In the closing thoughts of my last column, I predicted that I would receive a deluge of hate mail in response to publicly voicing my opinion of President-elect Barack Obama. As the week went on, and my inbox was slowly filled with commentary referring to me as “a morally despicable, selfish, un-American egotist,” it seemed as if things were going exactly as I had expected.

However, opening the Friday edition of The California Aggie to find an article titled “High Noonan” in the space that normally provides me with my weekly dose of liberal pessimism was something I had not anticipated.

To be honest, it wasn’t even the article itself that upset me. I mean, I get it, K.C., you’re a big fan of collectivism and know a bunch of funny ways to describe getting stoned. Hilarious.

What really got to me about the whole thing was the basic assumption that you had to make about my personality in order to write that column, and I’m not referring to the issue of getting high.

You began with a simple statement addressing the belief that I had a problem, and spent the remainder of you time trying to help me realize this. It was here that you exhibited the fatal flaw of positive rights, forced charity and government regulation in our society. You, and the other blind altruists who advocate for these programs, operate on one basic assumption of human nature – that man is not capable of helping himself.

This flawed view of the world grants men the same level of self-determination as a flock of captive sheep who have willfully surrendered control of their lives to a government of wolves posing as shepherds.

Fueled by this errant belief, world governments have adopted social programs designed to care for those who are thought to be somehow flawed and would find survival impossible without the aid of the government. Because you’ve adopted a view of existence that so drastically differs from my own, I think you’ll find that future disagreements between us are inevitable.

My view of human nature does not depict man as a flawed and helpless character, but rather as a being who is capable of and specifically designed for, self-advancement.

The entire notion of government in our world was introduced by groups of “selfish egotists” who discovered that their own success and survival was easier to obtain if they developed reciprocal relationships with like-minded individuals. Basically, one individual would exchange services with another, thus benefiting both parties. Entering into such a relationship was voluntary, and the partnership was only maintained as long as each man’s service was in line with the other’s self interest.

Society, along with an economy based on the exchange of goods and services, sprung from these relationships and governments were developed in order to maintain an environment that could facilitate these interactions.

As the flawed opinion of human nature that you so willingly embrace entered into the realm of world politics over the last century, the relationship between man and society has stopped being mutually beneficial and is no longer thought to be voluntary.

It is because of you and others who cling to equally flawed ideologies that it continues to become the burden of the productive man to care for the individuals that society has deemed incapable of success.

It is true that the Obama presidency will not be the first example of this irrational thinking in history, but rather another instance of charity collected at the point of a gun and yet another battle lost in the war waged on the self.

JAMES NOONAN doesn’t know if his fragile self-image can withstand another week of name-calling and hate mail. See if you can shatter his ego at jjnoonan@ucdavis.edu. Best of luck!!!

Sometimes, I envy guys. They have a better handle on solving problems dealing with interpersonal relationships among friends of the same sex than girls do.

Take how guys handle cleaning the apartment. When a disagreement about who should vacuum the living room arose between these guys I knew, it escalated to a lot of screaming and finally a physical altercation. All over vacuuming (OK maybe I take it back, boys are lame sometimes)! But six minutes later, everyone apologized to one another, someone ended up vacuuming, Call of Duty was played, and everything went back to normal.

Now if it were an apartment full of girls, someone would have done the vacuuming (seemingly without protest), but she would have silently held a three month long feeling of resentment about the injustice that occurred. And during those months, the girl would remain in this passive aggressive state, intermittently saying a few hostile comments under her breath to her roommates about vacuuming. Eventually it blows over until the next time the issue of vacuuming arises, at which point said girl goes apeshit “apparently out of nowhere” at her roommates.

Or what about money? Once I was carpooling with three buddies of mine, all guys. At the end of the trip, my friend Lamson nonchalantly said, “Alright, I want my gas money now bitches,” and all the guys threw their money at his face as if he were a whore sleeping on a sidewalk (which, in some ways, he is) and the issue was settled, no drama.

I wonder if a girl ever said that to her girlfriends, would they have reacted so indifferently? Would they talk smack behind her back, perhaps noting that it was rude how she asked, or that she was inconsiderate to have even asked at all? Would they think of her as greedy because the toll should have been enough?

If you think these questions sound crazy, they’re not. And therein lies the secret for this week’s column: we’re just awful to one another. If you think I’m self-conscious enough when it comes to what guys think of me, I’m absolutely terrified about a girl’s opinion because it’s usually much harsher.

Take any Thursday night at a club. Sure, girls dress sexy to nab a guy’s attention. But guys, you should know that we know that you don’t know the difference between a Louis Vuitton and doggy bag with a handle on it. We buy that shtuff to impress other girls, not guys. And if you think that we want that Return to Tiffany’s necklace so badly because it’s cute, you’re mistaken – we want it because it tells other girls that we have a boyfriend who can afford to buy jewelry from Tiffany’s. That’s pretty much it.

I’m not really ranting about how “all them girls be bitches” and how the boys got it right. We’re just too mean to each other sometimes, damnit. I mean, I’m no saint (obviously). I can go to parties and whisper “If I see another black patent leather peep-toe pump, I’m going to shoot myself,” as well as the next girl. But we already have problems enough about how guys treat us; we really shouldn’t pile on the hate with girl vs. girl action.

If I were to sum up the difference between how guys and girls handle conflicts, it would have to be the fact that it takes a lot for a boy to hold a grudge. Guys have a way of letting things go – something I wish I could do myself and wouldn’t mind girls dabbling in either.

Then again, the way girls behave has a lot to deal with social issues that can’t be dealt with at length in a column like mine. All I know is that if I see another issue of Cosmopolitan telling me the 32 different ways to give some guy head, while also including another article teaching me how to climb that corporate ladder by ruining the woman superior to me, I’ll have no choice but to pump my fist vehemently in the air and frown vigorously.

LYNN LA admits she’s not that great when it comes to thinking of ideas about expressing her disappointment toward the media. If you want to suggest creative acts of rebellion, e-mail her at ldla@ucdavis.edu and as a thank you, she will … do something. Again, she’s no good with the ideas.

This Thursday when we sit down to gorge ourselves with turkey feasts and our subsequent food comas conjure thoughts of happy-go-lucky natives breaking bread with jubilant Pilgrims, let’s not kid ourselves. Just as modern German and Japanese textbooks downplay the Holocaust and the Rape of Nanking, the U.S. has altered its history through the Thanksgiving story to erase from our collective memories what really happened.

Some of you might remember Squanto from the Thanksgiving story. Well, his real name was actually Tisquantum, but the Pilgrims didn’t think it was cool enough, so they decided to call him Squanto, or “Big Bean” (the Pilgrims actually just couldn’t pronounce his name). A member of the Patuxet tribe, this loveable native taught the Pilgrims to grow maize and catch eel so that they could survive the harsh Plymouth winter.

Europeans had been wonderful to Squanto and he wanted to return the favor; they captured and sold him into slavery not once, not twice, but three times. They even sent him on an all-expenses paid voyage to Europe aboard a luxury slave liner. He studied abroad in Málagua, Spain for a couple years where local friars taught him English and forced him to accept Christianity. Squanto got homesick, so he stole across the English Channel and got himself a job on an English mapping ship and sailed for home. He returned home only to find that a European-borne plague had wiped not only his entire village, but the entire Patuxet tribe.

Squanto settled with the Pilgrims and acted as an intermediary between the European settlers and the Wampanoag, a local confederacy of tribes. Meanwhile, the Pilgrims were engaging in a genocidal war against the Wampanoag. An 11-foot-tall wall surrounded the Plymouth settlement, which was fortified by 5 mounted cannons, and any natives that ventured too close were subject to robbery, enslavement and in many cases, death.

In 1621 the Pilgrims did host a dinner celebration and members of the Wampanoag did attend; however, it was an accidental party. The Pilgrims had invited the Wampanoag sachem, or leader, Massoit to celebrate with them, as he was largely responsible for their survival that year. Following native tradition, Massoit invited many members of his tribe to go with him, much to the Pilgrims‘ annoyance. The Wampanoag also brought most of the food to the gathering, but they didn’t eat turkey with mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce; they most likely feasted on duck, geese and wild game.

One could only imagine how awkward the table chat was, as only days before a Puritan group had attempted to behead one of the local Wampanoag chiefs. At the end of the table sat poor Squanto, who was disliked by both the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag because although he was sometimes helpful, he often played one side against the other for his own benefit. Less than a century later, the Wampanoag were nearly exterminated during King Philip’s War.

Don’t get me wrong. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. It’s a time when I get to hang out with my dog and visit family and eat delicious food, while being thankful for all that I have. But Thanksgiving as we know it today really began in 1863 during the darkest hours of the Civil War when Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that the final Thursday in November would be a day of thanks.

It’s easy to sugarcoat the past and isolate the more painful truths to footnotes. But we all know what cognitive dissonance can do if allowed to dominate our worldviews. Looking at the past through Walt Disney goggles will only lead us to ignorance.

I will leave you now with one of my favorite quotes by the French scholastic philosopher Peter Abelard: “The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth.“

MICHAEL HOWER is sorry if he spat on your turkey dinner and wishes you a safe and happy Thanksgiving break. Send all love/hate/ambivalent mail to mahower@ucdavis.edu.

It’s getting to be like clockwork – another year, another wave of student fee increases. In these troubled economic times, this year’s increase could be over $600 annually per student if the government doesn’t close the funding gap.

There has to be a limit to this cycle of increases. The UC system – arguably the premier public higher education system in the world – is becoming increasingly privatized every year. Since 1990, the state of California’s per-student spending on UC education has steadily fallen from $15,860 to $9,560, adjusted for inflation and growth. For a system founded with the underlying belief that the availability of higher education should be based on merit and not financial means, this erosion of state support is potentially lethal.

In addition to possibly raising fees, the UC regents are considering cutting 10,000 freshman enrollments. This action would be unfair to the thousands of high school students currently working towards a UC education. Furthermore, as the CSU system has been forced to adopt similar enrollment cuts, many of these students would be denied admission to any four-year institution – thus placing more strain on California’s already struggling community colleges.

California’s priorities are greatly out of line. The state spends more on its prison system than on the UC, CSU and community college systems combined. A government that spends more money imprisoning its citizens than educating them is in obvious need of reevaluation.

If California won’t shift spending to something as important as higher education, then it’s time for someone to say what no one running for political office will – we need to raise taxes. A good education is one of the most vital investments a government can make in its citizens and will in the long-term benefit society as a whole. Over the past several years that idea has been largely ignored in favor of an easier budget process.

A marginal tax increase is a relatively small price to pay for continuing the tradition of quality, affordable higher education that sets California apart.