state of the nation

A lot President Obama's address tonight went over my head - I'm not anything close to an expert on economic or public policy, and much of what he said I was unable to evaluate with any objectivity. However, I do know that three of the things I am most passionate about are education, health care reform and energy (for me, as it affects the environment) - the three focuses of our president's address. I'll admit I had a lot of questions - is he planning a comprehensive health care overhaul or more specific reformatory legislature? What exactly were the government incentives for teachers, and how will that affect the public education in my are versus the public education in places like South Carolina? When he says he refuses to accept a future where the new jobs and ideas are taking root outside our borders, I'm not sure I agree - I think globalization requires a slightly different turn of phrase. Also, I'm not sure what I think about credit and loans being the lifeblood of our economy...I do know that it makes me want to enroll in economics asap. On the other hand, I was incredibly excited to hear about the closing of guantanamo - I think that is a victory that needs to be celebrated. Also, (even though I want to know more details) I am so excited that teachers are getting more incentives and that we're funding preventative care. Those are also, in my opinion, huge steps forward. 

I was a little devastated to hear the statistics about our public education in America. I am deeply grateful that I can be here at college, and I am also grateful that our government and ordinary citizens are doing something about the fact that so many kids can't have that same opportunity. Also, although I don't agree with everything Obama has to say (i.e., the american example is the greatest power in the world), I am truly inspired by our current government's desire to work towards a better tomorrow, and even more by the american people.

American Government post

I commented on http://preciousmythoughtsare.blogspot.com

Last week in gov we discussed an article by Richard Bushman about the book of mormon and its opposition to the political environment in which it was brought forward. (i.e. , deliverance as opposed to resistance). I started to wonder what the implications of that paradigm shift are - does the book of mormon suggest that a deliverance oriented perspective is closer to God? I have a deeply (culturally) rooted impulse for a more defiant, independent, resistance perspective. But on the other hand, I don't know if that's always a bad thing. Even in the book of mormon, Captain Moroni and others fight for their lives, liberties and families. So I guess the question is how you define resistance as opposed to deliverance, and wether you think one must aggressive and the other passive. I suppose all of this comes back to a Calvin and Hobbes strip (like most weighty dilemmas.) Calvin asks Hobbes what he thinks about wether it's better to stand up and fight or to always turn the other cheek. Hobbes replies that probably the mature thing to do is to go on a case by case basis - to look at the actual situation and decide on the best course of action (Calvin says that requires too much maturity and does something violent). I believe that we do need to make situational choices, but I would like to think that I could find some sort of guiding principles with which to make those decisions. I don't know what those are, but I guess I have some ideas. First of all, I don't think I should ever decide wether to resist or deal with a problem through fear. Second, I think that all of these decisions should include me asking what the Christlike, or loving, thing to do would be. Beyond that, I'm not really sure. (again - I guess I'm not very good at conclusions).

"the silence" of the declaration

Last week I was doing my reading for American Government, and I discovered the "silence" of the declaration of independence as to the kind of government necessary for freedom. Democracy has become so simultaneous with the word freedom in the U.S. today that separating them feels unnatural. However, I think that when we look back to this first declaration of our country, we can learn important things about how to deal with countries that are emerging now. It is tempting to say that 'of course democracy is freedom' and that 'of course everyone wants freedom' and therefore to try and impose a foreign system of government on developing countries. But our founders did not do that. They allowed the idea of the country to be born without a specific plan of government in mind. Perhaps when we are attempting to help other countries as they come into the political world, we could offer them the same chance that we said is the right of all men - to let a people choose the government they feel will best serve them. That sounds suspiciously like a democracy, I know - the people choosing the government. So perhaps, then, I believe that there needs to be a moment of democracy in which the people choose which direction their nation will go. When you think about it, though, that kind of choice is not so much democracy as it is reality. Every day that a people gets up and goes about their work without attempting a revolution, they are in fact perpetuating, agreeing to, the government they currently have. The tricky part, though, is that in some nations, a resistance movement would have so little chance of unifying the people much less succeeding, that this principle of silent perpetuation gets complicated. It's true that the people of North Korea could, as a whole, just decide not to go to work. But they have no way to unify that kind of movement, and so the individuals participating would be virtually committing suicide. In such instances, do we as a nation have the right or responsibility to intervene? I'm not sure - I will have to think about that some more. 

American Government #2 - spheres of influence

Sometimes when I study the founding fathers, I wonder what made the difference for them - what made it so that they saw a bigger picture. Was it just that they had dreams of changing the world like people today, but theirs actually came into fruition? I feel like something in their youth or childhood must have triggered some kind of awareness - a feeling of not only social responsibility, but that they could and should do more than accept their current societal structure. I know many historians suggest that they accomplished what they did because of their unique economic and societal situation - they had the time and the finances to study and think. But John Adams was a farmer, and he had a vision so radical and yet realistic that today he influences more than 300 million people.  A girl in my American government class today suggested that maybe we do have people like the founding fathers today, but there are so many of them that they don't stand out. I do think it's an interesting question, whether the sheer magnitude of our society, despite its trend towards globalization, actually limits the sphere of people's influence. If it does, and individual's actions now have smaller impacts (or at least smaller speaking relatively), than what does that mean in terms of our social responsibility? I don't know, but maybe it means that if we do want to influence more than a proportionately small circle of people, it requires us to connect - to not do it alone. Although, I guess that was true in the founding fathers' day as well. It wasn't until they got emissaries from all (or most) of the colonies together, not until they made connections outside of their local spheres, that real change occurred.