Just a few months ago in September, I wrote a piece for The Concordian Politics called “Charting a Course”. The gist of the piece was basically the idea that the United States needs to disabuse itself of the notion that it can unilaterally shape the affairs of the world to its liking. In the United Nations the…
Author: Jon-Erik Nelson
In defense of a general
The swirling controversy surrounding the resignation of the director of the CIA, former four-star general David Petraeus, because of an extramarital affair is extremely perturbing. Surprisingly, the affair is perhaps the least bothersome piece of information about the whole situation. This is in no way to diminish the significance of General Petraeus’s actions; he made…
Ragnarok for Republicans
The 2012 campaign was supposed to be a nail-biter. Republicans were convinced they had an incumbent in the White House who was vulnerable, both because of the weak economy and because of deep-seated divisions among the electorate. The strategy was an old one for Republicans: find some kind of wedge to break the electorate in…
The vision thing
Election day is fast approaching. By this time next week Barack Obama will have been elected to a second term or Mitt Romney will have been elected the 45th President of the United States. Presidential elections are a quadrennial ritual in this country and at times they can seem tiresome, trite, or even downright toxic;…
The road less travelled by
With the fourth and final debate of the 2012 election cycle concluded, both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have entered the final sprint of the campaign. The debate on Monday was, ostensibly, to be a showdown, a battle between two competing visions of America’s role in the modern global community. During the Republican primary and…
Round two
Much like the first debate, Wednesday night’s presidential debate, the second of the election season, drew an audience of more than 65 million viewers. Unlike the first debate, however, Wednesday night featured two men who appeared to be awake. In reality the differences between the first debate and the most recent one are much starker…
Down to brass tacks
In conversations with Republicans and conservatives, one common response when they are asked about the economic woes facing this country has to do with the rapidly expanding deficits and the national debt. To begin, it’s first important to understand exactly what these terms mean. A deficit is when the government spends more money than it…
Silence is no solution
Wednesday night was the first of three Presidential debates. I was intending for this installment to focus on the performances of each of the candidates, their relative strengths and weaknesses, and so on. In watching last nights proceedings, however, I couldn’t help but notice with not a small measure of disappointment that throughout the ninety…
Charting a course
Anybody who’s been following the 2012 campaign for any length of time has most likely been inundated by pundits from the left and the right with the idea that this year would be a reprise of Bill Clinton’s 1992 classic “It’s the economy, stupid” and to a large extent this has been the case. A…
Introductions
To kick off my first blog post in this new venue, I’d like to quickly tell you all a little bit about myself. I’m a junior here at Concordia, majoring in Political Science and Chinese. I’ve lived in Moorhead since the summer before my freshman year of high school and my favorite candy in the…