The Hippocratic Oath is confusing, out of date, and contradictory. In a world in which health care is determined not by doctors or health professionals but rather by politicians and their decisions, it is difficult and confusing to progress with healthcare legislation when the medical community is beholden by a different set of regulations. By forcing doctors to promise to protect a patient’s life at all costs, the Hippocratic Oath essentially prolongs the current conservative healthcare system.

With healthcare decisions becoming increasingly liberal, though, the protection of life is being set on the backburner. On issues such as abortion, in fact, the medical community overtly goes against the Hippocratic Oath because of a conflict between the Roe v. Wade decision and the existing oath.

A new dilemma arises over the force feedings at Guantanamo Bay. Currently, doctors are on orders both by politicians in Washington and by their Hippocratic Oath to preserve the lives of suicide intent Guantanamo Bay subjects. But what if Washington is to decide to ban force feeding, a position supported by much of the international community? In such a case, doctors will be torn between protecting the lives of their patients and upholding a set of laws contradicting that. This contradiction with the basis of all healthcare, the Hippocratic Oath, makes it much more difficult for Washington policymakers to disavow force feeding.

On euthanasia too progress is failing because of the Hippocratic Oath. Doctors, under the Hippocratic Oath, are obliged to protect the lives of their patients above all else. This is inconsistent with the path many states have gone to allow euthanasia if a doctor has certified that a patient is terminally ill. It is only a matter of time before such a policy goes to a national scale; after all, policies tend to get more liberal over time rather than conservative. The Hippocratic Oath serves currently as an impediment to easing the suffering of dying patients.

The issue with the Hippocratic Oath is that it leaves little room for maneuvering. When citizens are placing their lives in a doctor’s hands, it only makes sense for the doctor to get full responsibility to take a decision. A doctor should not be held accountability by the Hippocratic Oath, an outdated medical practice that mandates a right to life rather than offering it as a liberty. In the present day, the Hippocratic Oath stifles liberal healthcare bills condoning euthanasia and preventing force feeding from passing. And, in the future, as politics continues to liberalize and euthanasia and voluntary starvation become legal, doctors will soon be repeating the Hippocratic Oath on a page while acting very differently on the operating table. 

The failure of ERT, Greece’s public broadcasting system, as well as most of the rest of Greece’s overly bureaucratic public sector, offers valuable lessons in public sector pay and unionization for the rest of the world to follow.

In the public sector in Greece, as anywhere, unionizing is no one’s first choice. Public sector employees tend to be over skilled and underpaid. The fact that a person who has attained a university education would choose a lower paying public sector job indicates that they are not purely driven by money; serving value to society is equally important to such a worker. Thus, the unionization of public sector workers shows that they have been pushed far beyond what is fair or reasonably expected of a public sector employee.

Unionization is more often than not a response to abuse by the public sector and its workers to the government. While it may seem cheaper to pay public sector workers low wages, this is hardly ever the case. In the long term, paying public sector workers poorly will lead to unionization which can only cost more for the government.

Unfortunately, once unions achieve fair rights for workers, they rarely stop there. They often go on to make unfair demands for extra compensation and more hiring that contributes to a costly bureaucracy. This probably doesn’t sound too foreign a concept. This is the case with the ETP where around 2/3 of the job posts were found to be unnecessary. Yet this is also the case, albeit to a lesser extent, with the public school system in the United States where tenure allows poor teachers to never be fired and to earn above average salaries whether their students learn or not.

As such, it is necessary for governments not only to pay their public sector workers well but also to pay them based on performance. More often than not, all public sector workers in a given sector in a particular region, state, or province are paid according to a set formulaic guideline based on experience, degree, and job title. To make matters worse, given unionization’s chokehold on public sector jobs, it is nearly impossible to fire a public sector worker; doing so often requires a bureaucratic, complex system that is so costly and time intensive that it makes more sense just to keep incompetent public sector workers around.

As such, a teacher or other public sector worker can get the same pay whether they spend their day trying to improve society or surfing the net, reading magazines, and wasting valuable public funds. A high paying, meritocratic system of paying public sector workers (paying them like private sector workers in other words) in Greece and the rest of the bureaucratic developed world will appease unions, boost productivity, and therefore save the government precious funds in the future. 

With the recent election of moderate Rouhani for Iranian president, many across the world have prematurely prophesized sweeping reforms, a new Iran, and global peace and stability for ensuing decades.

Such visions fail on two fronts. Firstly, Rouhani is a moderate compared to his much more radically conservative opponents; his objective moderation may be limited. Secondly and more importantly, Rouhani will have little power to influence the status quo in Iranian politics. Contrary to popular opinion, as Iranian president, Rouhani will merely serve as a figurehead for Ayatollah Khamenei just as Ahmadinejad did. Ahmadinejad was constantly overruled by the Ayatollah on issues ranging from nuclear developments to diplomacy with the United States. Expecting change under a leader who has consistently ruled conservatively for his nearly 25 year term is idealistic to say the least.

Some may say that the Ayatollah allowing a moderate like Rouhani to win the “elections” rigged by the Iranian Guardian Council presided over by the Ayatollah himself signals a shift towards liberalism. In reality, though, Rouhani’s election is merely a shift back in line with Khamenei’s political slant from the radical Ahmadinejad.

The pure and simple truth is that things will not and cannot change with the Ayatollah still in power. More depressingly, there is little likelihood of things approving even after the Ayatollah’s death; the next Ayatollah will be chosen from the Guardian Council, a group chosen by Khamenei precisely because they matched his political inclinations.

Of course, there is a chance that things will change with Rouhani as Iranian president; while Rouhani lacks substantial physical power over politics in Iran, he could conceivably impact Khamenei’s political leaning. One must assume that working with the radically conservative Ahmadinejad for years led Khamenei to be ever so slightly more conservative, even when he held the reins. Logically, one can conclude that Rouhani could have the opposite effect, swinging Khamenei’s pendulum ever so slightly to the left past an arbitrary threshold that would impel him to embrace or at least consider reforms.

But trust must be earned and with the status quo likely to perpetuate in Iran, the U.S. and the rest of the international community has little choice but to continue operating its foreign policy in regards to Iran under the assumption that nothing has changed. As such, perpetuating a foreign policy based on distrust is necessary. If Iran truly is keen on reforms, then it will simply have to provide not just talk but actions to alter its foreign policy, domestic civil rights abuses to convince the United States to loosen its diplomatic tensions with Iran.  

Currently, Senate and state legislatures are debating government benefits and the provision of driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. Such measures reek of assimilation, a policy towards illegal immigrants out of tune with the political inclination of average Americans.

While the recent push towards rights for immigrants may appear to be a step in the right direction of historic American “melting pot” values, such a statement could not be further from the truth. For one thing, the United States has never been too keen on immigrants; recent immigrants have always comprised the most oppressed, most downtrodden class of Americans. Moreover, Americans have always made a distinction between legal and illegal immigrants. Looking at the treatment of the squatter Pilgrims and the non-citizen Native Americans in the early years of the United States, it is clear that the ideal of America being open to all is far from true. Therefore, the rhetoric that politicians have overused to the point of staleness that it is innately American to provide services to all residents of the U.S., legal or not, is not necessarily true.

Of course, history does not have to dictate U.S. policy and ideals; the U.S. can conscientiously strive to work towards superior living conditions for illegal immigrants in spite of its insular past. However, with the historical basis of protection for illegal immigrants disproven, politicians need to create a persuasive case to sell Americans on the benefits that government services to illegal immigrants provides them.  

Unfortunately, even if Americans supported such a policy on moral grounds, it is extremely impractical and contrary to their interests. With states in recent years approving laws to help illegal immigrants and, especially, their children gain access to government benefits almost on par with Americans, the U.S. is setting foot on a dangerous path. Unless Americans can turn the tide in the other direction, immigrants will have no fears, no downside to immigrating illegally to the United States save for being caught en route to the U.S. in which case they would merely be turned back. Doesn’t sound half bad does it? No, it doesn’t, especially considering the harsh situations at home that would impel people to leave their home country to become an illegal immigrant in a foreign, unknown country.

What the U.S. needs is to further its policy of extending government services to the children of illegal immigrants born in the U.S. or immigrating to the U.S. at a young age. Doing so best upholds the United States’ ideals of meritocracy; those born in the U.S. to illegal immigrant parents never willingly committed a crime and should therefore have full and equal access to U.S. government services. At the same time, the U.S. needs to punish the first generation of illegal immigrants to serve as a deterrent. Doing so strikes a healthy balance between conservatives who want to make life so bad for illegal immigrants that they self-deport and liberals who want to make life as good for illegal immigrants as for citizens.

In any case, a pathway to legal residency, a monumental task, is needed in order to track these immigrants and appropriate government services and handouts to the correct generation. Providing such a pathway with minimal benefits to the true offenders, the first generation of illegal immigrants to the U.S., is far more in tune with American ideals of responsibility and meritocracy than full assimilation is with the supposed ideal of acceptance.   

With perceptions of large corporations already very negative amongst Americans, three new issues add fuel to the fire burning against corporate excesses. Firstly, Reuters studies have shown that many of Wal-Mart’s branches in the United States are hiring only temporary workers to cut back on healthcare costs. Next, Google, only the latest in a series of similar cases, has been ‘minimizing’ its taxes below acceptable levels, the UK has found. To top it all off, Fox Searchlight Pictures has decided to appeal a case in which it was found guilty of masquerading student employees as interns to avoid paying minimum wage.

While it may seem profitable for companies to take measures like this in the pursuit of short term profits, shirking the law will only come back to haunt such companies. Gone are the days when wealth and profits made right and Americans were resigned to the will and impunity of large corporations.

The Occupy Wall Street movement may have all but died down, but the sentiment behind it has not. The movement itself was poorly conceived and planned but the ideals behind the movement, whether right or wrong, highlight the beliefs of many Americans, especially the next generation.

Whether or not companies choose to believe it or not, corporate ethics and the extent to which companies uphold their corporate social responsibility will have a huge bearing on their ability to hire employees. The next generation of Americans have been permanently shaken by the idea that large Wall Street Banks could ever hold Americans hostage to their derivatives, credit swaps, and other ways of gaming the system.

Now, they are fighting back, not only against the Wall Street giants, but also against other companies which seek to violate the intent of laws and regulations to the detriment of society. Wal-Mart, Fox, Google, and every other American company and multinational must re-evaluate their business model. No longer are they subject only to the scrutiny of the IRS and the Federal Government. They are now beholden to the masses of the next generation.

This necessitates a whole new way of thinking and operating. While before companies only had to worry about operating within the defined boundaries of the law (boundaries that could be stretched depending on the strength of their corporate lawyer) to avoid prosecution, companies now must be mindful to public interpretation. Now, it is not just convictions but even mere allegations that can stick in the minds of Americans for decades that companies have to be mindful of. 

With the Eurozone crisis, European nations have faced despair, unemployment, and poverty. Yet, despite all the negatives of prolonged recessions, one positive has emerged: European nations, through austerity, are reforming their welfare systems to sustainable levels. 

At the same time, though the United States is confronted by a welfare system equally large and unwieldy as many European nations, it is extremely complacent. What with continued economic growth and no Eurozone bailouts to fund or receive, it has had no major wake-up call like the Eurozone crisis to impel it to deal with its welfare colossus.

The issue is that Americans feel entitled to the welfare system while Europeans tend to view themselves simply as beneficiaries. Americans, particularly in regards to Medicare, feel that it is unfair to take away or reduce the benefits of a system that they paid into when they were taxpayers. The problem with such a view is that successive generations will continue to demand the benefits of a welfare system they paid into as taxpayers and thus it will be nearly impossible to ever mold public opinion and thus politicians’ votes in favor of shrinking the welfare system below its current size. In fact, even Republicans, who supposedly argue for a fiscally conservative, smaller government, view it as taboo to even propose cutting Medicare benefits.

The basis of the American welfare system was established Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s. It grew to a major extent in the 1960s under Johnson’s Great Society and has continued to grow or stay the same size since then. Unfortunately, since the 1970s, America has grown more fiscally conservative and, as such, has reduced tax rates, especially on top earners. This causes perpetual and increasing budget deficits and leaves no clear path to a balanced  budget.

While Europeans have held welfare in as high a regard as Americans, European nations now find themselves in a position where they are either in need of a bailout or funding a bailout of another EU nation. In either case, austerity is the only reasonable option.

Perhaps the United States needs a major recession like the European Union. It seems that without one, the U.S. will continue on an unsustainable path of greater and greater spending, less and less revenue, and higher budget deficits each year. Although a deeper recession may come as a bit of a rude shock to Americans, it will surely comfort the United States for a softer fall, a fall that will inevitably come once the rest of the world demands its debts repaid. 

Haiti- the biggest failure of the Western hemisphere. It has attempted to continue on the same path to economic prosperity as much of developing Asia, but has been unable to. At the same time, starvation is common, education scarce, and hope all but lost.

Would Haiti be justified in continuing to ignore its poverty and suffering and adopting the typical path to economic growth- low taxes and free trade- in the hopes that economic growth would mitigate these issues?

For most developing nations, this formula has been a no-brainer. But Haiti is different. Haiti is different because this path has dealt it damage in the past, because its infrastructure weak and nearly irreparable, and because it is not conducive to agricultural production.

Almost every nation’s industrial revolution and consequential economic growth has been on a bed of an agricultural boom. Yet, Haiti has an extreme climate that alters between drought and flood, making food production difficult. To make matters worse, Haiti is densely populated and even the areas that do remain farmland are relatively infertile due to centuries of poor farming techniques. Adding force to the vicious current that keeps Haiti’s farmers poor and people hungry, Haitian farmers are unprotected by the government; Haiti has, in recent decades, greatly reduced its level of tariffs in the hopes of better relations with the United States. Haiti’s government has also accepted food aid following recent natural disasters without reviewing the effect on farmers, which has led to the depression of the prices of key Haitian crops like rice and sugar. While this may help Haitians in the cities, it only exacerbates the situation to the majority of Haiti’s poor living in rural areas.

Moreover, Haiti’s infrastructure is among the weakest in the world. Its physical infrastructure, namely roads and bridges, is outdated, but that is besides the point. More pressingly, Haiti’s government is stagnant and its economic policies overly bureaucratic. As such, even if Haiti implements free trade policies, it may not work to its advantage. Haiti will never have businesses that it can put on the world stage because its economic policies are so business-unfriendly and bureaucratic. The political system in Haiti shows no signs of improving in the near term given continuing lack of education and acceptance of a non-democratic government opposed to the people’s interests.

For Haiti, an industrial revolution is not assured as it was with the Asian tiger economies or the booming South American markets. Therefore, implementing free trade and low taxes, policies that favor post-industrial societies, is unwise. After all, if Haiti remains a struggling agrarian nation, as it almost surely will (for the next few decades at least), a large government, welfare model will better serve the interests of average Haitians. Though the Haitian government is corrupt and inefficient, such a system will best curb wealth inequality and ensure a better standard of living for the majority of Haitians. 

The meeting of North and South Korean delegates in Panjunmom, the site of the armistice that ended the Korean War, is symbolic. The upcoming 60^th anniversary of the Korean War is symbolic. These symbols in the midst of moves by North Korea to refute the Korean War armistice, threaten attack on South Korea and its allies, and further develop its nuclear program are quite honestly frightening. As such, it is the perfect time to reflect on the Korean War, its aftermath, and the possibility of a new Korean War.

The Korean War was ended by an armistice in 1953, not a peace treaty. As such, though tensions are relatively low at the moment, North and South Korea are technically still at war. The Cold War tensions and U.S.-Soviet occupations of Korea in the 1940s are no longer factors in the tensions along the Korean peninsula. However, the major causes of the Korean War, namely North Korea’s suspicion of capitalism and desire to unify the Korean peninsula, still hold true today. As such, there is the ever-present fear that tensions between North and South Korea could escalate militarily.

A second Korean War would be very complex because of the players who would inevitably be involved and the dire threat of nuclear warfare.

Contrary to what many think, Kim Jong-un is not intent on destroying the West with nuclear weapons. He is an educated man who has been groomed for leadership for years by his father Kim Jong-un who, in turn, was groomed for rule by Kim Il-sung. All three North Korean autocrats have used the nuclear threat simply for the purpose of extorting sanction reprieves and food aid from the United States. Of course, Kim Jong-un is the only North Korean leader thus far who commands a nuclear program with the potential to inflict damage on the United States. Yet, his recent downplay of tensions with South Korea indicate that he, like his predecessors, will act rationally with his nuclear stockpile.

The risk is that the North Korean military, which continues to overpower Kim Jong-un, could force an all-out war with South Korea and the United States using its nuclear stockpile based on its age-old desire to reunite Korea. In such a case, the United States would have two options.

Firstly, it could retaliate with nuclear power. However, such a possibility is extremely unlikely. Since the use of nuclear weapons in World War II, Americans have been adverse to the use of such deadly weapons. Given its conventional military might, the United States would not need to resort to using nuclear weapons against a weaker nuclear and conventional military power like North Korea. As such, the second possibility of a conventional military attack is more likely.

In reality, concerns about tensions in the Korean peninsula ever materializing into nuclear warfare are greatly over exaggerated. Such a prospect requires three unlikely events coming together. First, it requires Kim Jong-un to declare war on a far superior enemy. Secondly, assuming Kim declares war, it requires him to defy common sense, defy the theory of mutually assured destruction and declare nuclear war on the ally of the world’s largest nuclear military power. And, thirdly, it requires the United States government and Defense Department to go against American defense interests to initiate an unnecessary nuclear conflict when a conventional military assault would do the trick. Despite the outcome of the talks between the North and South, there should be no concern in the international community that escalated tensions could threaten global peace and stability. 

In a scandal that has caused a great deal of anger across the United States, it appears that millions of Americans had their phone calls tapped by the government. Surely, this must come as a shock to all Americans: only seven years after the Patriot Act was signed into law, it is being implemented. Obviously, Americans would be angry over the Patriot Act once it is being enforced, not when it was being proposed.

Meanwhile, 70% of Americans continue to support Guantanamo Bay and, therefore, the practices affiliated with it including detainment without trial and various counts of torture.

It seems that as long as the United States is only curtailing the civil liberties of foreigners, especially (surprise, surprise) Muslims, Washington will have the support of Americans. But, if it those having their rights violated are fellow star-spangled, freedom loving, flag worshipping Americans, the response is completely different.

Such xenophobia is completely against America and the values it has historically upheld; racism and degradation of human rights, the most basic rights that are innate as opposed to provided for by the government under Locke’s political holds no place in the United States under the Constitution.

I have long been an advocate of closing Guantanamo Bay. However, given that the facility has 70% support from Americans, such a proposal is unlikely to materialize. In such a case, Americans will have to learn to accept a larger government, one that enforces the Patriot Act and other such legislation.

The United States must take a stance one way or the other. If the nation, the government, and, most importantly, the people are willing to sacrifice civil liberties in the pursuit of deterring terrorism, then such curtailments of rights must be applied proportionally to all those within the United States and its justice system, be it the terrorist held captive in Guantanamo Bay or the citizen who agrees to have his/her calls monitored.

In other words, allow the Patriot Act to be enforced and maintain Guantanamo Bay or scrap both. There is no middle ground on an objective issues such as the rights to a fair trial and freedom from government monitoring. By  supporting a middle ground approach on civil rights that gives preferential treatment to U.S. citizens over foreigners, Americans are violating an even more important and far-reaching right: the right to fair and equal treatment under the law. Doing so erodes the base of American democracy to an even greater extent than phone tapping. 

According to a poll from Rassmussen Reports, an independent, politically neutral group, 41% of likely voters support Obamacare while 54% oppose it. In other words, in a nation where only .1% of people know the freedoms guaranteed by each of the first five amendments, 95% of voters can take a solid stance on a document roughly three times as long as The Bible. Right.

Clearly, support and opposition to Obamacare is based far less on knowledge of the bill than on the perception of the bill the media has given Americans. That is to say, on an issue which most Americans are neutral (since they lack sufficient information to take a clear side), Americans are swayed more by conservative news agencies than by liberal ones.

In a way, this is unsurprising. While there are liberal and conservative news stations, it is the conservative stations that tend to be far more radical. Ask any American who has watched both liberal and conservative news channels their perspective on Benghazi, Obamacare, or the IRS scandal and they will tell you that they are conspiracies by Obama’s Administration ten times as destructive to democracy as Watergate.

In part, pro-Republican news stations have the ability to be more radical because they are supporting the opposition party. With Obama and the Democrats in office, liberal news stations are unable to go much further left than Obama himself if they hope to attract viewers. And, despite calls from the far right that Obama is a Communist or a Socialist, Obama is a very moderate leader.

This clearly presents a problem. At a time in America when the people are becoming increasingly allegiant to the Democrat Party and its ideals, Americans are being swayed in part by their own ignorance and in part by a media not in tune with the political inclinations of Americans.

The major issue this presents to the United States is the creation of a cynical political culture, an overextension of democracy in many ways. While Democrats are in office, the more radical conservative news agencies shape public opinion and while Republicans are in office, the liberal news agencies get more radical and cause a pendulum shift left in political leaning. As television news media continues to have a greater impact on the political leaning of average Americans, the risk is that each election will produce a new party in power. In a nation like the United States where even democracy is taken to far, this may be applauded. But, in reality, this will merely create an instable political system representative more of Bill O’Reilly and Jon Stewart than Joe the Plumber.