Rand Paul On The Need For A New Republican Party

The Article: Rand Paul: We need ‘a new Republican Party’ — not small changes by Aaron Blake in The Washington Post.

The Text: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says in a new interview that the Republican Party needs an overhaul rather than minor changes.

“I think Republicans will not win again in my lifetime, for the presidency, unless they become a new GOP, a new Republican Party,” Paul said on Glenn Beck’s show. “And it has to be a transformation — not just a little tweaking at the edges.”

The tea party favorite said it’s much more productive for people like him to refashion the GOP than to go the third-party route like his father, former congressman Ron Paul (Tex.), did early in his career. (Paul was the Libertarian Party nominee in 1988 but later returned to the GOP and ran for that party’s nomination twice.)

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How A Shitty Economy Affects Your Love Life

The Article: How America’s Terrible Economy May Be Ruining Your Love Life by Sam Pizzigati in AlterNet.

The Text: Finding true love, philosophers have always understood, can get complicated in deeply unequal places. Grand fortunes tend to give Cupid a hard time, on Valentine’s Day and every other.

“If you gain fame, power, or wealth, you won’t have any trouble finding lovers,” as Philip Slater noted years ago in The Pursuit of Loneliness, “but they will be people who love fame, power, or wealth.”

But philosophers no longer have a corner on the love-and-inequality connection. All sorts of social scientists are now working that intersection where wealth and romance meet — and they’re uncovering an assortment of troubling trends.

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What College Graduates Regret

The Article: What College Graduates Regret by Eleanor Barkhorn in The Atlantic.

The Text: What’s the most important thing a college student can do to ensure she’ll have a job after graduation? The most common answer to that question lately: Pick the right major. Major in science or engineering, you’ll have no trouble finding work. Study the humanities, and you’re doomed. A recent BuzzFeed video takes this idea to its comic extreme. A bunch of underemployed liberal-arts graduates try to talk a group of college kids out of repeating their mistakes, “Scared Straight”-style.

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Kansas’ Abominable Anti-Gay Bill

The Article: Kansas’ Anti-Gay Segregation Bill Is an Abomination by Mark Joseph Stern in Slate.

The Text: On Tuesday, the Kansas House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a measure designed to bring anti-gay segregation—under the guise of “religious liberty”—to the already deep-red state. The bill, written out of fear that the state may soon face an Oklahoma-style gay marriage ruling, will now easily pass the Republican Senate and be signed into law by the Republican governor. The result will mark Kansas as the first state, though certainly not the last, to legalize segregation of gay and straight people in virtually every arena of life.

If that sounds overblown, consider the bill itself. When passed, the new law will allow any individual, group, or private business to refuse to serve gay couples if “it would be contrary to their sincerely held religious beliefs.” Private employers can continue to fire gay employees on account of their sexuality. Stores may deny gay couples goods and services because they are gay. Hotels can eject gay couples or deny them entry in the first place. Businesses that provide public accommodations—movie theaters, restaurants—can turn away gay couples at the door. And if a gay couple sues for discrimination, they won’t just lose; they’ll be forced to pay their opponent’s attorney’s fees. As I’ve noted before, anti-gay businesses might as well put out signs alerting gay people that their business isn’t welcome.

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Michael Sam And The New America

The Article: Michael Sam and the new America by Frida Ghitis in CNN ONline.

The Text: When a massive, muscle-bound American football player announced this weekend that he is gay, we watched yet another brick crumble in the monolith of American prejudice. To some, Michael Sam’s words might have come as a shock, but most Americans know the country is in the midst of a fundamental social shift, one that conjures images of a different place.

Where? Well, if you traveled from the United States to the Netherlands a few years ago, what you saw — and smelled — in the streets of ultra-liberal Amsterdam probably shocked you. Young people smoking joints in an open-air café, gay couples holding hands on the streets and people of all ages not batting an eye about any of it gave U.S. visitors a novel and exotic experience.

Back then, the United States and the Netherlands stood on opposite sides of the front line of the social wars. Not anymore. It’s not because the Netherlands has changed. It is the United States, the American people, who have changed.
The transformation in U.S. public opinion, increasingly reflected in legislation, has narrowed what was an enormous gap between the two countries. Change is coming at such a fast, accelerating rate that one wonders, is America turning into the Netherlands?

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