Seriously, this editorial might be one of the stupidest things I've ever read. I read it on Wednesday (or was it Tuesday?) in five minutes while waiting for my lunch companions and was immediately fired up to write a caustic and contemptuous response, picking the argument of this piece (if it can even be said to have an argument) apart line by line. This lasted approximately 2 hours, when I showed it to someone I had bumped into in the stacks, who (luckily for me) reminded me of the fact that arguing with idiots is truly and totally futile. And really, I shouldn't get so worked up about it. Student papers are, after all, hardly at the pinnacle of journalistic excellence. And the author, after all, is just an undergraduate. All of that I will grant you. But the point remains that if Stanford is going to brag about the quality of its undergraduate education, they might think about keeping this guy under wraps.

What really threw me about the whole piece is that it had a great (if totally ridiculous) trajectory. I was all set for the classic "Why can't we all just get along?" paean for peace. But when I got to the end, it turns out that the Mexican-American war was okay, apparently, since it ostensibly "benefit[ted] us". Whatever.