February 2019

“We have won against ISIS. We’ve beaten them, and we’ve beaten them badly. We’ve taken back the land, and now it’s time for our troops to come home.”

In his final address to the nation, George Washington delivered these important words: “However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion” [1]. Sound familiar to anyone?

After an uneventful New Year’s Eve, I was unprepared for the resurgence of a long-forgotten name in the headlines on New Year’s Day. On January 1st, Mitt Romney, the recently elected Utah senator and 2012 presidential candidate, decided to give us his take on Trump in his op-ed “The President Shapes the Public Character of the Nation. Trump’s Character Falls Short” [1]. Following his 2018 midterm win, Romney set out to clarify his relationship with the nation’s politics by openly criticizing President Trump’s character, while agreeing with his conservative policies. While the op-ed itself is full of bland generalizations, it does help us to understand the current state of the G.O.P. and how Romney fits into it.

Mala Krusa is a small village in Kosovo with a painful history. On March 25, 1999, the day after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia began, a special police unit entered the village, separated and killed the men and boys, dumped them in mass graves, and forced the women and children out of the village. Agron Limani, a resident of the Mala Krusa village, lives in a house adjacent one of the mass graves that was recently exhumed and in which his brother, father, and uncles were buried. Limani commented, “We cannot talk about reconciliation while graves are still open. Let’s first shed light on the crimes, find our people and put justice in place” [1].

A few weeks ago, I began my final semester of my senior year at BYU. Like most, I started the term with excitement, enthusiasm, and only slightly less motivation than I’d had previously. The plan was to coast through my last twelve credits, get my degree, find a job and head out to D.C. to work in (fix?) Congress. As I walked into my first class that Monday morning, I was shocked as I listened to my professor explain the purpose of the course: to prove to us why the modern liberal movement is fundamentally flawed.

Chances are, if you have followed any sort of political discourse throughout the past two years, you have heard heated debate about what to do with healthcare in America. This discourse has spawned anger, accusations, and animosity between politicians and constituents alike. Frustrated by rising healthcare costs, many have turned to government programs in hopes those costs can be reduced or covered and that, although more expensive for some, it would be the compassionate thing to do. However, stricter government control of our healthcare would prove disastrous for a multitude of reasons.

In May 2018, the Salt Lake Tribune published a commentary piece from two high school students in Utah arguing that Utah’s public school system needs comprehensive sex education (C.S.E.). A few weeks later, another student responded to the piece stating the exact opposite: in a commentary article titled “Utah Students Don’t Need or Want Comprehensive Sex Education,” Heather Ellis argued that students are already receiving information about contraception and sexuality, and that a formal institution of this sort of curriculum would not only be unnecessary, but detrimental to students’ sexual and social health [1]. Despite this opinion, which is shared by at least some of Utah’s students and parents, scientific and social studies demonstrate that comprehensive sex education is the best way to ensure the health and safety of students and society—and although some aspects of Utah sex ed are lacking, the state is already beginning to increase the comprehensiveness of its sex education policy.