Things were heating up today politically in more ways than one. The first big issue was the debate over whether journalists who cover “secret” government programs should be tried for treason. The second was the Senate’s vote on the flag desecration amendment to the US Constitution.A few days ago, the New York Times ran a story detailing the US government’s access and active searching of financial records for a number of American citizens in order to find connections to al-Queda and other terrorist organizations. Why this is an issue for the Bush administration is curious, since information about the government running this type of surveillance was pretty much well-known after 9/11. But since this story compounds to the laundry list of civil liberties assaults made by the Bush administration, its publication, while not revealing anything new, does help to hammer home an important point about George W. Bush — that he is soft on freedom. I commend the New York Times for shining a light on injustices done to America by its own government.

Meanwhile, the Senate failed to pass a flag desecration amendment. Many people fall into one of two camps regarding things like flag burning. One camp says that it honors the people who’ve died for the flag by not burning it. Others say that it honors the military by protecting the essential freedoms of speech and expression that they fought and died for. It’s not about either of those things at all. While I support the right to speak freely, burning the flag is a bit more than that. All throughout the world, there are countries where the American flag is burned. But look around those same countries — you see people enjoying the products of American inginuity and invention, beloved American products and slogans, favorite American actors and personalities and even people leaving their homeland to come to America. When people in those countries burn the US flag, it’s not a protest against American culture, but it is a protest against the US government and its actions. America is great, not because of its government, but despite its government. Thus, flag burning is not just freedom of speech, but is an important act in protesting our government when it gets out of hand.

But you’ve got to wonder about these debates. If these same debates happened immediately after 9/11, we would be gladly imprisoning journalists for only hints of treachery and banning even the most impure thoughts about the flag. But these debates are happening right now, when support for the Bush administration and Republicans is at an abyssmal low. Forget about honoring troops — they’re just more political footballs for the Bush administration. The Bush administration and Republicans on Capitol Hill have chosen to fiddle while the rights and liberties of the American people burn. The media machine talks about imprisoning journalists for doing their jobs and arresting protesters for burning a piece of cloth while the officials in power openly violate the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I feel strongly that there should be a radical shift in the discussion within this country now!

Not really, but that could be the theme for the government’s new frontier in the war on terror.All last night I was glued to CNN’s coverage of an alleged Miami-based terrorist plot to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago. Throughout the coverage, Anderson Cooper and the cavalcade of CNN analysts that were brought on hammered on a number of points. The first, and most relevant was, that of the seven men arrested, all but one of them were American citizens. They used the phrase “home-grown” quite frequently. Also, they were all part of some unknown Muslim group. Additionally, Anderson Cooper repeated that they were black, except for one. Since CNN thought it was important, I started wondering. This one non-Black wasn’t white. The President is white, and we know that George W. Bush is not a terrorist (typed as sarcastically as possible). He probably wasn’t Middle Eastern. They already had the crazed-Muslim tie-in to the “War on Terrorism”. The U.S. government really hates Native Americans, but that didn’t seem right. Finally, it came to me — with all the news about North Korea lately, he was definitely of some Asian variety. This will help the Bush administration relate this incident to another one of the members of the Axis of Evil.

The US government has tried doing this sort of thing before — to create a “home-grown” terrorism scare. One day I attended a church service where the topic of discussion were these things called patriot groups. This was about 1999. At that time, a patriot group was a neo-Nazi group that lived out in the wilderness and had their own private armies. A few years later, with the passing of the US government’s PATRIOT ACT, the irony has not been lost on me. I guess the idea of home-grown terror couldn’t be sold at that time, because a lot of people live in “red state” wilderness, have guns and hang out with a bunch of people who also have guns. Additionally, the home-grown terrorism thing didn’t go over because the people who were labeled as potential home-grown terrorists included people who read the Bible, went to church, thought the Constitution was a good idea, had thoughts other than the government and media espoused, etc. It’s just like the little old lady getting frisked at an airport for being a threat to national security after 9/11. And strangely enough, people (particularly the Christian faithful) still vote for politicians who think that the typical American is a terrorist.

Anyhow, this wasn’t an unexpected turn of events. When the media machine starts propogating the idea of “home-grown black Islamic terrorists”, it’ll take off real well. According to Census figures, African-Americans number about thirteen percent of the American population. Since we live in a democracy, the majority rules. The government just needs to muster enough support for the Black terrorist theme. Not that I’m for that — I’m just saying what’s possible in this brave new world the US government claims to be saving us from.

As part of the requirements for my upcoming entrance to business school, I’ve been required to take and submit a number of personality tests. Outwardly it will be used to help plug me into a diverse “Real World”-esque team of fellow business students. Being a slightly odd and quirky person, I’m sure that whoever sees the results at the College of Management will either have a good laugh or they will be afraid. They will be very afraid. It’s probably not quite that bad. Having studied psychology a number of years ago and received a degree in it, personality testing has always fascinated me.The first required test was the IPIP-NEO. It measures five different domains of personality and thirty sub-domains. The domains measured included extroversion (and introversion), agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience. The College requested only the domain results and not the sub-domain results. This probably works to my advantage. Had they received the sub-domain ratings, they may have barred me from coming onto campus, which would have made completing my degree requirements difficult. I joked with one of my recommenders that he could tell the MBA program, as I’ve agreed to waive my rights of review on my recommendations, that I am a menace to society and should be shot on sight. Hopefully, he didn’t actually write this in my recommendation, but if he did, the admissions committee looked past it.

According to my IPIP-NEO results, I scored low on extroversion (thus, I’m introverted, lost in my inner world and a loner) and high on agreeableness (which includes trust, morality, cooperation and modesty). The other categories were about average for my particular demographic. As with averages, low values can offset a high values. For example, in the case of conscientiousness, I scored extremely high on cautiousness, while scoring extremely low on self-efficacy. Being overly cautious more than likely explains why I can’t get things done. Having benefited from the opportunity of completing this evalutation, I will now try to trust myself more and (hopefully) move forward.

Similarly with the neuroticism category, a low sub-domain result offset a high sub-domain result. As suggested by this tool, I have an extremely high level of anger. This was offset by my extremely low level of depression. This is actually a good thing, since the majority of my undergraduate years were marked by long and deep bouts of depression. While, it is not desirable to have an extreme hot-head in an academic environment, I’m sure it will be offset by my extreme level of agreeableness.

As oppenness to experience went, I scored very high on imagination, but low on artistic interest. I was a bit shocked by my score in the intellect sub-domain, but was relieved to find that it was a measure of dealing with concrete items as opposed to hypotheticals. This domain also contained a sub-domain called ‘liberalism’. Liberalism, in terms of this personality evaluation, is defined as:

…a readiness to challenge authority, convention, and traditional values. In its most extreme form, psychological liberalism can even represent outright hostility toward rules, sympathy for law-breakers, and love of ambiguity, chaos, and disorder…

Overall, this evaluation was right on the money, until it came to my average level of psychological liberalism. I am the most psychological liberal person in the entire world. This probably came about, however, by my desire to rebel being overshadowed by my need to be agreeable. I guess this is an example of the spirit being willing, but the flesh being weak.

In addition to the IPIP-NEO exam, I was asked to take the Jung Typology Test. This oldie-but-goodie has had generations referring to themselves by enigmatic four letter combinations. Mine came out to be INTJ. This is probably one of the nerdier types. Only INTP could be spazzier. The analysis labeled the typical INTJ as a Mastermind (like Ulysses S. Grant). I’ve never thought of Grant as being a spaz, but maybe that was the case, since only nerds are against the concept of seccession. There was also a more robust list of other famous INTJs (real and fictional). Other than Michael Dukakis, Charles Rangel, Donald Rumsfeld, Ensign Ro (WTF?) and Hannibal Lecter, I feel I’m in at least half-decent company. Let’s hope the College of Management agrees.