Minors in Ballroom Dance and Pre-Law.
Lover of cooking, dancing, politics, and my darling wife.
Adam Benson
Staff Writer
Political Science and Information Systems
More from this author
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The Past, Misquoted: Learning Nothing
In May 2025, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz—the 2024 Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee—stood before graduates at the University of Minnesota Law School and declared that “Donald Trump's modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the streets.” He described ICE agents in “unmarked vans, wearing masks,” shipping people “off to foreign torture dungeons,” [1].
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Be Careful What You Wish For: Life After U.S. Hegemony
The international rules-based order survives not because it is universally respected, but because someone has the power to punish those who ignore it. For decades, that power has looked a lot like a B-2 bomber.
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Agency, Law, and the Sanctity of Life: The Weightier Matters
With great power—agency—comes great responsibility.
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Zohran Mamdani: A Socialist Gift to the Republican Party?
Zohran Mamdani might be the best thing to happen to Republicans since Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. If he wins, the GOP should probably send him a thank-you card and a “get well soon” note to New York City. His radicalism may thrill activists on X and young socialists, but to most Americans, it is a clear signal that the Democratic Party has lost the pulse. They are mistaking polarization for a permission structure to double down on radical ideas. Mamdani’s “democratic socialism” might play well in progressive enclaves like New York City, but outside those circles, it’s political poison. The average American voter does not like socialism, even if it hides behind a “democratic” façade.
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Endowed by Our Creator: Why Rights Come from Our God, Not Our Government
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” [1]. The American experiment began with a radical idea: rights are beyond the reach of government, anchored in something higher than politics. Elsewhere, these notions lingered as philosophy; in America, they became reality. When Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, he didn’t say that governments “grant” us rights. He declared that we are endowed by our Creator with rights that are unalienable. These were not just some flowery, nice-sounding words—it was a revolutionary claim about the very source of human freedom that endures this day, nearly 250 years later. This claim reframed the conversation around rights by changing the government’s role from the “giver” to the “guardian” of rights.
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