When a person brutally murders another human being, I don’t think they deserve to live – they should be severely punished for their actions, and I think the best-fit punishment for taking a life is to be executed. How could anyone just let a person rot away in jail for the rest of their life for murdering and that's all they get? Jail is definitely not the best place to reside for the rest of your life, but I don’t think jail alone is a good enough sentence. Plus, a lot of the time people don’t ever end up fulfilling their whole sentence – nowadays people are released so much earlier than they were originally supposed to. Does this teach the murderer a lesson? Probably not. At least I don’t think it does. Plus, capital punishment is a huge deterrent against murder. If a man is deranged enough to consider killing, but knows that he probably won’t get a severe punishment for his actions, he will probably just go right ahead with his murdering. What is there to lose? If there were really strict laws against murder, such as the death penalty, then maybe he would think twice before acting on his murderous desires.
Even though this is how I believe, sometimes I have a hard time completely committing myself to this stance. Don't get me wrong, for the most part I am for Capital Punishment, but every once in a while my opinion wavers. I believe God forgives those who have sinned and wishes for His forgiveness. Sometimes I am not sure if capital punishment is not the most correct way of handling this, because maybe we should forgive the killers and not punish them by death because deciding whether or not a person should live or die is more God's job. I guess we could always forgive them and still kill them, but sometimes I wonder if capital punishment is totally fair. I usually think it is, but I don't know what I feel exactly. I may be a little too softhearted, but sometimes I am not sure if I am 100% for capital punishment. But we, as humans, have a right to keep the world safe from horrible people like serial killers. These people have committed atrocious acts against innocent people and probably don’t deserve their lives anyway. But should we be the ones who take their lives away? I dunno. Wait - I have an idea! As sick as this will sound, instead of *capital* punishment, maybe we should advocate *cruel and unusual* punishment! When someone commits a heinous crime (such as first degree murder) maybe instead of sending them to death row, we could send them to a torture chamber of sorts. We could also use this as punishment for or even something like rape or child molestation. All of the family members of the deceased (or the people who have been raped or molested) could take turns beating the crap out of the criminal. Then, the killer/rapist/molester could spend the rest of his miserable life in jail, and when any of the family members feel like it, they could come back and take a few more shots at the guy. Also, on a regular basis maybe the people in charge of the jail could do humilating/cruel things to the criminal. This idea of mine is completely inhumane...maybe capital punishment really is the right answer. Although I am not completely sure how I feel about this issue, I think I mostly sway over to the pro-capital punishment side. I come from a very conservative family – both of my parents are very strong Republicans. However on this issue, my parents are somewhat divided. My dad is 100% for capital punishment, but my mom thinks that capital punishment is wrong, Maybe this is where my confusion comes from, because I can see both of my parents’ sides. Nevertheless, I side with my dad a bit more on this issue than I do with my mom.
~~Religion/Prayer in School~~
I consider myself to be a religious person. I am a Christian and have a strong belief in Jesus Christ. While I may not be the most religious person out there, my faith is an important part of my life. I definitely don’t go to church as much as I’d like to, but my strong faith in God is a very integral part of how I live. I have complete respect for all other religions, well, maybe not for Satanism or any anti-Christ belief system, but everyone else I can get along with. My best friend is a Muslim (she is from India) and another one of my great friends comes from a Buddhist family (she is from Bhutan). One of my good friends from high school is Jewish, and I have a few Hindu friends at my college. I have great talks with my friends who are of other faiths, and even though we might not believe in the exact same things, we all consider ourselves to be very moral people. I love learning about their religions, and on many levels I can identify with a lot of them. My best friend who is Muslim and I talk for hours and hours about Christianity and Islam – I think talking to people that have different beliefs than yours helps you become more of an open-minded person and also helps reaffirm your own believes. It is a very healthy activity for the mind and soul.
I get really angry with those left-wing liberals who are always dissing the religious right-wing people. Why is being a Christian so bad? Do they think that because we have strong MORALS and a deep Christian faith that we are insane? We all aren’t radial Christians who preach fire and brimstone and try to scare people into our religion. I personally don’t think everyone is going to hell because they don’t believe in what I believe in. I think those Christian-bashing liberals should just shut up and stop saying that we are all nuts and weak-minded because we believe in organized religion. They’re probably just jealous of our high-moral standards! :o)
I think it is completely absurd that people have a problem with prayer in school. The word “God” or “Jesus” is practically taboo anymore! If at the beginning of the day the school wants to have a little prayer for the students, it should be okay. They don’t even have to make it a Christian prayer, it could be completely ambiguous of faith. Any of the kids who don’t agree with it don’t have to participate. The people who are praying aren’t trying to convert any of the non-religious people! People should stop being so afraid of religion. Religion is a good thing! If a certain school is a public school, and for some reason there is a scripture from the Bible on a hallway wall, or something about the 10 Commandments, why is it such a problem to leave it up? I thought this was a Christian nation – it was founded on Christianity! If I lived in Saudi Arabia (which is very, very Islamic) and I went to some school that had verses from the Qu’ran plastered everywhere, I actually would find it to be comforting. It is someone else’s religion, and I respect it - I am in an Islamic nation, this type of thing is normal. So this type of thing *should* be normal in the US! I understand the notion of the separation of church and state, but didn’t our founders mean it to be that there shouldn’t be some sort of national religion controlled by the government? That’s what I get from it at least. I think with that thought in mind, our founders wouldn’t have a problem with a little bit of religion in school. I don’t think it they were concerned about religion being a part of government, I think they wanted to make sure that government wouldn’t be a part of religion.
~~The Media~~
The media today is blatantly liberal – there is no getting around that. I am so sick of listening to the world news and seeing those reporters gush over all of the things the Democratic leaders say and do, but barely give any Republicans a shred of credit for anything great they accomplish. For instance, take this presidential election. Everything Gore does is just brilliant, but when Bush gave his wonderful speech at the RNC all they did was pick it apart. I heard so many of those media goons saying things like “This was the biggest speech in Bush’s short political career.” (insinuating that he isn’t experienced) and that “Bush spent months working on this speech,” (insinuating that he is slow/dumb and has to take a long time to write a decent speech).
When I was at the Bush rally in Akron, OH on August 4th, we had seats right next to the media stand. When all of those national press/media came in from the train, they set up camp on the stand that was next to us, so we had a good view of what they were doing. During Bush’s speech, all of the media people looked soooo unenthused – practically disgusted to be there. There was this one guy on this step next to us with a pad of paper in his hand. He sat there for about 10 minutes into Bush’s speech with this far-away look on his face like he wasn’t even paying attention. He didn’t even look at Bush once! Near the end of his presentation, he scribbled something down on the pad and put it all away. He obviously didn’t want to be there. I know if I were at a Gore rally, I wouldn’t be happy at all, but reporting on Bush’s rally is that man’s JOB! He should at least give Bush and Cheney the respect they deserve. I bet in that man’s article, he probably somehow insinuated (without trying to be blatantly biased) that Bush’s rally was boring. What a chump!
When I watch the news, read the paper, or even get the news off of the internet, I don’t want to hear the media’s slant on the issues. I want fair reporting! I am sick of all of the things the media insinuates about the Republicans. And it is really sad to because it is sooo obvious they are biased. If they feel that way about it, fine, but keep it to yourself and do your freakin’ job! A good reporter should be one that doesn’t show any opinion on what they are reporting – but obviously there aren’t many good reporters out there in the US today.