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I. Introduction Political blogging is a dead genre. Its corpse is kept animated by ancient thirty-somethings left behind by a snapchat world. It�s fine whisky in an age of vodka and gatorade.  Yet I have the stubborn impulse to keep alive this tradition of my people. I can�t help myself. Left idle, my hands start typing up new political ideologies. Blogspot.com: it�s a gen X thing. The purpose of this post is to identify and define a new ideology: Pro-Civilization.  �Pro-Civilization� is an adjective I�ve been hearing lately in right-wing tech circles, and I find it evocative. Let�s uncork a bottle of #ProCiv, swirl it around the tongue, and see what impression it leaves. For me, it is one of the most intriguing vintages to come out of the modern Right. So I want to define it, examine it, and signal-boost it.  By no means do I want to be on the hook for defending the whole of the political Right. Lord knows it has its share of bathtub swill. The question �why bother with ...

Senator Marlon Kimpson (Left), Senator Greg Hardee (middle), and Senator Greg Gregory (right) I�m not going to lie, I have stopped following the daily actions and tweets of our President. This is not an intentional act, but the sensationalism that President Trump creates is so tiring, so repetitive, and so predictable that I have stopped clicking on articles detailing something �crazy� that he said or did. It is an old, worn-out cycle of news that has no significance on the real issues. I have not even sat down to watch the Stormy Daniels  interview on 60 Minutes that everybody has been talking about this week and that is because I simply do not care.             Is that a bad thing? I do not know. In a way, I am normalizing the bizarre and disruptive leadership that Trump exhibits by becoming numb to it. We have been reading these ridiculous headlines for almost three years now and it used to be exciting and outrageous, but n...

 Before I begin I would like to thank Sydney Clinton and Dalton Bell for their leadership and giving me the opportunity to stand before you today and help organize this unique event. Without them, this march would not be happening. There are many ways to judge the success of a protest. You can look to the turnout at the protest, the number of people that showed up. You can look to the media coverage surrounding the event, how much attention it received. However, the biggest indicator of a protest�s effectiveness is actual policy changes made because of it. When looking at this protest, not just the one here but the national Never Again movement, that is how I will judge success. We can achieve that success but it can only be attained if we keep up the pressure after we go home tonight. When the legislation is passed and the changes we want to see are made, then we can relax and celebrate our hard work. Until then, we cannot let up. There are a multitude of ways that you can create ...

Phil Cheney is a man that you have probably never heard of until you read this sentence. He is running as an independent candidate for governor by petition and is the definition of a political outsider. Cheney is a man dissatisfied with partisan politics and presents ideas that are relatively unheard of in the mainstream. I have followed Mr. Cheney�s campaign for months and I got the chance to sit down with him last Saturday to discuss his candidacy.             Before I could even sit down on the bench in the Charleston County Public Library to introduce myself, he handed me a book titled Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horowitz which  investigates how American citizens of the present discuss and perceive the Civil War and the two sides who fought in it. I had a feeling that I knew where this was going. Cheney launched into a passionate defense of Confederate monuments and how he is against any monument being taken down. He...

It�s been a really busy week for me. Perhaps the busiest week that I have experienced in my seventeen years on this planet. However, the blog continues on despite the stresses of daily life. I would like to plug an event that has been the source of my stress this week before I get into the contents of tonight�s blog. There will be a  March For Our Lives on Saturday, March 24 th from 3:30 to 6:30 at Riverfront Park in North Charleston. I will be speaking at the event and I encourage you to come out and join the Never Again movement. That�s all I have to say about that, for now.             There was a special election in Pennsylvania last night and since I heartily enjoy covering election results, I decided that I would cover it on this week�s blog. Democrat Conor Lamb narrowly  defeated Republican Rick Saccone in a district where President Trump won by a comfortable margin of 20 points. The race was so  close that...

For the past three weeks I have been covering gun control and the national movement to prevent more mass shootings from happening. I know what you�re thinking, �Jacob, can we just move on already? There�s all kinds of things to talk about. I�m tired of hearing about gun control whenever I turn on the TV or scroll through my Twitter feed.�             Well, that�s the point. By consistently shoving this topic in your face along with many other outlets and activists doing the same, action will eventually be taken by our lawmakers because of the amount of pressure being levied against them. While I have been focusing on the national discussion and reaction to Parkland, I decided that I would look into what actions or lack thereof are being taken at the State House on this week�s blog.             The core arguments circulating in the general assembly are reminiscent of those happen...