The Brown University Spectator

Man, Misery and Mystery

Sean Quigley — Fri, 07 May 2010 03:38:45 +0000

As a member of a family that has been Presbyterian for many centuries, and as one who regularly communicates at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal on George Street, I feel comfortable writing on behalf of orthodox Protestants. I am just a layman, to be sure, and make no claim to clerical expertise; but in addressing the [...]

The Great Debate Over Sarah Palin Con

Poppy Addison — Fri, 07 May 2010 03:36:06 +0000

Sarah Palin may appear an earthy cookie-baker, but the cutesy provincialism neither advances nor represents conservatism. Rather than garnering public trust, the hockey mom routine has made her primetime laughingstock. The winks, insipid buzzphrases (“You betcha!”), and muddled policy perscriptions show Palin to be fatally flawed and not of, for, or by the real right. Cursory [...]

The Great Debate Over Sarah Palin Pro

Ivayla Ivanova — Fri, 07 May 2010 03:33:09 +0000

Pro: Not long ago, I was at a dinner with a couple; a professor and his wife. When they discovered that I was a conservative, and that on top of that I like Sarah Palin, the wife exclaimed: “Sarah Palin is a bitch! And I never, ever use that word.” This from a woman [...]

The Street

Hari Tyagi — Fri, 07 May 2010 03:29:44 +0000

Greedy, money-grubbing, arrogant. These are a few of the many insults bandied about by President Obama and his media allies to describe the scapegoat du jour: Wall Street bankers. Similar epithets can be heard all over this campus, spat by aggrieved students and professors, their faces flushed with the venom of self-righteousness. These loudmouths [...]

All for one, one for all; Government for – none!

Lily Tran — Fri, 07 May 2010 03:27:57 +0000

An acquaintance once said, “The more money I make, the less I care about people.” This ‘insight,’ he explained, informs his conservatism. It was to me totally insensible. Conservatives do not not care about people. Opposition to welfarism and to the high taxes that end up funding dole programs do not signal a [...]

Here, Bullet

Brian Turner — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 05:04:08 +0000

If a body is what you want, then here is bone and gristle and flesh. Here is the clavicle-snapped wish, the aorta’s opened valves, the leap thought makes at the synaptic gap. Here is the adrenaline rush you crave, that inexorable flight, that insane puncture into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish what you’ve started. Because here, Bullet, here is where [...]

Certainty

Kirby Olson — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:59:23 +0000

Love should remain still as the sun, yet burst! Love is hot. Love reveals. Love opens the heart’s cathedral — the congregation ululates! Love is not mere. The sun lasts a few billion, or so, simple years. Love always persists. Love never ends!

Calculations

Kirby Olson — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:55:00 +0000

What is left of time for me or you? Subtraction is the melody of God as we disappear, a trickle of kingdoms in the sand clock.

Evening

Kirby Olson — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:50:47 +0000

Is it true that I like to confess? The days linger like shadows in the evening. At seventeen I considered suicide from a small bridge, & now almost laugh at the evening. Things don’t go as well as hound dogs chasing prisoners through the evening. Beechnut gum is made in Canajoharie as the hired men smoke with the evening. I have nothing to [...]

Dude, Where’s My Change?

Terrence George — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:44:35 +0000

November 5, 2008. Standing on a broad stage in Chicago, surrounded by roaring crowds, president-elect Barack Obama announces: “Change has come to America!” Sixteen months later, here we are, with growing malaise and sinking approval ratings. Dude, where’s my change? Obama arrived as a modern-day messiah come to set his people free, leading Hillary Clinton [...]