Post 2: China's 'One Family, One Child' Policy

China's Controversial Methods

I'm sure everyone has heard about the Chinese government's policy of allowing each family to have only one child. At first I thought it was some outlandish myth created to stir up controversy about a foreign nation, but I later realized that it is actually a very real institution. I think a lot of people believe view the policy as draconian, but when you think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense.

Before I begin, I feel that it is important to point out that I do believe that this policy is very unethical.

I do not support the Chinese government taking away children from their families simply because a piece of legislation

requires it. However, try to approach this situation from the perspective of the Chinese government. There are over

1.3 billion documented Chinese citizens trying to squeeze into a country almost exactly the size of the United States, which

houses only 300 million. Does China really need more citizens to worry about when a decent amount of the country has

yet to be industrialized? With the Chinese standard of living already much lower than the American standard of living,

does the country really need more mouths to feed, educated, and clothe? The amount of resources China requires to

sustain itself at this point has never been seen before. China is expanding more rapidly and more productively than any

other country in history, but adding more people to this equation would only make it more difficult for the country's infrastructure

to sustain and expand upon itself.

Despite China's massive economic boom, allowing its citizens to breed without restrictions would slow the pace of its expansion

and make it more difficult for the government to tend to its population of already very hard-working citizens. The

policy of 'One Family, One Child' might not be 'fair', it is there to aid in the creation of a successful future for the country.

Post 1: Censoring Mark Twain (Response to Washington Post Editorial)

The “New” Huckleberry Finn

I decided to write about Kathleen Parker’s Washington Post editorial on how a certain word in Mark Twain’s masterpiece was censored because I strongly agree with her stance. Parker argues that in order for a writer to create perfection he or she needs all the creative freedom they can get, and this includes word choice. One word can mean the difference between great writing and poor writing. In Twain’s original work he used “the n-word” several times for literary effect. Recently, there has been a large amount of outcry against the use of this word in the book, such a large amount in fact that future publications of the story have replaced “the n-word” with “slave”. Just as Parker does, I think this is absurd. It’s not like Twain was advocating racism by using this word, although a lot of people seem to think he was. “Slave” is a politically-correct, watered-down replacement and the replacement is a huge defeat in the literary world.

The Washington Post

I decided to use The Washington Post as my resource for editorial articles because growing up it was the newspaper of choice for me and my family. I would read the comics every day during breakfast and glance over the headlines, just to get a good idea of what was going on in the world at that time. I feel most comfortable with The Washington Post, I find the newspaper and website to be non-distracting and well designed. I check CNN.com many times daily, but The Washington Post is a close second news source for me.