Health Care Debate

President Obama has made universal health care coverage an important agenda item. This act would insure 40 million Americans who are today without health coverage. On the other hand, some estimates suggest that it would cost taxpayers in excess of $1.3 trillion.  The questions for you are these: Is it feasible to change the nation’s health care at such a high cost at a time when the nation suffers from a severe economic decline? Is it morally acceptible to deny 40 million people health care for the sake of keeping the economy stable?

Is the Media Giving President Obama a Free Pass?

In this discussion, particularly for my American Government students, I’d like you to think about the role of the media and Barack Obama’s presidency. Has the media been fair in its coverage of the President? Has it asked the tough questions of him or has it not reported on his first few months in office with the proper level of scrutiny? Are there some elements of the media that have been more fair than others?

Barack Obama versus Hillary Clinton

The Democratic primaries have been the most heated in a long time in large measure because you have two worthy opponents sparring against each other. Either one would make history as the first African American and first woman President respectively. Recently, the issue of race in America’s political culture has become a very important issue. Do you think race is as important or perhaps more important than gender in determining for whom people will vote?

Virginia Tech Mass Killing

I would like students to consider the many facets of yesterday’s mass murder at Virginia Tech in which a college student, Cho Seung-Hui, murdered 32 people, the largest mass killing in American history. I think this event relates to the college population more than any other, though it affects all of us in some way.

Firstly, the most common question students have asked me in the last couple of days is how something like this could happen? What would motivate someone to do such a thing? What do you think?

Secondly, does the tragedy bring into sharper focus the gun control debate? Could this event have been prevented with stricter gun control laws? Indeed, this is what a few students argued in my American Government course today and it has become a matter of debate in Congress already.

Thirdly, can we place this horrible occurrence in a broader cultural context? What is it about American culture that might produce events such as these or at Columbine?

I would also like us to deal with an existential question: Was the man who committed these murders evil? More generally does evil in the world explain why terrible things happen?

Finally, a question to consider is how safe you feel at Tunxis Community College. Could something like what happened at Virginia Tech happen here in Farmington, Connecticut?

Please be sensitive to this issue as you post your responses. 

Global Warming

I am putting together a panel discussion to be held on Thursday, April 26th  from 1:00 to 3:00 pm in room 201 on the issue of global warming, which has commanded the attention of my American Government students of late. A consensus has emerged that global warming is taking place, humans are causing it, and that a state of urgency exists to do something about it. However, in the spirit of this weblog’s concept, I want respondents to approach the topic with an open mind. Just because there is in fact a consensus, it does not follow that we ought to blindly adhere to it. There was once something called the cold war consensus in which unanimity existed between liberals and conservatives to contain communism. That consensus led America into an ill-fated war in Vietnam because no real deliberation or discussion occurred in the 1950s and early 1960s. A consensus based on “scientific” analysis existed in the southern states in the 1850s that the brains of African Americans are smaller than their white counterparts. In the early 20th century a consensus emerged within the eugenics movement that immigrants and the poor were genetically inferior to others. My main point: a consensus is not always necessarily accurate and should be constantly revised and reassessed. After all, claiming the end of debate would never have given us Newton or Einstein. My questions are these: are humans in fact causing global warming, is this warming trend long lasting, what if anything ought to be done about it? Remember, we want to avoid the assertion that some scientists have made that “there is no more debate” on global warming. And those who disagree are merely politicizing the issue.

I have posted a few links for your convenience so that you can become more informed on the issue:  

http://www.realclimate.org/

http://epa.gov/climatechange/index.html

http://www.globalwarming.org/

http://www.fightglobalwarming.com/page.cfm?tagID=274

I have also posted on the “Video Presentations and Clips” page a rebuttal of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth put together by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. Please view the film first before watching the rebuttal. I would also encourage you to look at other critiques of Gore’s film, both supportive and critical.

Abortion

I want you to think about the 1973 decision of Roe v Wade and how the nation decided to settle the issue of abortion.

Gay Rights

In our American Government course, we talked about two major actions taken by the Federal government, one opposed to gay marriage and the other a general defense of gay rights in terms of the states’ sodomy laws. Here is the full text of both the U.S. Congress’s Defense of Marriage Act (1996) and the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Lawrence v Texas (2003). Read the act of Congress and the Supreme Court ruling for yourself and draw your own conclusions as to how to interpret them.