Feb 11, 2015 | Conservativism, Extremism, mic, Political Ideologies, Political Parties, Religion and Religious Issues, Republicans, Terrorism
Published: Daily Dot (February 11, 2015) If there is one thing we can learn from the Christian Right’s continued response to President Obama’s National Prayer Breakfast speech, it is that religious prejudice isn’t limited to any specific religion. Ironically, the online effort by social conservatives to rebut Obama’s most controversial point—namely, that we “remember that during the Crusades and...
Jan 22, 2015 | Autobiographical, Jewish Experiences, mic, Terrorism, World Affairs
Published: Good Men Project (January 22, 2015) Matthew Rozsa explores the divided politics of the American Jewish community. ___ Although I recall a great deal about the day I was nearly murdered, my conscious memory has suppressed the few minutes during which my head was held under water and my 6th grade classmates chanted “Drown the Jew!” Like a scratched DVD, it skips from the moment right...
Jan 19, 2015 | Foreign Policy, Media Issues, mic, Race and Racism, Terrorism, World Affairs
Published: Daily Dot (January 19, 2015) Starting on Jan. 3, hundreds of Nigerians were slaughtered in an attack on the border city of Braga by the notorious Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram. Shortly after, two girls blew themselves up at a market in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, killing at least 19 people. All of this came on the heels of reports last month that a 13-year-old...
Jan 12, 2015 | mic, Religion and Religious Issues, Terrorism, World Affairs
Published: Daily Dot (January 12, 2015) Even before the events in Paris this week, many Americans already harbored prejudicial attitudes toward Muslims, and not surprisingly, there has been a flurry of Islamophobia in the immediate aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, but it’s all part of a long history of treating and fearing Muslims as the Other. The true enemy, though, is not a single...
Dec 23, 2014 | Arts and Entertainment, Civil Liberties, Foreign Policy, mic, Terrorism, World Affairs
Published: Good Men Project (December 23, 2014) Matthew Rozsa offers three suggestions to protect both the police and the communities that fear them and calls for both groups to demand that politicians enact them. ___ Believe it or not, Michael Brown and Eric Garner share one very important quality with the pair of NYPD officers who were brutally slain earlier this week: Both of them live in a...
Dec 22, 2014 | Arts and Entertainment, Civil Liberties, Foreign Policy, mic, Terrorism, World Affairs
Published: Daily Dot (December 22, 2014) Say what you will about The Interview, but let’s abandon the notion that the filmmakers were wrong for their fictionalized depiction of Kim Jong-un’s death. The reason is simple: It is healthy to assert that Kim Jong-un deserves to die. Kim Jong-un is not just some interchangeable foreign leader. This is a point critics, like Justin Moyer of the...
Dec 19, 2014 | Arts and Entertainment, Civil Liberties, Foreign Policy, mic, Terrorism, World Affairs
Published: Good Men Project (December 19, 2014) Matthew Rozsa is mad as hell that Sony pulled ‘The Interview.’ But he’s equally horrified by the company’s racist attitudes. ___ If North Korea has shown the world anything, it is that the executives at Sony are abject cowards. This may sound rough, but it needs to be said. And since I’ve already expounded at length upon the free speech issue...
Dec 18, 2014 | Arts and Entertainment, Civil Liberties, Foreign Policy, mic, Terrorism, World Affairs
Published: Good Men Project (December 18, 2014) Matthew Rozsa believes North Korea’s threat to Sony challenges the very essence of our democratic freedoms. ___ Is it too much to expect Americans who expect to profit from the First Amendment to stand up for its underlying ethos? Of course, due emphasis must be placed on the phrase “underlying ethos” in the aforementioned sentence. Although the...
Dec 9, 2013 | Conservativism, Foreign Policy, History, mic, Political Ideologies, Race and Racism, Terrorism, World Affairs
Published: mic (December 9, 2013) Back in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan, Dick Cheney, and other paladins of the American right labeled Nelson Mandela a terrorist. While mainstream conservatives tend to renounce this characterization today, it still has currency in more ideologically zealous circles. Indeed, some people on Twitter are already tweeting away reiterations of the infamous "terrorist"...
Sep 11, 2013 | Foreign Policy, History, mic, Military-Industrial Complex/Security State, Terrorism
Published: mic (September 11, 2013) While it's a tad unorthodox to opean a political op-ed with two historical quotes, this pair strikes me as particularly prescient: 1. "They [the Union of states] will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican...