Study Abroad is supposed to be transformative: that’s the whole point. Yet, as every stubborn college student does, I underestimated how much a couple short months would change my perspective on almost everything. These are my thoughts and reflections on a trip that was the best decision I have ever made.

Read about my travels in Tokyo, Kunming, Beijing, and Seoul in The Texas Orator.

“We must take our country back.” The most salient political refrain of our time is so widely endorsed that it is impossible to locate its origin. Populists from every corner of the globe all seem to share the same message, but they rarely quote each other. Their appeals to fear of subversion and to the necessity of pure autonomy have become incredibly successful in contemporary politics by building a movement around a timeless objective.

Sovereignty is an old concept in tension with a new world. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia enshrined the principle among European monarchies. For centuries, the idea that a state ought to be free from foreign interference held. When this norm has been violated – by assassinations of nobility or invasions of neighbors – massive conflicts have ensued. Even as the world democratized, the concept was transferred from the rights of the crown to the rights of the public.

Read the full article at The Texas Orator.

Diagnosing what ails the American republic is a national pastime that has indicted particular culprits such as new technology, economic inequality, and Newt Gingrich. At the risk of adding yet another sky-is-falling tome to this burgeoning literary genre, there is another clear and present danger threatening political discourse. American politics has been afflicted by rampant reductionism, otherwise known as “Labelocracy.”

In many ways, Labelocracy is an intensified form of the scourge of identity politics. It is most clearly revealed when, as Congressman Dan Crenshaw aptly described, one entity labels “someone as an ‘-ist’ who believes in an ‘-ism’” and dismisses their statements, sentiments, and experiences altogether. Identity politics is the assertion of one’s own labels; Labelocracy is the imposition of labels onto another as a means of suffocating debate.

Read the Full Article at The Texas Orator.

This semester, I was lucky enough to be joined at The Orator by a couple of fellow Canadians, one of which has very graciously agreed to join me in a conversation about a recurring topic in Canadian politics: First Nations issues. First Nations are what people in the States refer to as “Native American” communities; the Canadian government’s relations with these peoples is a long, often messy history, which we will try to break down and compare to Indigenous issues here in the United States. First, I want to start out by sharing our personal connections to Canadian Indigenous communities.

My family is originally from the province of Saskatchewan, which is overwhelmingly rural and sparsely populated. The Indigenous community makes up a noticeable segment of Saskatchewan. As a child, I remember visiting family and playing with Indigenous children in the park. It has only been since I left Canada that I have realized the hardships faced by generations of Indigenous peoples. I was very shocked to hear when my home province became the site of what is called “Canada’s Trayvon Martin” moment when an Indigenous man was shot and killed by a Saskatchewan farmer. These issues are always overlooked by rather rosy caricatures of Canada, so I look forward to uncovering some of the realities of this dire problem. Morgan, would you like to start off with a little introduction to your ties and background to First Nations in Canada?

Read the full article at The Texas Orator.

As the polls open for early voting, the classic “I voted” stickers serve as a reminder of American civic duty, or the lack thereof. Bemoaning low voter participation is a tried and true American pastime. Yet, the most unrelenting aspect of this phenomenon is the chronic inaction by elected officials. In these midterm elections, no major candidate has made voter enfranchisement a key campaign issue. The landmark Voting Rights Act is over 50 years old, and still no recent administration has passed major federal legislation to update our elections system and address America’s consistently abysmal voter turnout.

Meanwhile, United States foreign policy sputters from one crisis to the next, unable to control a cascade of human rights calamities from Asia to the Middle East and even into Europe. For the first time in recent history, the number of democracies worldwide has begun to decline. This should be alarming. Democracies tend to avoid war against each other, build cooperative political and economic ties with other states, and are typically more stable than autocracies that rely on sustained repression. Fewer democracies in the world will threaten the longevity of our own; it’s about time we started to promote democracy here at home.

Read the full article at The Texas Orator.