The case, which was taken in June of 2011 after the Supreme Court granted the writ of certiorari that was put forth for the case, brought light upon the situation in which government law enforcement agencies track individuals using GPS devices. Antoine Jones, a nightclub owner in the District of Columbia, was arrested and charged by police for conspiracy to distribute cocaine. The District’s Metropolitan Police department had conducted surveillance on Jones for an extended amount of time. In particular, Jones’ movements were tracked using a GPS transmitter. The device had been placed on the car Jones was using long after the warrant to place to object had expired.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that such a placement of a GPS device did indeed constitute a search of personal property and, as such, required a search warrant. However, while all the justices did rule unanimously, three separate concurrences were written. The majority opinion, written by Justice Scalia, consisted of the jurisprudentially conservative view that the GPS device did not meet the two-pronged reasonable expectation of privacy test that was originally established by Justice Harlan’s concurrence for the case of Katz v. United States. Scalia was joined by Justices Kennedy, Thomas, Sotomayor, and Chief Justice Roberts.

In a concurrence that took aim at the stance of Scalia and the majority, Justice Alito noted that rapidly changing technological trends look to quickly make the traditional response of Scalia and his cohorts into an antiquated relic of the past. With his pointed concurrence, Alito was suggesting that the days of using such a narrow distinction were mostly over, as the immediate future of public surveillance may be able to be characterized by real-time video that is accessed remotely. In this concurrence, Justice Alito was joined by joined by Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, and Kagan.

Justice Sotomayor also crafted her own separate concurrence in which she took the unusual step of exploring the entire issue of privacy in the modern age, presenting a laundry list of complaints that privacy advocates often have and then urging that these issues soon be settled via the courts.

As for Antoine Jones, his case has been remanded and will again be heard within the District of Columbia’s District Court.

While the prestige and glamor surrounding Wall Street and New York’s financial district presents to the world at large the image of a city dominated by multinational corporations and other gargantuan businesses, it is small business that is truly the beating heart of the city itself. With media focus drawn to Downtown Manhattan’s Financial District, it’s easy to forget that Midtown Manhattan is above and beyond the largest commercial center in the United States. Midtown, while home to such tourist attractions as Times Square and the high-end shops on Fifth Avenue, also houses more small businesses than any other place in the United States.

Continuing our Lifestyle series, Envision More looks at small businesses in and around the New York City area, chronicling the work done by both raggedy upstarts and long-established family businesses. It is these outfits that compose the backbone of America’s service economy and, consequently, they drive the American economy as a whole.

DayTraderJobs.com Inc. currently is run out of an office in Manhattan. Founded by Ara Mehetarian, a veteran of the financial services industry, the business itself exists solely on the web (daytraderjobs.com) as a platform to serve businesses in finance. Designed and operated to be purposefully niche, DayTraderJobs.com focuses solely on providing services to the core of the financial trading industry.

“Easy to use interface, quick information, and low intervention from the
service provider,” explains Ara Mehetarian, founder of Day Trader Jobs Incorporated, “After years of working as a Quality Assurance Manager for software development in the financial services industry, I learned how the business works, what the people need from a technical perspective. [With DayTraderJobs.com] we created for the recruiter and the prospective jobseeker an interface that allows them to complete their business with ease.”

Mehetarian, after years in the financial sector, was inspired to start the business after he noticed that many large companies had trouble with recruitment.  “[Throughout the course of my work], I became involved in recruiting business developers in the insurance and mortgage industry. Here I became acquainted with the needs of recruiters in the financial sector,” explains Mehetarian.  DayTraderJobs.com, a brain-child fostered after years of dealing with improper and inefficient recruitment techniques, was created to streamline the process of recruitment within the financial sector.

Running small business in New York City has brought its own set of challenges, as well as unique opportunities. “Like with all dot-coms the biggest hurdle is reach, and providing real results,” says Mehetarian. More optimistically, he notes that, “operating from the center of the world, connections are consolidated through sound and transparent business dealings. New York City amplifies the results necessary for expanding our business and helps us to reach those who will greatly benefit from our service.”

Envision More also sat down with Daniel Dabek, one of the few employees Mehetarian has hired to help run the fledgling operation. “I am a full-time proprietary trader and also a full-time business development manager through DayTraderJobs.com Incorporated. I basically incubate ideas and make them a reality,” Dabek explains. He further notes, “for me, as a day trader, DayTraderJobs.com resonated with necessity; a hub where the world can connect to day trading. I just had to become a part of it.” Dabek, a full-time day trader, was intrigued by the idea of such an integrated job-application system and noted that, like Mehetarian, the industry needed a better process for the recruitment of new individuals.

Both men, having long and successful careers behind them working for other individuals, have jumped feet-first into this new endeavor, exhibiting extraordinary optimism for the work they are doing now. Regarding the near future of the company, Mehetarian states that “[Within five years], there is no doubt that DayTraderJobs.com will be a standard in this industry. No hedge fund, proprietary trading company, or financial services firm will find their candidates through any other recruiting service.”

Copyright Dan Downs 2010

However, with ordinances passed by city government in the last decade, no future cigar lounges may be opened within city limits. For the foreseeable future, the New York City is stuck with the lounges it has. Deciding to take part in this timeless tradition, Envision More sent an operative to dive feet-first into New York’s cigar culture, sampling lounges along the way.

Davidoff’s at Columbus Circle:

Located at The Shops at Columbus Circle (housed inside the Time Warner center) in Manhattan, Davidoff’s combines the premier lifestyle-and-cigar-store that has made the brand famous with an incredibly intimate cigar lounge. Essential to any lounge, Davidoff’s carries an expansive collection of cigars, particularly the ones produced by the company itself. The lounge, compared to most others in New York, can be considered to be small, with seating limited to under ten or twelve individuals when filled to capacity. This results in a forced camaraderie of sorts, with conversation between persons at the lounge being particularly rich. The major detracting feature of the establishment –its relatively small size- can be viewed in a positive light to due to the interactions between patrons. A great place to relax and have a smoke after a busy day at the office, Davidoff’s comes highly recommended.

Cigar Inn on 2^nd Ave:

Since Cigar Inn opened its notable Cigar Aficionado lounge in February 2009, smoking in New York City has never been the same.  Located on 2^nd Ave between 53^rd and 54^th Street in Manhattan’s Midtown East, Cigar Inn has one of the most versatile lounges in the city. Wooden furnishings, a nice walk-through room humidor, large leather couches, multiple wall-mounted flat-screen televisions, and a beverage-filled refrigerator, Cigar Inn provides an extraordinarily relaxing environment designed for lounging and conversation with good friends. While alcohol may not be purchased on the premises due to city laws, the lounge’s BYOB policy is most welcome and makes the cigar experience all the more enjoyable. Its late night hours (closing at or after 1:00AM for Monday through Saturday) are always welcome. If you’re looking for a place to watch a sports event or wish to have a relaxing evening with a drink and a good cigar, this is the place to be.

Copyright Dan Downs 2010

                The SFL Conference, jointly held with the Ivy League Alliance for Liberty and sponsored by the Columbia University Libertarians, took place on October 10^th at Columbia University, with events lasting from before 9:00AM to well after 9:00PM. Topics of discussion included issues regarding economic freedom, personal liberties, governmental tax policy, and foreign policy, among others.

                Students For Liberty, a recently-founded organization dedicated to promoting liberty-orientated values on American college campuses, ensured that the event progressed swimmingly and without any major hiccups in programming. The speakers, diverse in their specialties and all at the forefront of their fields, were particularly engaging. Dr. Nigel Ashford of the Institute for Humane Studies and CJ Maloney, a Mises.org contributor, were particularly well received for both their humor and wisdom. Among the more educational of the presenters were Damon Root and Mario Rizzo. Root, a Reason magazine employee, conducted a wonderful lecture regarding libertarianism and the fight for racial equality in America, with emphasis on historical figures who operated using pro-liberty ideals in order to combat racial injustice. Professor Mario Rizzo of New York University went in depth about governmental economic paternalism and how it affects individuals today. The keynote address was delivered by Fred L. Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a speech which ended the evening on a humorous note.

More dangerous than the outright, blatantly obvious damages that modern-day humans inflict upon our planet’s fragile ecosystem are the injuries we inflict that are more deleterious than anything; that is to say, those injuries which we don’t realize as having a negative impact upon our environment until it is too late. While there is a matter of debate among scientists as to whether the space just beyond Earth’s atmosphere can be described as part of this planet’s ecosystem, one certainly cannot deny that this planet’s upper atmosphere is part of the environment in which we live.

With the advent of space flight, governments and private entities (both wealthy individuals and private corporations) have been blasting off rockets into space, or at least into the border area where the Earth’s atmosphere generally ends and outer space begins (scientists are a bit fuzzy regarding this point, too). While certainly well within their rights to do so, humanity’s early forays into space have been slowly contributing to a problem that, while carefully monitored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), we as humans are currently powerless to remedy and, worse still, not only threatens the inherent natural and political rights of all humans but also endangers Homo sapiens as a species.

This problem, not widely recognized now but sure to be a well-known phrase in the coming decades, is known as the Kessler Syndrome. Explicitly defined, the Kessler Syndrome is the idea that space debris collisions can occur at an ever-increasing rate to the point that a self-sustaining system is created in the form of a positive feedback loop. While this definition may be abstruse, the Kessler Syndrome itself is easy to illustrate. Basically explained, the scenario calls for any number satellites (satellite being defined as any object in orbit above a planetary body) in space around Earth, each traveling at varying velocities and in different directions, to crash into each other. The analogy of a car accident is appropriate. While certain minor car accidents, such as fender-benders, result in little to no damage to one or both automobiles involved, a major accident, such as one that results in the “totaling” of at least one car (totaling being defined as destroying the automobile to the point that repair costs would be greater than the cost of buying a new vehicle), often produces debris. Pieces of one or more of the automobiles often break off and become scattered around the scene of the original collision. This is where the automobile accidents and real-life satellite collisions start to differ. When automobiles collide violently, debris disperses around the immediate area. When satellites collide, something entirely different occurs. Due to the greatly lessened affect of Earth’s gravity upon the satellites, collisions in space are far more dangerous. When two satellites violently collide, pieces of both satellites do not stay in the immediately vicinity. Instead, they shoot off at different vectors, often traveling at thousands of miles per hour. Within a matter of moments, two large satellites can break up into hundreds of smaller pieces, all flying and falling in different directions. Each of the smaller pieces is now a projectile that could possibly crash into other satellites. For every impact that produces debris, more small satellites are created, meaning the Kessler syndrome is a positive feedback loop (it feeds on itself). While much space debris would eventually fall to Earth within a few years due to gravity, the debris that becomes trapped in a higher orbit can linger for as much as a thousand years, destroying the possibility of a safe exit from Earth’s atmosphere.

Should there ever be a case where the Kessler Syndrome would prevent humans from launching space-faring vessels and exploring beyond this planet’s bounds, the societal ramifications would be incredibly far reaching.

In the modern era we live in, man has spread to every corner of the globe where life can be sustained, and some places where it cannot (Antarctica, for example). Due to the wave of democratic revolutions that took place during the 20^th Century, the world went from a continuous period of autocratic-dominated rule to an era in which democratic countries with representative governments now vastly outnumber countries that maintain monarchies and autocracies. This is remarkable considering how all of written human history up until the 20^th Century provides us with a record that currently confirms the fact that governments of the people are a relatively new phenomenon.

Representative governments, generally being very liberal regarding the rights of citizens, tend to enact few systematic barriers regarding travel. This usually holds true for both travel within a country’s bounds and travel that has individuals leaving a specified country. While this is certainly an ability that many people, even prolific travelers, take for granted, one must remember that many countries throughout history had governments that prevented their people from leaving, or at least had institutionalized roadblocks that made travel all but impossible. Severe travel restrictions visited many countries, including the United States, during both World Wars. It is easy to forget that the Soviet Union, a country that greatly restricted both in-country and out-of-country travel before its collapse in 1991, was the world’s largest country in terms of land area and among its most populous. To think that the almost three-hundred million people of the Soviet Union were trapped within their country less than twenty years ago is mind-boggling.

If the Kessler Syndrome were to result in a situation where space flight from planet Earth were not practically feasible due to the danger of collision with orbiting debris, humanity, both as a collective and as individual members, would be trapped on this planet. While this explanation seems plain enough, it would most assuredly have almost immediate drastic consequences.

Given that the vast majority of governments throughout human history have been autocratic in nature, it is not unreasonable to assume that sometime in the future at least one sizeable autocratic government will be established. Depending on the reactions of both world leaders and common citizens, this theoretical autocratic regime will either be shunned and will eventually fall by the weight of its own people or, worse, will inspire a world-wide power grab as the leaders of nations either centralize power or new political factions arise, these factions then implementing for stronger centralized states. At this point in time, history shows just how real both scenarios could become. For an example of the former, see Josefa Iloilo, the current president and now-dictator of Fiji (he recently dissolved the country’s highest court and suspended the country’s constitution), rose to power simply out of his own might but is destined to fall, both due to the fact that there is institutionalized popular sovereignty in Fiji based on the country’s constitution but also because, at age eighty-eight, many Fijians wishing for a new leader are just waiting for him to die rather than start a revolution. For examples of the latter, one needs only to turn to Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler, men who both rose due to popular sovereignty, or at least, were confirmed as leaders due to the support of their respective country’s citizens.

But how exactly does the Kessler syndrome figure into these postulations? Time and time again, history has shown that autocratic governments almost always trample on the rights of individual citizens in order to carry out government goals. It should be noted that these aims could just as easily be due to the desires of an elite oligarchy as they could be due to calls for action by an enraged, blood-thirty general populace. During these times of social unrest and/or governmental oppression, the primary danger of the Kessler syndrome is revealed: the destruction of the ability to have vessels leave this planet effectively prevents escape from planet Earth. While this may seem like a particularly bold claim, the interconnectivity of our world today due to both advanced telecommunications emplacements and speedy travel possibilities has effectively shrunken the world; what two-hundred years ago would have been a several-months journey by horse-and-buggy or by foot became a few-days journey with the invention of the coal-powered locomotive and the establishment of train systems. From 1803 to 1806, explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark traveled from the western boundaries of the small American republic (pre-Louisiana Purchase) to the Pacific Ocean. With the completion of the United States Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, an individual could travel from New York to San Francisco, an even greater distance, in just under a week. With the advent of cheap air travel during the 20^th Century, any individual could pay a modest sum of money to travel the same distance in about six hours. With the shrinking of our world, any motivated and well-resourced government could easily hunt down individuals. Totalitarian governments in particular have shown to have complete disregard for the sovereignty of other countries by illegally pursing individuals who have fled to escape political oppression. Examples are numerous, including famous Marxist theorist Leon Trotsky, who was assassinated in his home in Mexico by a Soviet agent; Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian who fled to the United Kingdom but was later famously murdered in London by a KGB agent who used a specially-designed umbrella gun; Karim Mohammedzadeh, an Iranian who fled to Sweden and was later killed in his Stockholm-suburb apartment; and recently Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-KGB who in 2006 was poisoned in Britain with radioactive element polonium-210 by a suspected Russian national acting on government orders. With our world becoming ever more interconnected, escape from active, murderous governments has become almost impossible. A runaway Kessler syndrome scenario would close our final frontier and our only real escape: outer space.

When noting how the Kessler syndrome prevents escape from this planet, we must not focus on just individuals or even sizeable groups of individuals who wish for a change of scenery. Humanity itself is threatened by being forced to stay within this planet’s bounds. Each year, millions of objects stray into the path of Earth as our planet passes around the sun. These objects are known as meteoroids. When they come into contact with Earth’s atmosphere, they usually burn up and can be seen in the night sky as shooting stars. However, an incredibly small fraction of meteoroids fail to burn up in the atmosphere, coming all the way down to the ground. These objects are meteorites and the greatly threaten the survival of our species. The most famous historical example, one that very clearly illustrates just how deadly meteorites actually are, is the case of the rock that crashed into what is now the Yucatan Peninsula over sixty-five million years ago. This giant meteorite had such a massive impact on Earth’s surface that geologists believe that it carved out much of what is now the Gulf of Mexico. Paleontologists usually attribute this meteorite for causing the global destruction that lead to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Astronomers predict that the Earth is long overdue for another object to stray into this planet’s path and become a meteorite, reigning destruction down upon the fragile ecosystem we have here. That a runaway-case of Kessler syndrome could effectively prevent both planetary countermeasures as well as a last-ditch escape could mean that we would be trapped on Earth, facing our own demise as a species with almost no chance of survival.

The Kessler syndrome will certainly be a hot topic on the lips of many, astrophysicist, politician, and layman, in the coming decades. Preempting the angry rhetoric sure to be found in the speeches of future firebrands and aspiring office-holders, NASA has already established a network which tracks objects larger than five centimeters in size. For larger pieces that may endanger flying aircraft and ground populations, the United States Strategic Command, a section of the United States Department of Defense, tracks pieces and advises pilots and local law enforcement officials accordingly. Our knowledge today of how dangerous Kessler really is certainly our strongest weapon in the arsenal to battle this developing problem, with scientists and researchers worldwide working day and night to create technologies that will combat this future danger. Because of what we know now, we can only hope that our future is one where our skies aren’t plagued with debris so that we may freely leave Earth for beyond as we do please.

Copyright Dan Downs 2009

The world of print journalism will never be the same again. After 150 years of service to the Denver community, the Rocky Mountain News announced Thursday that their final issue would be Friday (February 27, 2009). Owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, the newspaper had been in financial trouble for months due to an industry-wide decline in newspaper revenues and the current financial turmoil that has shaken global markets.

The Rocky Mountain News had a storied history. Its first printing was in April of 1859, when William N. Byers, an Ohioan by birth, moved to Denver in order to sell newspapers to citizens of a booming gold-rush city. Since then, the paper has been through countless adventures. Evidence of the paper?s rich history can be found in author Robert L. Perkins? The First Hundred Years-an Informal History of Denver and the Rocky Mountain News, a book that chronicles the adventures of the Denver news giant from its birth in 1859 to its one-hundred year anniversary in 1959.

It is fitting to note that, while the closing of this institution is indeed a great tragedy, both for the industry and for the loyal readers of the paper, the Rocky Mountain News has left the stage in peak condition. The tenure of the paper?s last editor, John Temple, has seen the tabloid finally solidifying its position as a no-nonsense, high-quality news source that shatters the traditional stereotype that many Americans have come to associate with tabloid newspapers. Since 2000, the Rocky Mountain News has won four Pulitzer Prizes. Three were for excellence in photography while the last one was for reporter Jim Sheeler?s ?Final Salute? article, a piece about Casualty Assistance Calls Officers in the United States Marine Corps that was recognized as an outstanding achievement of journalistic prose, form, and content. While the death of this paper is a tragic one, Rocky employees can rest assured that the content produced by the paper was not at fault for the collapse of their beloved institution. Rather, revenues from Classified ads all but disappeared with the advent of Internet posting of services and sales, especially from sites like Craigslist.

This bottoming-out of revenue streams provided by newspaper ads has had detrimental affects throughout the American newspaper industry. This past Wednesday (February 25^th, 2009) saw the announcement from the San Francisco Chronicle that the newspaper was in experiencing incredible financial hardships, with the paper losing thousands of dollars each week. Hearst Corporation, owner of the Chronicle, knows that it cannot accept these losses forever. Currently, the paper looks to be listed for sale or closing within the coming months. The Journal Register Company, a multi-state corporation that owns over three-hundred local newspapers, recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection due to the almost complete destruction of revenues.

Some newspapers seem to be surviving, if not thriving, in this world of lessened newspaper revenues nationwide. The Wall Street Journal, for example, seems to be weathering the hard times nicely to due to highly successful web-based subscription service has resulted in many people paying substantial annual fees in order to read the Journal online each day.

The Rocky Mountain Press may be the first newspaper to go this year but it will certainly not be the last. With the passing of this once-formidable institution, an industry stands on the brink and waits to see if any more papers will share the same fate as the Rocky. For the job-seeking, ex-employees of what was Denver?s top tabloid and for the dedicated readers who enjoyed their paper?s daily serving of news, the market shift that has gutted the profit-making organs of newspapers across the nation has already taken its toll and robbed the world of quality writing and photography that Denver knew and loved. This new paradigm shift, while justified according of the market?s natural tendencies, has left a world where everyone already misses their Rocky.

Copyright Daniel Downs 2009

I took advantage of IHOP’s generosity and did visit my local franchise. The service was prompt, the pancakes warm and fluffy, the butter deliciously whipped, and the atmosphere cozy. Within minutes, I devoured my free stack of pancakes. After my meal, I made a sizable donation to the charity drive.

While I’m sure the event wasn’t too profitable for IHOP as a company, it is heartwarming to see businesses go out of their way for a good cause. That waiters and waitresses working today did so on the company dime but often without tips (as they were donated to the charity drive), a true act of selflessness on the part of those who survive on the money we patrons leave on the table.

Men and women of IHOP, I salute you. And thanks for the warm, fluffy pancakes.

Copyright Daniel Downs 2009

It was with incredible shock that I heard Senator Dodd casually mention the n-word while appearing as a guest on “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” a Bloomberg Television talk show that airs on Friday afternoon and Sunday morning. That a man could so audaciously use such a powerful, aggressive word in seemingly polite discourse was, to say the least, a surprising fact. Whether or not Senator Dodd intended his use of the n-word to have drastic consequences, the result was the same: markets tumbled Friday on the news that influential sitting politicians, such as Chris Dodd, were even considering the implementation of the n-word. When Alan Greenspan had used that n-word earlier this week, the market generally pooh-poohed his remarks without giving them much credence, as the aging former Chairman for the Federal Reserve, while still influential, now has almost no control over the mechanisms of this government, economic or otherwise. Dodd?s use of the word this Friday sent shockwaves through Wall Street as investors questioned their very reason for being.

This insidious word, one that is rarely mentioned in successful capitalistic societies, is certainly not what is needed now. The word I have been alluding to is, of course, ?nationalization.? Simply defined, nationalization is the process of a government seizing the interests of a company or even an entire industry. The history of the use of nationalization aside (Wikipedia and InfoPlease.com and good places to start for those wishing to brush up on the history of nationalization), the reason why this word has caused so much fear on Wall Street as of late is due to, among other things, a specific aspect of nationalization; namely, how investors are compensated once a government takes control of a business or industry. If a government were to nationalize an industry without compensating investors, the result would be known as expropriation. Depending on the industry, investors could lose millions to billions of dollars worth of assets simply because the government exercises its power (legally given or otherwise) to take control of a freely-operating business.

A nice benefit to living in a (mostly) free-market, capitalistic society is that businesses are allowed to fail and, by extension, allowed to succeed. As failure is generally an unpleasant option for entrepreneurs and business owners, the quest for success is generally what a business and its owners endeavor. That the government may swoop in at any moment and take over a successful (or failing) business is not a thought that business owners and operators wish to address. The idea that the government may, at any time, take over a business and jeopardize the assets of those who own stake in the company, is one that is simply abhorrent! Barring a major societal and economic shift, I can only hope that Senator Dodd and other law makers avoid the use of the n-word so that businesses and the people in their employ can continue trying to make a profit without the (hopefully needless) fear of government confiscation.

Copyright 2009 Daniel Downs

While the Obama campaign is by no means advocating such trickery, the mass communication infrastructure created by the Democratic candidate’s team has an incredible potential, one that has forever changed the nature of national politics. Imagine this: It’s Tuesday, November 4^th. You are a lanky college Freshman waking up after noon following a night of rigorous studying. Leaving the bed, you feel the familiar vibration of the brand-new iPhone that rests in your pocket. You look at the screen and see that there are two new text messages, both from the Obama campaign. The first, sent at 8:00 AM sharp, is a reminder that today is Election Day and that the Obama campaign needs your vote. The second is a follow-up reminder, this one containing a special video message from Barack Obama himself. It’s 12:34 PM and you’re still in bed, but the Obama campaign has turned your mind to national politics and has reminded you to vote. You quickly hop out of bed and turn on your laptop, eager to check your Facebook and MySpace profiles. Besides a few regular updates to your Wall that are just extensions of mundane, circular conversations that have been skipping back and forth between your Wall and the Wall of your distant friend for over a year now, you see that the Obama campaign has sent you reminders. All who are friends with Barack on MySpace get a personalized message; one that is replete with the fancy HTML coding that caused millions to jump ship to Facebook. It’s now 12:40 PM on a cloudy Tuesday. You have received a total of four communiques from the Obama campaign, with two being text-messages, one a Facebook reminder, and the other a colorful MySpace greeting. Although your day schedule was previously clear, you make plans to visit the nearest polling station. You know who you’ll be voting for.

With the advent of high-speed internet connections and instant, worldwide messaging devices, the Obama campaign could have the ability to effectively mobilize a younger and more tech-savvy demographic, one that is usually associated with staying home every November 4^th. The ubiquitousness of such communication devices gives the Obama campaign the capacity to remind potential voters constantly, to rally those students who may support him but didn’t plan on voting.

The McCain campaign had better watch out! While a certain phrase regarding the political process in Chicago is certainly outdated, the spirit it carries, that of mobilizing huge bodies of voters, is alive and well today. In a world of modern marvels and high-connectivity, the Obama campaign can and most certainly will be telling those able to “Just Vote!” on the first Tuesday of November.

Copyright 2008 Daniel Downs

It was an average Perspectives meeting. This week?s topic of discussion was about the then-current crop of frontrunners in the race for the White House. The meeting started spectacularly, with a group of female students quickly attacking Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton. These girls criticized the former First Lady to great extent, sometimes using words that cannot be printed here. While I understand and respect any informed person?s political views, I was horrified by the main argument that these girls put forward: Hillary Clinton should not become President of the United States simply because she was a woman. With the irony both obvious and saddening, I came to the startling realization that this argument was actually considered legitimate by these girls and other students in the classroom.

Collectivism is the philosophy of grouping an individual with a larger body or establishment. Collectivists tend to make unfair associations between people and large social groups due to a stereotype or commonly held belief. Collectivism encompasses all forms of discrimination, including racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, etc.

The discussion regarding Hillary Clinton is a perfect example of collectivist attitudes found in America today. Here, girls attacked Hillary Clinton for being born a female. Instead of judging her as an individual, these girls argued that females were inherently less suited for the demanding job as leader of the free world because, according to them, women were emotional and not able to properly deal with stress. This argument was not against Hillary herself but rather against all women. These girls argued that their belief, whether formed by personal experience or otherwise, applied to Mrs. Clinton because she herself was a woman, not taking into account that Hillary, as an individual, might not conform to their preconceived notions of how all women act.

The terrifyingly gargantuan nature of collectivism can be hard to grasp. While it is well known that forms of discrimination are all related, the idea that they come from humans making generalizations about groups of people can be a tough pill to swallow. Besides this, our current culture and government perpetuate the collectivist way of thinking.

For example, government handouts and leniency based on race, sex, ethnicity, etc. can build resentment between groups of people. Intelligent individuals could turn towards racism if the government were to specifically give benefits to people of a certain race. If all the members of one group were given special treatment because they just happened to be born with a certain skin color or ethnicity, people who didn?t receive such treatment might characterize all people receiving the government?s attentions as having the same positive or negative traits.

Culture also perpetuates collectivist thinking. What do women want? I don?t know what women want, as I am not every woman on the planet. I do know what certain women want. I know that my mom wants to go on vacation this summer to Disney World. But does every woman share this goal? Grouping all men or women together with a seemingly harmless question takes away from the individual rights of every person to be considered equally among all humans, regardless of gender or any other inborn trait.

Someday, I hope that all people are judged solely on their non-superficial traits. Until this concept is realized, the world will continue to exist with over six billion people but not a single individual.