This column made its humble beginnings with rants on coffee-drinkers and adjectives. I am proud to say that it has grown up and is ready to address more consequential issues.

Now I would like to outline three facts:

(1) Guantanamo Bay is an American Gulag.

(2) The Israeli initiative in Gaza is nothing less than an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

(3) Universities are a place for liberal minded hipsters with no sense of morals or direction who will cling to any fleeting cause just to increase their sense of self by the smallest of margins.

Do you see how important it is not to exaggerate things?

I’m not going to write about human shields or U.N. buildings, and I’m certainly not going to use any analogy which involves you, Mexico, California and hypothetical rockets. I’m going to avoid these things because I am an aforementioned University columnist, not a war correspondent.

I’m also not going to write about how the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay deserve our sympathy, how they deserve better treatment, how they deserve to have their voices heard. I’m going to avoid these things not because I am an aforementioned University columnist, but because these claims are ridiculous.

What I am going to write about is the cultural phenomenon where everyone wants to root for the underdog, whether he’s Cuba Gooding Jr. or a terrorist who throws grenades at U.S. soldiers. In the first case, the underdog winning leads to a tearful moment with Tom Cruise. In the second case, the underdog winning leads to the destruction of Israel, the United States of America and a few select parts of Europe.

Why is it that we are so quick to jump to causes which sound “right?” Like with most things, I blame George “Ron Paul” Orwell, the guy who wrote 1984. Contrary to what many think, it is not some sort of documentary, sent to us from a scary world in the future, meant to warn us. It is a book of fiction: entertaining, well written, and thought provoking (but please don’t think too hard). But it’s not from the future; it’s from the fiction section of your library. That’s right, Winston Smith and Guy Montag are not a supreme duo of fascist fighters, they are imaginary characters.

This is why, when you read reports about government censorship, “torture” or military action, you should not say, “A-ha! It’s 1984 all over again! QUICK, INTO THE PERSONAL LIBERTIES SHELTER!” You are comparing something happening in real life to something that never happened.

What do you propose we do with a person who broke away from his family, travelled to a foreign country with the purpose of receiving training in the practice of blowing up civilians and then attempted to “get some?” Oh, that’s right, give him more human rights. Yeah, that’ll solve the problem.

This is getting confusing … I might have to resort to analogies. Suppose a friend of yours left California, travelled to Mexico where he was taught how to launch rockets at the United States because, apparently, the United States took some land from them or something like that, and then he was captured and put in a secret prison. Get it now?

Many “freedom fighters” (read: liberals) are as misguided as the terrorists they support. Some of these terrorists didn’t have a cause, so they found one in the form of blowing up innocent people for some preposterous, unjustifiable reason. Take David Hicks, just a regular old kangaroo skinner from Australia. Somewhere between skinning kangaroos and exterminating Koalas he moved to Albania and joined the Kosovo Liberation Army. Sometime afterwards he converted to Islam and started calling himself Muhammed Dawood. Oh, and he joined al-Qaeda. Then he ended up in Guantanamo Bay for about five years. How does a man go from skinning kangaroos to fighting alongside Albanians to fighting against Americans within the span of 10 years? On the flip side, how does someone go from supporting human rights to supporting environment rights to supporting terrorists? That’s what happens when you don’t have a cause to fight for and desperately want one. Keep the cycle going, my friends.

And what of the three facts outlined at the beginning of this column?

The closing of Guantanamo Bay is a loss for human rights. That is, if one of the human rights is to live without having terrorists try to kill you because, well, they are bored. How can we let these people go? They will have a reunion. A reunion in which they will collect each other’s information (this time without waterboarding) and bomb the shit out of us. And on accounts of torture, these guys can dish it out but they can’t take it. Rip apart families and destroy lives? No problem. Get caught and have to walk around in shackles and occasionally get a beat down? Oh god no! Somebody call the ACLU!

And when you hear reports of the Israeli army going into Gaza to stop rocket attacks you should not call the ACLU and say “Holocaust.” I can’t blame this on 1984. I can only blame this on stupidity.

You think there is maybe a minor difference between being killed for being a Jew and being killed for harboring rockets to kill more Jews? Hey, how come the Iraq war, in which untold thousands of civilians have died isn’t called a Holocaust? Oh, right, that wouldn’t be quite as clever.

I will take back the third fact when you take back the first two. Until then, feel free to tell me that I don’t get the real truth and that I am as misguided as a Palestinian missile.