I checked the Fox News website this morning to discover that the Republicans had lost control of the House, and that the Senate is still in play. Over breakfast, in an attempt to lighten my generally depressed mood, I turned to the opinion page of the Yale Daily News, which is always good for a laugh.
The two leftist columns that I saw this morning made me angry — not because of the ideas they espouse so much as the simple fact that such infantile minds should be allowed to vote (and change the course of national elections).
Yale sophomore Alexandra Schwartz writes of her last summer’s journey to India, where she was frequently embarrassed by questions like, “Do you like George Bush? Then why did you elect him again.” At this, Miss Schwartz would apparently flush and explain that it was the fault of the electoral college. She writes that she “tried to dodge the critiques of America in various ways, sometimes by creating an alternate Canadian persona (not a bad idea in this day and age).” Now that Liberalism and America are once again compatible, she is happy, as the front page blurb puts it, to “stop pretending to be Canadian.”
The op-ed by senior Ted Fertik calls the elections a “victory for sanity” — redemption from “one-party rule” that “has proved itself to be cancerous for our democracy.” He gives an candid Leftist’s view of recent American history: “A group of right-wing ideologues hijacked the country and pushed through a remarkable array of devastating policies, including an ideologically-motivated war in Iraq, tax cuts even in the face of enormous deficits, an energy policy involving massive subsidies to already flourishing oil companies, and an attempt to gut Social Security, the most effective social safety-net policy in history. Not one of the actions — not a single one — made any sense.” Now, Fertik exclaims, the country sees the Republicans for what they are: “a cynical group of neoconservative ideologues who have mortgaged the country’s future for the same of political power.”
At Yale, this victory is hailed by students who wish they were Canadian, or who want us to fail in Iraq because they don’t see “what we hope to accomplish.” As a Yalie myself I can only hope that we college students will loose the right to vote.