By Lingfeng Li
I often encounter more liberally-minded peers keen to attack my own political views, even if they don’t fully understand what these views are.  When I talk about how the country cannot afford the kind of spending President Obama has undertaken, I am quickly asked “why is it that we could afford the war on Iraq?”  The truth is, we couldn’t.  I didn’t support the war on Iraq either.  In fact, when the United States first declared war on Iraq, I wanted to skip my middle school classes and …

By Amanda Auerbach
When Ada Gregory, the director of the Duke University Women’s Center claimed in the Chronicle article on the new rape policy that the Duke sex offenders are the “crème of the crop” due the high intelligence of Duke students and their consequent “cunning” and “manipulative” powers, she assumes that the female victims of sexual offenses have been out-smarted by their male offenders.  She has since apologized for the implications of her claim, but she did offer statistics to back her claim up in the same article.  For this …

By Aaron McGuire
There are a lot of different definitions of the word “conservative.” I agree with some of them. I disagree with many more. In this writer’s view, though, real conservatism is a philosophy best encapsulated in two key words. Responsibility and restraint.
Conservatism means a government that takes its responsibility to preserve the individual liberties of its citizens as a sacred vow, not an empty promise. A government that understands that, truly, its own value is in the freedom it gives its citizens.
Conservatism means a government committed to fiscal restraint, …

By Trent Serwetz
Intoning the phrase “political conservatism,” depending on the audience, might conjure up images of the bygone Reagan era and the laissez faire policies associated with it. On the other hand, to some people “conservative” is symbolic of a horned devil with a pitchfork and a can of Budweiser.
For a couple of reasons, identifying the meaning of the word conservatism while sifting through all the spin surrounding it is no easy task. The modern media is so polarized that we are constantly bombarded with negative images of both conservatives …

By Matt Straus
“If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.” – John Dewey
It was a normal Tuesday night for Kevin Zhu. After finishing his differential equations homework and hanging with his hallmates, he opened up his laptop and checked his email. Nearing 1 am, he finally decided it was time for class. That’s right; at 12:48 am, Kevin Zhu sat down for his physics lecture.
Across the campus Tuesday night, Kevin was probably not the only one streaming a lecture. In fact, with DukeCapture’s availability …

By Ari Ruffer
Former Texas senator and United States ambassador Robert Krueger spoke to a crowd of nearly 40 students on September 23 for the Duke Political Union’s fourth installment of its Super Tuesday speaker series.  Krueger was also a Duke professor and as the dean of Trinity College.
Krueger spoke mostly about his experience as ambassador to Burundi, a position that President Clinton appointed him to after losing his 1994 Senate bid. He vividly described the situation in the nation. He explained that Burundi—one of the 10 poorest nations in the …