A Puzzled Penguin

Everyone loves freedom. It’s on bumper stickers, posters, and it is also my excuse to eat cereal for lunch. After all it’s a “free” country isn't it?  America is called “the land of the free” (free shipping is usually included as well” but I would argue that it is the most misunderstood concept. In class, we were asked to read Civil Disobedience and The Swimmer . The two essays presented two different ideas to me. The former tells us to “be a friction” to the government while the latter tells us that we should just go with the flow. However, before I dig deeper, I’d like to address some problems I have with Civil Disobedience that I have to get it out(feel free to skip to the next paragraph.) First, how can you say that the power should be put in the minority? I promise you if that was the case the world would be over already. Did Mr. Thoreau even think about what groups are part of the minority? The minority could be a hate group for all you know (that would end pretty badly won...

  In the summer of 2025, I saw our president hand out tariffs like Oprah handing out cars: “You get a tariff! You get a tariff! Everyone gets a tariff!” No one was safe from this gift. Friends, enemies, and neighbors all were all chosen. I didn’t think much of it (besides the fact that our president basically announced a bar brawl and invited the entire world to it.) Like one would expect, the other invitees took a small swing back, a mere 20% increase on all American goods. It’s like watching kids on a beach building sandcastles. One kid goes to stomp all over the other kid’s sandcastle, yelling that he is the best. Naturally, the other kids go stomp on the troublemaker’s sandcastle. Problem solved right? Unfortunately, that is not the case. In the end, no one has any castles left — it's a lose-lose situation. But I mean hey, who doesn’t like a good scuffle? Imposing tariffs on each other limits trade. As one would learn in economics 101, countries specialize in certain produ...

We’ve all heard Churchill's famous saying of, “history is written by the victors." While this may sound cliche or just not true, it feels more truthful after the first two weeks of class. In my reading of Postcards from the Trenches, the same question kept on coming up: whose story gets to be told and who decides that?  Without a doubt, monuments are powerful at keeping history. They give communities a place to grieve, to celebrate, and to remember. Because most memorials are cut out of stone or metal, they are able to serve their purpose for centuries. However, monuments are expensive. A simple headstone costs upward of a thousand dollars and the Vietnam War Memorial reportedly cost 7 million, which is about 28 million now. That money doesn’t come from nowhere — it is usually paid for by the government or people with influence. For the people who pay for these memorials, if the memorial/monument does not reflect well on their history or themselves, they would not give funding...