On Nov. 11, Mr. Hasenmiller wrote an editorial criticizing America for making election decisions based on heart rather than mind. After ‘blaming’ liberal politics on the women’s suffrage movement, he managed to insult journalists as “not particularly logic based.”

However, in his own writing, he failed to provide any substantial evidence towards his claims beyond a quote from Winston Churchill and random postulations.

Perhaps Mr. Hasenmiller should be given an honorary degree in journalism for his attempts to persuade without logic or facts.

Apparently, the four great logic-based planks of the Republican platform were “tax cuts for the rich, cut government spending, give the people guns, and don’t end the war.” Let’s take a moment to consider the logic of each of these statements.

‘Tax cuts for the rich’ — How will this stimulate our economy? According to Keynesian macroeconomic theory — albeit rejected by most conservatives — tax dollars have a greater economic impact when there is a lower ‘marginal propensity to save’ (in lay terms, when people spend their money rather than stuffing it in the bank). All of the poor people I know are stellar at spending money — it’s the rich ones who have a bad habit of saving it. Thus, give the poor people more money and you’ll get more economic bang for the buck out of it.

‘Cut government spending’ and ‘Don’t end the war’ — Alone these may stand, but together are mutually exclusive. Compare the plans proposed by liberals to the cost of being in Iraq over the next ten years — a whopping $5 trillion (from Fox News, a favored source among conservative America). Using your logic, what type of situation would we be in if we instead spent $5 trillion on our own infrastructure, education and alternative energy research over the next ten years?

‘Give the people guns’ — My favorite. I don’t even recall hearing about gun control during this election — the closest it came was the National Rifle Association announcing their traditional endorsement of the Republican candidates. Logic would say ‘find an issue that’s been discussed in the last four years.’

Mr. Hasenmiller criticized Americans for not leveraging the intelligence we’ve been given.

On Nov. 4, we voted between two presidential candidates: one who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, and another who graduated in the opposite percentile of his class from the U.S. Naval Academy (out of pity, I won’t compare their running mates). I’m confident that the man American women elected is the more likely to make intelligent, logical decisions.

Joe Petrzelka

Graduate student

Industrial and manufacturing systems engineering