A comment on “Guns and Politics in the United States”

I have long heard that most people who died under guns in America are family members because guns make it so much easier to kill a person by pulling the trigger instead of going through the effort of holding a knife to stab someone when the victims can still defend themselves, when the person is too angry to have a conscious mind. This article, Guns and Politics in the United States, gives many convincing statistics to show that we actually do more harm than good by allowing citizens here to have guns.

It is not legal for anyone who is not associated with military and law enforcement to have a gun in Taiwan. Therefore, people who try to kill others in Taiwan usually have to go through the trouble of hiding a knife and killing people manually without the assistance of automatic technology. As a result, the number of the people they can kill is very limited. The most recent massacre that happened in Taiwan was “Taipei Metro Massacre” that took place in 2014. According to the 21 years old criminal in Taiwan, Cheng Chieh (鄭捷), who was executed on 10 May 2016, he had been preparing for the massacre for over a year before he committed the crime. He went through a year of physical training to ensure that he would have enough strength and endurance to kill as many people as he could. Also, he went to the Taipei Metro station to find out between which two Metro stops has the longest transportation time, allowing him more time to kill the passengers. At the end, he killed four people and injured 24 others, which is by far fewer than the number of people killed in any mass shooting in America. From here, we can see that we in fact save more people’s lives by prohibiting the general public to have guns.

I have talked to some Americans who agree with the idea of people should be allowed to have guns, and the most common reason is that they think they will be able to defend themselves when they confront a violent person. However, I told them there are many other alternatives that allow you to defend yourself. For example, you can have a pepper spray, a police baton, a Taser, or even an electric gun. We can still have fairly good protection by having those things. Also, the best way to stay away from danger is use common sense. Being able to sense the danger and get away from a dangerous environment is the best way to protect yourself.

A comment on "Using racial quotas in universities admissions is unfair" from GOVT 2305

It is surprising to me to know that the schools in America have a different SAT requirement for Asian students. I was wondering if I can have more proof on that to confirm the information is true. I am not saying I do not trust the information given from the blog, GOVT2305. It is just unbelievable to me that the schools here can do something like that without getting in any trouble, such as racism issue. As an Asian immigrant with the permanent residency moving to American two years ago at the age of 35, I was not required to take SAT to enter college. However, I went to Australia and England for my two master’s degree, I was never told that the requirements on our TOEFL or IELTS scores are any higher than other students of different races. That is why I really want to know whether what is mentioned on this blog is true.

 

I agree and disagree with the ideas of the blog. The part I agree is that the requirements should be made equal for students of all races. Any difference in the requirements is a sign of unfair competition.

 

The part I disagree is “we should reduce the focus on SAT and increase the focus on individual student’s character and skills, etc.” Schools are the place for Academic activities; therefore, it is understandable that your eligibility of entering a university should be decided according to your academic success. However, if you are applying to work in a strip club, your academic success will not matter even if you had a law degree from Harvard. Therefore, I think the focus on the SAT should not be reduced, or maybe we can add other academic ability tests similar to the ones people do to apply for graduate schools, such as GMAT and GRE. Moreover, I do not like the idea of grading someone according to his/her character since those things are totally subjective and ambiguous. Besides, who are the teachers to decide which students’ characters should be admitted to this program and whose should not? If I got rejected by a school when I know a girl who got a much lower SAT than I did, and she got admitted, I would just think there might be a possibility that she slept with one of the examiners, one or some of the examiners were her parent’s close friends, or even some of the examiners were bribed by her wealthy parents. Therefore, transparency and objectivity are the most important elements to anything controversial. When I worked as a lecturer in Taiwan, I maximized the transparency of the way I graded my students to minimize any possible grading unfairness by giving all the weights of the exams, quizzes, and extra credit, so that my students would not think I gave someone a better grade just because I liked her better. When I applied to get into the nursing program here at ACC a few months ago, we were also given the formula ACC use to calculate the ranking points we have, and I really appreciate that, so that I was confident that none of us was ranked unfairly just because some of the students are better at “socializing” with the professors. Sadly, it is not always the case in the real world, but I believe that is right way to do things.

 

 

P.S. If by any chance the author of the blog, GOVT2305, knows that I made a comment on her blog, please don’t get mad at me. Professor Seago made me do this!

Explaining What Donald Trump Wants to Do Now on Immigration

The article I am commenting on this time is Explaining What Donald Trump Wants to Do Now on Immigration. Immigration has been one of the major national issues in America. America has been the most powerful country for over a century. Many people from poor countries and monarchy countries have seen America as a much better place to go to for their next generation. Therefore, many people try hard to immigrate to this country. From my point of view, this is a very good advantage of America to use the labor and talented people around the world to contribute to the country. However, without proper immigration regulations, it could be harmful to the states.

It is understandable that the first concern of American citizens would be the safety of their society. However, from the statistics disclosed by a Video made by Clarify on immigration, it is learned that the crime rate of native born Americans is actually higher than that of immigrants. Therefore, if the statistics shown in the video is true, immigration might do more good than harm to this country. Another concern they might have is the job opportunities issues. Many Americans will be worried that their job opportunities might be taken by immigrants. It is true that it might give Americans, especially the less educated or less wealthy Americans, more challenges to find a job. However, with the development of the country, we all have to face the challenge that the society brings us, and that is how America can stay on the top on many aspects in the world, such as art, music, technology and military force. By evading challenges from the world, the United States will only decline. Thus, I think it is important for the government to create more job opportunities for the people here, but it is also important that the people should be aware of the challenge around the world, so that the people here will spend more time and money on their education instead of luxury.

From my point of view, America has done a good job using the highly educated in other countries to contribute to this country. A pharmacist in Taiwan told me he knew a famous scientist in pharmacology field who was treated so well in America, but he was not offered neither a good environment for doing research nor a good income. Understandably, he decided to stay in America at the end.

There are two things I don’t believe about Trump’s immigration policy. First of all, Mexico is not going to pay for the building of the wall. The other thing is that he will not be able to deport all or even close to all the undocumented immigrants. Many people came to this country to put in much of their effort to survive in the way of being abused by American citizens for a reason. They are willing to make the sacrifice because they have a reason to persist here, and that reason might be achieving their goals or other political reasons from their home countries. Therefore, by putting the undocumented immigrants in the corner will only make them try other extreme methods to stay here and very often these methods will be illegal because Trump’s immigration policy will put them in a more difficult situation. Therefore, I agree with Hillary on her way of dealing with undocumented immigrants by putting them in light and collect tax from them instead of deporting them. As a result, they can contribute to the economy of America; however, because they are not granted American citizenship, they won’t be able to affect America’s political situation much, which is a win-win solution for America and the undocumented immigrants.

Third Presidential Debate

Presidential election has been the hottest topic these days in America. Therefore, I would like to comment on the third presidential debate.

The third presidential debate started with two major candidates, Hillary and Trump, talking about their vision for the country. From my point of view, this is just a corny cliché, even though they did both sound pretty good and ambitious when they are talking about where the country should be directed to.

They first talked about Second Amendment. In where I grew up, Taiwan, it is illegal for anyone to own a gun. I am more conservative on this topic, and I believe that the regulation on gun control should be stricter because most people do not have consciousness when they are extremely agitated or mentally ill. Therefore, when they have a powerful weapon, it will be easy for them to cause a lot of harm to others. Let me use the 2014 Taipei Metro attack as the example. The criminal, Cheng Jie who was already executed in May this year, planned on killing people on Taipei Metro for a year before he committed the crime. However, because it is not easy for him to have access to fire arms in Taiwan, so he could only use the most accessible weapon, knife, to stab people on Taipei metro, and he ended up killing 4 people and injured many others on that day. However, if you compare with the gun shooting events in America, such as the Orlando nightclub shooting, you can easily tell that a single person can easily cause 10 times more people killed before the police arrive. Therefore, for the safety of the general public, I am more on the side with Hillary on this issue. Besides, there are many other alternative weapons you can use to defend yourself without causing death, such as electric gun, Taser, pepper spray, etc. Therefore, I agree with a stricter regulation on gun control.

The next thing they debated on is one of the oldest but also the most controversial issues people talk about, abortion. My opinion on this topic is also agreed with Hillary’s idea. I agreed more with Hillary’s idea that women should have the right to have abortion, and Hillary also gave a convincing example on why women should have the right and free will to have abortion without being punished. I also found another report written by a woman talking about her late-term abortion, Late-Term Abortion Was the Right Choice for Me. As we grow older, we should understand that life very often doesn’t work out in the way we want. One good example is divorce. Do you think those divorced couples, which is 50% of the marriage, planned on get divorced in a few years before they got married? Of course not. When something unexpected occurs, we have to make decision what choice is for the best result for the most sides. However, every individual has their own personal and family issues. It is wrong that we have the right to get involved in others’ personal issue, which is just how unreasonable it is when we think homosexual people should not have the legal right to get married. Who are we to decide others’ decision on their own lives?

Due to the word limit of the assignment, I think I need to stop here. However, I have read several news articles that give very in-depth and interesting analyses on the third presidential debate, such as Trump always takes the bait and otherdebate takeaways and Fact Checks of the Third PresidentialDebate. If you are interested, you can click in and take a look. The last thing I would like to comment on is the way they debate. Hillary, from my point of view, is more legitimate and mature than Trump in the sense that she will give you an idea on how she is going to achieve her goal for this country, instead of talking about how good her plan is without giving how she is going to achieve it, which is how I perceive Trump. Another thing I noticed is that Trump was a lot more in control in the first half of the debate than the last two presidential debate. However, he got out of control again in the second half of the debate and started interrupting Hillary in a childish way by saying “Wrong” again while she was talking. Also, he even said Hillary was “such a Nasty Woman” while Hillary was addressing how she was not going to cut benefits by collecting tax from wealthy people. Overall, I think Trump is still a childish boy instead of a mature man from the way he argued with Hillary.

The Lesson Ted Cruz Taught Us

Just like the words in the pre-Revolutionary War song written by John Dickinson, “United we stand, divided we fall.” I agree with whatever the author says in his commentary, but I also kind of disagree with the high standard he set for the politicians.

        The main goal of a political party is to win the election, so as to have a seat in the legislation house, or even win the presidential election. Therefore, it is important to prioritize things. This kind of thing happened in Taiwan too. The candidates of different parties fought for the nomination and spoke ill about each other. However, when the nominees of different parties are decided through the survey, the rivals that lost in the poll in their parties will come back to support them, and very often, the words and issues used by the rivals that lost the poll in their respective parties become the ammunition of the rival parties in the campaign. However, there is no way to do it privately because the parties need to find out which candidate can win the most votes from their supporters. Therefore, either the party has only one nominee, or they have to go through all the fierce (or nasty) debates to find out the nominee that can get the most votes out of their supporters.

        The reason I said I disagree with the high standard the author set for the politician is that I think we do the thing that Ted Cruz did all the time in our lives, and it, prioritization, is a very important “survival” skills we need. Take our U.S. government for an example, how many of us would really read through all the assigned readings thoroughly and digested what we read in order to know every detail about the confederation, federation and constitution from the assigned readings backward and forward? I believe none of us would have the time to read them all because most of us do more than one subject, have a job, or even have a family to take care of; therefore, very often we have to cut right to the point by studying the “study guide” to save us a lot of time. The idealists can always argue that if you only study the “study guide” you won’t be able to have a comprehensive understanding about U.S. government, and that is not the purpose or ideal way of learning. However, most of us who have been through many years of education would know that it is almost impossible to gain so much knowledge in a short time. Sometimes it would take years to build up enough knowledge to make a difference in the way we think or change our life. Therefore, we might spend some time doing the assigned reading, but it would be stupid of us if we are still doing the reading I cannot finish a week before the exam without looking for the answers to the questions on the study guide. I don’t think it is smart to fail the exams and try to finish the reading to get a lot of knowledge that cannot answer the questions in the exams. That is how we survive in all the courses in college, even though we know it is not the “ideal” way of learning, but learning is like a marathon, we will keep learning after the end of the semester; therefore, we will touch on what we have heard in the lecture before if we keep learning, but if we do not keep learning, we will forget everything we learned in the class no matter how much reading I have done in the class.

        It is the same for the politicians. The goal of the politicians from the same party, same faction or same interest group, is to win the power through election. Losing the election will lead to the marginalization of the party, and the party will end up having no voice in the government; therefore, sadly, the members of the same party will have to collaborate with others in the same party to win the election no matter how much they hate the nominees of the party if it is statistically proven they have the best chance to win the elections. It is not the most ideal way to deal with the disagreement, but it is definitely the only best way for the party to win the election, which is the same as the way we study in the sense that we learn the knowledge that is most likely to be present in the exam and leave the knowledge that is less likely to be present in the exam to later time to study. This is why I think what the author says is politically correct but not practical or realistic. When I was doing my Certified Nursing Course three months ago, our instructor also told us what we should do in the “test world” and what we should do in the “real world” because the “test world” can only be used in the ideal world, which has never existed. Therefore, I can totally understand and accept what Ted Cruz is doing right now. All we, citizens (when I am only a resident), have to do is pay close attention to the platforms of the two American president candidates, Hillary and Trump, and figure which candidate would be the better president for the United States. I am not saying the best or correct president because I know both candidates are loved and hated by many people and both of them have some positive and negative things to be discussed, but we just have to pick the less evil one of them to be the president. That is also a compromise that coincide with my opinion against the author’s theory because if we do not vote for the one we dislike less, we are giving the one we dislike more a better chance to win, and from the author’s point of view, we should not vote for either of them because they both have some issues that might hurt the democracy or human right values of the country.

Release the Charlotte Police Video

The critique is written by the editorial board of New York Times targeting the general public about the social issue ofthe release of Charlotte Police Video; therefore, the stance of this critique represents New York Times’ opinion on this issue, which might indicate the editorial is quite reliable since New York Times is a very reputable news media worldwide.

I agree with the author that “transparency” is the only way and best way to solve this kind of problem.

There is no legal reason to withhold the video from the public, and in this fraught situation, the best way to allay the community’s distrust is complete transparency.

 
        The way to solve this social issue is simple. The Charlotte police should just show the video and find out who is the one that should be responsible for the killing, or maybe it’s the victim’s fault because he did something that make the officer think his/her life safety was threatened by the victim. However, the mayor of the city, Jennifer Roberts, chose not to release the video, which will only lead to more distrust between the civilians and the police. It seems obvious to me that the government is trying to protect the police from being criminalized for what they have done. They might have done something really brutal, so they have to hide it; however, it will only make it even worse by doing that. Now, the police is not only killing, but also covering the fact that people have the right to know.

The board of New York Times also gives a convincing event that happened in Chicago before that the real situation is exactly the opposite of what the police stated. Therefore, it is proven that the police do not always tell the truth. Besides, if there is really nothing to be worried about, why do the police need to withhold the video. The way of dealing with this issue only makes people distrust the police.

What surprised me is that North Carolina legislature even passed the measure this year that allows police departments to withhold camera footage from the public unless a court orders the release taking effect on the first of October when I believe the measure that should be passed is that the video should be released as soon as this social issue has triggered distrust or protest in society, so as to earn trust from the civilians and give both the victims and the police a fair judgement. Nonetheless, Controlling and hiding the truth will only escalate the tension between the civilians and the police.

        To conclude, I agree with whatever the editorial board of New York Times stated in the editorial that transparency is the only and best way to solve this problem, and it is surprising to me that a State government in the United States, a country that emphasizes freedom and human rights, would adopt the method that is used mainly in dictatorship countries, censorship, to deal with this kind of social issue, which, like using oil to put out fire, will only lead to more serious problem and distrust.

Release the Charlotte Police Video

The critique is written by the editorial board of New York Times targeting the general public about the social issue ofthe release of Charlotte Police Video; therefore, the stance of this critique represents New York Times’ opinion on this issue, which might indicate the editorial is quite reliable since New York Times is a very reputable news media worldwide.

I agree with the author that “transparency” is the only way and best way to solve this kind of problem.

There is no legal reason to withhold the video from the public, and in this fraught situation, the best way to allay the community’s distrust is complete transparency.

 
        The way to solve this social issue is simple. The Charlotte police should just show the video and find out who is the one that should be responsible for the killing, or maybe it’s the victim’s fault because he did something that make the officer think his/her life safety was threatened by the victim. However, the mayor of the city, Jennifer Roberts, chose not to release the video, which will only lead to more distrust between the civilians and the police. It seems obvious to me that the government is trying to protect the police from being criminalized for what they have done. They might have done something really brutal, so they have to hide it; however, it will only make it even worse by doing that. Now, the police is not only killing, but also covering the fact that people have the right to know.

The board of New York Times also gives a convincing event that happened in Chicago before that the real situation is exactly the opposite of what the police stated. Therefore, it is proven that the police do not always tell the truth. Besides, if there is really nothing to be worried about, why do the police need to withhold the video. The way of dealing with this issue only makes people distrust the police.

What surprised me is that North Carolina legislature even passed the measure this year that allows police departments to withhold camera footage from the public unless a court orders the release taking effect on the first of October when I believe the measure that should be passed is that the video should be released as soon as this social issue has triggered distrust or protest in society, so as to earn trust from the civilians and give both the victims and the police a fair judgement. Nonetheless, Controlling and hiding the truth will only escalate the tension between the civilians and the police.

        To conclude, I agree with whatever the editorial board of New York Times stated in the editorial that transparency is the only and best way to solve this problem, and it is surprising to me that a State government in the United States, a country that emphasizes freedom and human rights, would adopt the method that is used mainly in dictatorship countries, censorship, to deal with this kind of social issue, which, like using oil to put out fire, will only lead to more serious problem and distrust.

GOP minds are at sea — but not the right one

The event reported in the news article, GOP minds are at sea — but not the right one, by WashingtonPost was one of the major pieces of news that involves U.S. and Asia that we talked about a lot in Taiwan, but I have found many people in America do not know of, the South China sea conflict.

China has claimed the South China Sea when Philippines and the U.S. believe it is a public ocean territory. In 2013, the Philippines took its case to the Court of Arbitration. The result of the Arbitration said that China does not own the South China Sea, which irritated China, and China still did not want to give up on controlling South China Sea. Therefore, there are a lot of military wrestling going on between America and China, as well as Philippines. The Defense Secretary of the United States, Ash Carter, decided to adopt the strategy of “a long campaign of firmness, and gentle but strong pushback” to fight against China. At the end of the news article, the author even said that “if the next president does not conduct such operations with steady, measured skill, the result could be the collapse of the United States’ position in the world’s most populous, dynamic and perhaps dangerous region, or war.”

The reason I recommend this news article is to bring one of the major events to American classmates’ attention, so more people here will be more aware of what is going on between America and several other Asian country. The major impact of this event on Taiwan is that one of our “island” in South China Sea is now defined as a “rock”. Therefore, our ocean territory of that “location” is now reduced from 200 nautical miles to 20 nautical miles. However, the news report from a different perspective in Taiwan also said that the change of the ocean territory of that location does not really affect the fishing area of our fishermen; moreover, it can give Taiwan more protection from China since China owns even more “rocks” in South China Sea. Another point that is worth mentioning in this news article is that, it contains an embedded link that takes you to my favorite English Newspaper in Taiwan, Taipei Times, which is also the newspaper that is pro Taiwan Independence.

Hi, my classmates!