In a 'Conservative's conservative' school, proclaiming progressive values of honesty, integrity, ethics, virtue, chastity, and morality, Brigham Young University's student body of 28,000 has more in common with the Progressive community than anyone here will admit.
Look at the problems and see the Authoritarians collapse with the worst solutions. BYU, we're with you!!
Warning: Fire down below!!
Abortion is anathema-ask any woman who has had one, and abortion is a problem. The solution is prevention, not repression - education and unconditionally easy-to-acquire pregnancy prevention. No age restrictions. No parental consent, at all. Here's the ethical problem: Whose morality do you punish, or limit, if a kid gets hold of pills, a condom or has an abortion? Repression simply cannot work, nor is it the law of the land or the will of the majority of the people. We dare not legislate morality and restrictions in the name of religion. That isn't an American value.
Divorce and single motherhood, especially, is a problem, and the solution is not privatization, corporate economic subjugation of workers with low wages but shared and measured, hopeful prosperity for all. Society's morality suffers from divorce. Nothing will collapse a family faster than economic hopelessness or helplessness. It is unethical to do otherwise than to support propsperity for all in a true defense of marriage. Criminality is reduced with hope.
Gay 'marriage' is a problem? Is your religious or sacramental marriage really threatened or debased by a homosexual civil union of committed partners? I had to get a civil union, a marriage license, before our clergyman would even put his pen to paper.
Education is a problem, and the solution is not discriminatory vouchers for private schools that come out of public tax funds but early interventionworks! And we ought to have the best public school system in the world. Free higher education for all who qualify. Free on-the-job internships for all trades.
Accredited tradeschools? Only if they are tied to on-the-job internships and proven leads to jobs within two years of accreditation.
Healthcare is a problem, and the solution is not for-profit privatization of hospitals and insurance companies but expansion of Medicare, the lowest-cost system in the world. Non-profit expansion is the place to be. No one should make a profit from your illness. No one.
The problem is Bu$hCo extremism, the driving force of extremist wingnut authoritarians and lobbyists. Money is not speech. The results: fear, intolerance and subversion of our American ideals, encapsulated in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The result of these stupid social and cheap labor conservative shenannigans [(shə-nān'ĭ-gəns) n.Informal,1.Deceitful tricks; underhanded acts]: Subversion of our Justice system, degradation of our Legislative branch and the decadence and perversion of the Administration's raw political ambition.
At the cost of ethics, morals or values of ANY KIND, Administration ineptitude, fraught with ambitious politicization of every single issue, has replaced excellent scholarship at every level, honorable statesmanship in Foreign Policy leadership and basic Executive ability.
Our President is a simpleton and a schmo, and his irrational Vice President is suffering the less desirable effects of pump head syndrome.
I am pleased that conscientious BYU students proudly request a more appropriate speaker for their commencement exercises. I think they should be requesting a different Vice President, a former Vice President, to deliver their commencement address. Wouldn't that be cool?