The past few months have involved considerable discussion of the “War on Women.” This war seems to be largely sensationalist rebranding of a conglomeration of some very important debates. While there is no excuse for comments about “legitimate rape,” Democrats probably don’t do the national discourse much service in framing the issue so violently. In her Republican National Convention speech, Ann Romney tried to win women’s sympathies and, ultimately, votes for her husband, Mitt Romney. Unfortunately she chose to speak to women as if they lacked brains.
The men and women of our armed forces are facing continual, catastrophic assaults that threaten not only their individual well-beings but also the effectiveness and cohesiveness of the military as a whole. These assaults don’t originate from Al-Qaeda, the Taliban or any of the groups that we have declared as our enemies. These assaults, distressingly, originate from within our own military. Every day our military personnel face sexual assault and battery from other members of the same military, frequently from those they have been drilled to trust at a religiously absolute level.
I’m slightly obsessed with elections, so I found out about the election complaint when I checked to see if the results were up at midnight Saturday morning (it displayed a short message entitled “Election Complaint”). Unlike the candidates at issue, however, I wasn’t able to secure any of the then-classified information on the subject, instead finding out the details in the early-released article in The Student.
Apparently there is a new commandment that has been revealed unto the Republican Party. One that Jesus errantly left out of his parables and teachings and that Joseph Smith must have failed to read before he lost his special glasses or perhaps just forgot to pull out of his magic hat. It is “Thou shall hate the poor.” This new commandment dominates today’s conservative politics and discourse, reveals the turmoil at the heart of America’s public morality and shows the clear ideological choice before us.
