Shannon Zhang

This year's State of the Union was watched by a record few Americans—only 33.3 million viewers, the lowest in fourteen years1. I will be the first to admit that I did not watch the State of the Union—I was about to go to class atthe time, and I watched the beginnings of the speech, knowing that later, I could watch the entire speech on Youtube, or read a transcript of the … [Read more...] about One Nation Under Who?: The State of the Union of a Sitting Duck

        The Supreme Court just tussled with the concept of religious liberty and the right for women to have contraceptive. Contraceptives have been mandated as part of employee medical insurance, as provided by employers under the Affordable Care Act. For-profit companies have already been told that they cannot exempt themselves out of the … [Read more...] about One Nation Under Who?: Religious Freedom vs Obamacare

Marijuana has been at the forefront of American minds mostly as the “gateway” drug into harder drugs, or even as a drug that was on par with cocaine or meth. Thus, during the 1980s, marijuana, along with other substances that are usually considered more “hard”, were banned at the federal level (as a schedule 1 substance) as part of the war on drugs[1]. Since then, thousands of … [Read more...] about One Nation Under Who?: Americans and Marijuana

As a freshman in high school, just getting into politics, I found myself sympathizing with so-called liberal ideas frequently, While trying to gush to my father about my newfound liberal views, my father, himself a moderate liberal, shook his head at my extreme views and said, “Well, when you’re young, you’re liberal. It means you have a heart. When you’re not conservative if … [Read more...] about One Nation Under Who?: Being a Somewhat Libertarian