Matt Esposito

Enraged Muslims, angry over a depiction of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb as a turban in Danish and Norwegian newspapers, protested in the streets in the past few weeks. However, as the smoke cleared from the "infidel" embassies in Damascus and Beirut, we did not hear calls for faithfulness to our democratic values of free speech, but rather the world community's cries to appease the most evil of forces.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, isn't it? Many of us have decorated our rooms, shopped for gifts or listened to Christmas music on a more regular basis, waiting anxiously for that special time: the season when nothing can go wrong and all the world is right.

Who likes to use Facebook? Despite getting an occasional piece of hate mail here and there, I thoroughly enjoy browsing over my friends' kooky sayings, favorite movies or anti-Bush groups. In all seriousness, the online yearbook, as I like to describe it to old people who have never heard of it, has inadvertently become the host of a new controversy surrounding free speech.

Whether we all know it or not, a big election is approaching. No, Hillary supporters, it is not 2008 yet. Put away your banners. In fact, this is the year for the New Jersey gubernatorial race. I know this fact has not aroused the passions of so many in this state or the attentions of too many major media outlets, but this race is critical to our state.

The conservative movement scored a major victory recently when New York Governor George Pataki turned down the proposed International Freedom Center (IFC) at Ground Zero. This so-called freedom center was intended to sit on the grounds of the former World Trade Center.

Recent debates, such as those over the Iraq war have brought up many questions about the nature of true patriotism. Is it more patriotic to support the war or to protest against it? Both sides seem to have completely different opinions. Just as the war generates a lot of this controversy, so do the developments over the use of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools.

Hurricane Katrina is a human tragedy and I encourage you all to pray for those caught in its wake. With untold numbers of dead and billions of dollars in damage, the forces of this world seemed to have declared war against the American Gulf Coast region.

There's an old expression that implores us not to blame the bringers of bad news. This "don't shoot the messenger" maxim was probably left over from some distant time when rival tyrants would assassinate each other's couriers to make a point. However we do not live in an age when messages about the world are conveyed to us to by unbiased envoys dressed in flashy colors with feathers in their caps reading from scrolls of parchment.

Welcome back fellow students. I am sure that you all have been suffering from withdrawal symptoms without having my articles to read each week, but never fear! Once again, due to popular demand, I have returned to wreak havoc upon supporters of liberalism.

Well, my loyal supporters, critics and readers, another year is in the books. I have enjoyed the interaction with all of you, whether in print or in person. I trust you will continue to write in and keep me honest when you feel I have gone off the deep end, and I welcome the communication next year.

Anyone who knows me will affirm that I love politics. I enjoy watching and working for elections. I like listening to talk radio hosts babble on and on about different candidates and why or why not they would be good choices for positions of power. I get a laugh watching politicians stab each other in the back with political attack ads and then try to say nice things about the other candidate.

Speech is a distinctively human characteristic that sets us apart from the other lesser animals that make up this earth. The first caveman grunts eventually developed into diverse languages that circumnavigated the globe, now only to be misspelled by kids on AOL Instant Messenger.

It has been quite a couple weeks for The Signal, hasn't it? I have received quite a few angry letters in my tenure as a columnist, but the entire section lovingly dedicated against Mr. Carter has certainly set the record for liberal student outrage. Ah yes, liberals angry that someone said something unpopular using faulty data.

Being openly conservative on a liberal campus is a strange experience. On one hand, I have found that to my delight many people here are much more conservative then they realize. They go with the flow because it is popular, but in 10 years many will consider liberalism to be a college phase.