A new survey reveals that youth support sending troops to battle ISIS, the Air Force Academy has raised questions about religious presence on the field and #AT30 discusses the tragedy and community in San Bernardino.
America's youth on 'boots on the ground' to combat ISIS
A new national poll of America's 18- to 29-year-olds by the Harvard's Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government finds that a solid majority of support sending Ground Troops to fight ISIS.
This polling occurred before the Nov. 13 Paris terrorist attacks said that America's youth was mostly split over U.S. ground troops against the so-called Islamic State with 48% for and 48% against.
However, after the attacks, IOP polling fielded the question again. Those results show that 60% of young Americans are in favor of "boots on the ground".
How do you feel about sending ground troops to combat ISIS? Is a recent large-scale incident what it takes to galvanize today's youth?
Guests:
John Della Volpe, Director of polling at the Institute of Politics at Harvard. John leads the survey of public opinion every semester.
Bernard D. Rostker, senior fellow at the Rand Corporation. Former undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness for the US Department of Defense.
We used to listen to politicians and laugh at comedians...now what?
Presidential elections offer prime material for comedians and satirists who try to sprinkle a little truth-based humor among the sea of political seriousness.
Whether it’s an outlandish statement, a political gaffe made during a stump speech, or an awkward interaction with a reporter or show host, candidates on both sides of the aisle have always been regularly skewered on late night talk shows and political satire programs.
This year, however, there is a marked decrease in the amount of attention comedy and satire programs are paying to the 2016 election.
John Oliver, Host of HBO’s ‘Last Week Tonight,’ has said he has no interest in covering the 2016 election until 2016. In the past, Comedy Central’s ‘The Daily Show’ and ‘The Colbert Report’ have been the beacons of satirical reporting when it comes to presidential elections, but that coverage has decreased with the respective departures of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who built much of their careers off of subtly lambasting presidential candidates when they did or said something truly ridiculous.
Stewart has moved on to filmmaking while Colbert is still hosting television, but even he isn’t able to cover elections the way he could when ‘The Colbert Report’ gave him the platform to be the character Stephen Colbert instead of the actual person Stephen Colbert that he has to be on ‘The Late Show.’ And with some of the characters in the 2016 election, some might wonder if there’s even a need for comedic reporting on politics when the candidates themselves start to seem like comedians.
When did we start laughing at politicians and start listening to comedians when it comes to politics? Is that even a fair assessment of where political comedy is right now? What roles do humor and satire play in covering a presidential election? In covering politics in general?
Guest:
, comedy historian and author of “The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy” (Grove Press, 2015).
Football team’s pre-game prayer raises questions on the role of religion in the Armed Forces
Before a November game, players from the Air Force Academy’s football team were seen gathered on the field and formed a prayer circle.
It’s something the Falcons have done many times before. But their pre-game ritual has now sparked a debate on the role of religion in the military.
After complaint from a watchdog group, the academy has launched an investigation into the practice. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation charges that these public prayers give the impression that the academy and the Air Force are endorsing a particular religion.
The Air Force Academy’s football team has run into similar problems before. The Falcons were censured after then-head coach Fisher DeBerry hung a banner in the team’s locker room that read: “I am a Christian first and last. … I am a member of Team Jesus Christ.”
But are pre-game prayer circles the same as proselytizing?
Arlington National Cemetery Emblems
Guest:
Pauletta Otis, Ph.D., former resident instructor with the United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College at Quantico, VA who is now teaching with the Marines' extended studies program at Miramar and Pendleton
AT30: Tragedy and community in San Bernardino
On Wednesday, December 2, 14 people were killed during a holiday party in San Bernardino in one of the most devastating mass shootings in the last 20 years.
The FBI is now investigating the attack as an act of terrorism and looking into affiliations of the two assailants behind the shooting: Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik. Both were killed during a deadly shootout following the attack.
During a special statewide live broadcast hosted by Larry Mantle and KQED’s Scott Shafer, listeners called in to discuss issues related to the incidents. Those included gun laws, religious extremism and radicalization, Islamophobia, local and national governments' response and building safety and design.
As new details emerge on the circumstances of and motivation behind the attack, San Bernardino is left with many of its own questions.
For the final AT30 event, Larry Mantle and AirTalk will travel to University of Redlands to convene a conversation* around some of these questions with the San Bernardino community and to discuss how to cope and heal after this recent tragedy.
In light of last Wednesday’s attack, we shifted away from a previously planned program on the future of the Inland Empire’s economy.
Guests:
Larry Mantle, Moderator and host of AirTalk. He tweets from
Jarrod Berguan, Police Chief of San Bernardino
Larry Humphreys, Executive Director of Behavioral Autism Therapies which worked frequently with the Inland Regional Center
Amjad M. Khan, National Director of Public Affairs for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community based in Chino, a leader at the San Bernardino County-based Baitul Hameed Mosque. He tweets from
Brian Levin, Director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at CSU San Bernardino and professor of Criminal Justice. He tweets from
Cassie MacDuff, Staff Columnist at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside. She tweets from
Sandy Tice, Pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of San Bernardino
John Walsh, University Chaplain and Faculty Member, Department of Religious Studies, University of Redlands
Here are some highlights from last night’s Final AT30 event at the University of Redlands:
Amjad M. Khan, National Director of Public Affairs for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Chino, says religious freedom for Muslims is unique to the United States, and how wearing the hijab fearlessly is part of that.
“Our country, the United States, we are more free to practice our faith as American Muslims than anywhere else in the world. I believe that. I believe when the president says that. So we can’t abandon our right to wear religious garb that identifies us as Muslim. It’s a quintessential part of who we are. We will not cower in our homes or in the supermarkets and take off our head scarf because we are partners in this common war against a perverse view of our faith.”
San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Berguan says law enforcement are taking extra precautions to protect the city's local Muslim community.
"We obviously reached out to our local mosque immediately the day of the incident. We reached out to the leaders of that mosque, we asked them about if there’s any protections or patrols that they may need, and we put that in place. And we think that they had some phone calls and some things that made them uncomfortable. Internally, we watched the city really come together. I think it took a lot of people by surprise, the amount of international and national attention that came to the city and that outpouring of support. And it’s also been nice to see the city come together as a result of that."
Larry Humphreys is executive director of Behavioral Autism Therapies, which works with the Inland Regional Center. He says despite the tragedy, there are ways the community has united even more strongly in the wake of the shooting.
“It’s a traumatic experience, but it’s one of these experiences where we were able to see two things manifest: We were able to see great police force. We were able to see the resilience inside of the [Inland] Regional Center of one of the service coordinators recording the event and actually letting the world see that. It actually just allows us to really come together as a community as well.”