The Obama Fad

As the painfully long primaries finally wind down, the Democrats are finally coalescing around Barack Obama to be their nominee for president of the United States. My own state of Oregon has backed Obama and he is huge on campus here at Oregon State. There are a couple of big thoughts that have passed through my mind repeatedly as I watch all of this unfold. The first is an honest bewilderment at why Obama is so popular in the first place, a question I think I have answered but am looking for alternative points of view on. The other is a fear; the fear of someone that is little known, inexperienced, and highly radical. I will deal with these two questions in order.

 

As a political scientist, I look at first glance at Barack Obama and wonder how in the world he became so popular so quickly. He was a little known first term senator from Illinois just over a year ago but now he is a household name throughout the developed world. Europeans are coming out in numbers in their own countries to follow the new phenom in American politics. He is popular among African Americans (no surprise since he is one also), upper-class whites, and students. There are various reasons that could be delved into as to how he rose to prominence so quickly, but I am not going there in this discussion. I want to focus on students.

 

Obama is pretty popular with students nationwide. Based on his policies alone it is difficult to know why he is so wildly popular with students compared with Hilary Clinton. Their overall stated objectives and platforms are very similar. They hold the same common beliefs. Personally, I think people like Obama because it is trendy to do so. He is young, his background relatively unknown, and his policies flowery and hopeful, yet so vague. He is a master orator, I mean no disrespect to him. He definitely knows how to give a speech and rally his base. He talks about "changing Washington" and making "new politics rather than politics as usual". But he says nothing substantive, which brings me to my next thought.

 

When taken over time, the Senator's words seem so vague and empty. He talks about hope, crossing party lines, bringing real change that will last instead of short-term DC political change. He talks about what he will do and it all sounds great. But what are his plans to actually do any of that? How is he going to change things? Even if he wins and has a democratic majority beneath him, that sweeping of change is highly unlikely. And what is this change anyway? You watch any single show on TV and you will see multiple ads by all kinds of politicians and you might wonder if there isn't some federal law stating that all political ads must mention the word "change" at least once in the course of their message. Obama's slogan is "Change We Can Believe In" but what exactly is the change he proposes?

 

I wish that my fellow students were better educated voters. I truly think that he is the next cool thing out there and so people are riding the trend like they do with just about any other fad. I feel this is dangerous because they know little of what his policies actually are (because he keeps everything so vague anyway) and no one knows his background. Every year a non-partisan group ranks all senators and congresspeople on how liberal or conservative they are. The rankings are based solely on quantitative data: how that person votes in their respective house of Congress. Low and behold the rankings this year have Barack Obama as number 1 liberal. That's right, Obama is the most liberal man in congress. If many people see Hilary Clinton and John Kerry as radicals, watch out, here comes Obama.

 

This ranking I believe goes back to his votes even in the Illinois state legislature. His entire political career has been spent working to push the agenda of the most radically liberal people in this country. I think that is a dangerous person to have leading the United States. I think many people who support him now do not realize how far off center he is politically. I would take Hilary Clinton as president long before I would take Obama. And besides the fact that he is extremely liberal, I do not think he is strong enough to lead this country. When he wasn't voting his liberal agenda, on other issues he simply does not take a side. There are few other Senators who simply vote "present" instead of yay or nay as Obama. He shows up, but won't take a side.

 

Working  with Republicans and Democrats? Reshaping politics as usual in Washington? Are you kidding me? If Obama is elected president, you will see polarization of the parties taken to new heights. You cannot take a far-left leader and expect that even moderate conservatives are going to want to work together on everything. Someone more moderate is needed. It will be a sad day for the United States if Barack Obama is ever sworn in as its president.

The New Bad Words

Lately I have been watching the political ads on TV and I have been making some observations. A lot of the things said in these ads play on the emotions or internal feelings of people and, I might add, the ignorance of many. Using the media and strong words, campaigns are distorting the true meanings of words and making them into bad words to make things sound negative. Or they make negative things sound positive in a sort of Orwellian double-speak effort.

 

The first one that has really gotten me lately in the media is a couple of Democratic candidates (it is irrelevant where they are from or what they are running for) who have been running ads about lobbyists. They are talking about how bad lobbyists are and how we need to stop listening to the special interests of the lobbyists. After studying this fairly extensively, I have something to say about it.

 

Lobbyist groups I would dare to say are the reason we as regular citizens still have some direct influence over our politicians. Lobbyist groups do have lots of money, yes. Lobbyist groups are powerful groups that have the ear of the lawmakers. But did you know that you, yes you yourself personally, are represented by at least one lobbyist group all the time? It pretty much does not matter how old or young, rich or poor, or what your occupation, there is a lobbyist group representing your interests and fighting for YOU in Washington, in the state capital, wherever.

 

Even students are represented by lobbyists groups. OSU has a couple taskforces: one for federal and one for state affairs. There are many others too, but the point is these are lobbyists. Maybe they are not as powerful as some, so I will give you a more well known one: the American Association of Retired People. That's right, AARP is a special interest group, a lobbyist group that was meant to fight for the rights and interests of elderly people in the United States. The organization AAA is the same thing. These are lobbyists, these are special interests, and yet they have done many good things. No one would dispute this. Lobbyist groups keep democracy in full swing and keep the government accountable. In a system dominated by only two parties (unlike almost any other democracy in the world) interests groups make sure the minorities do not get shoved out of the system.

 

There is another ad out there that just galls me personally and I believe it is based on another gross misunderstanding of past events. The ad starts out: "Some votes weren't counted, and we got a mess" and the images on screen refer to the 2000 presidential elections. Apparently people still will not let go of a decision made almost 8 years ago. The Supreme Court decision in the case of Bush v. Gore still seems to just eat at some liberal naysayers. Does anyone really remember anymore why that case even started? Sure we know the outcome; recounting of votes in Florida stopped and Bush was declared the winner of the election.

 

People are still up in arms over what they feel was George W. Bush's political wrangling and that he used the Supreme Court to further his own political goals. But does anyone know why it became a court case in the first place? Al Gore got it put before the Supreme Court, not George Bush. And the decision was about as close to unanimous as a controversial decision can get: 7-2. The court was far less conservative than it is now and still a strong majority sided that the recount should stop. Why is this even an issue anymore? The problem was not that votes were not counted, the controversy was over a RE-count of votes that had already been recorded. Liberals, get over it. It is 8 years in the past, time to move on. You talk about change and moving on from the past, practice what you preach.

 

The last one I am going to touch on is a personal issue that bothers me more than any other political issue. This one is something that, again, is in a couple of democratic candidates' ads. This one has to do with "protecting a woman's right to choose". When you put it in those terms, it does not sound bad at all does it? But what exactly is being protected? What is being protected is a woman's "right" to choose to kill an unborn child. They are "protecting a woman's right to choose" by taking away an unborn child's right to life. It all sounds different though, does it not, when they sanitize it in the media and in political ads?

Devotion

In all likelihood I will watch the Oregon State University men's basketball team make history on Saturday. Unfortunately, it will not be the good kind of history. They will go down in history as the only Pac-10 team to lose every conference game in a season. They have currently lost 19 straight with an overall record of 6-23. I have not seen them win a home game. The games they won were either during marching band season and I didn't have to be there or they happened over Christmas Break.

It seems like going into every game I know that they are going to lose, but I cannot help feeling depressed every time it actually happens. I still get sad no matter how bad I know they are. I show up and I give my all to cheering them on. I yell at the refs and scream at the opposing team's coach like my life depends on it. When something goes good, I lose my voice yelling so hard. I bark at the opposing team's fans to sit down when they start pouring it on. Maybe the reason it hurts so much is that I invest too much emotion in each game. I just cannot help it; it is my team and I hate to see them triumphed over by anyone. Especially because of being in band, it is my duty to protect the honor of my school.

That is real devotion though. I could cheer for some other team because there is no point in cheering for mine. I could just not give any emotion to the game at all. There are many things I could do because the team is really bad. But what kind of fan would I be? I do not just love my team when things are going great; I devote my energy to them even when things have gone terribly bad. That is devotion: to stick by something or someone no matter how bad the circumstances become. To stay by their side in the roughest times.

What I am trying to say here is bigger than just my love for OSU though. I think that my devotion to cheering for Oregon State in every sport, through thick and thin, is sort of a good picture or example that can be applied to many other things. My generation has been referred to by some as the silent generation. I would add to that lazy. Don't get me wrong, this is my generation too, but I definitely see us as a silent, lazy generation.

My generation is no longer committed to anything. We have an attitude of "if it doesn't make me feel good, I don't want to do it." If life is hard, give up. I saw a commercial the other day, I believe it was a car commercial, that illustrates my point. Basically the narrator was saying that today if you do not like your house, get a new one. If you do not like something about your body, get a new one. If you do not like your wife, well, get a new one. He then goes on to ask, "What ever happened to commitment?" I guess that is what I wonder.

To prove my point about us being lazy, I will give yet another example from the press. I read an article about two weeks ago in the Daily Barometer, OSU's student newspaper. The article was about the type of "relationship" known as "friends with benefits." Basically the article talked about why these relationships are popular nationwide with high school and college age students. The reason is that it is easy: you get to have sex and whatever without having to commit to any kind of relationship. Why work at a relationship (because it definitely does take work) when you can just go "hook up" anytime you want without a relationship?

The sex professor here at OSU (who I already had almost no respect for) was almost praising these relationships in the article. It kind of made me sick. My generation likes to cheat on tests, find the easiest way to get rich, go out and have sex with all kinds of people without any commitment, and do all sorts of other things. Everyone knows that in America today we have the fattest population ever. We are so lazy.

Maybe people already know why we are called the silent generation, but I will go over it real quick anyway. Part of the reason is exactly what I am doing right here. Besides being lazy, my generation does not voice their opinions anywhere except in their blogs. When people in my generation get mad about some societal ill, they go and blog about it to release their anger. They do not go out and get anything done, they just blog about it and forget. Everything is OK after that because they made themselves feel good by writing that blog.

This election is somewhat unusual because there is a higher percentage of young voters turning out. But the fact of the matter is that most of those are 4-year college and university students who are more or less being pushed to get out and vote by their peers and professors. Not that that in itself is bad; as a political science major I would suggest doing it myself. But what I guess I am getting at is most people my age are not at a university. Most of the people in my age group are still not involved. Even the Darfur awareness among college students is not the biggest thing. It is almost more the trendy thing to help with than anything else. If it makes me look or feel better, than I will do it. That is my generation.

I guess I just wonder what this generation will look like in ten or twenty years. We are so lazy that we are not willing to work at anything. We do not work to make the country better. We do not work to make our states or cities better. We do nothing to help those who are really in need on the streets. We do nothing to keep our relationships strong. Are we just going to sit by when the government makes bad decisions in the future? Are we going to let our marriages fall apart at the first sign of trouble because it is easier to let it fall apart? Where is there room for devotion in the midst of our laziness and silence?

As for me, I want to have the same devotion, the same emotion invested in everything else in my life that I do in cheering on my team. I want to passionately pursue the goals and interests, and develop the talents that God has given me. I want to be passionately devoted to one woman for the rest of my life, no compromise. I want to be utterly devoted to my God. I want to do all of this no matter how hard it gets. That is true devotion. Of course there will be very hard times, but true character shines through the darkest circumstances.

The Short Time in Life

I went over to Newport today because all week I have wanted to just get out of Corvallis and be somewhere less hectic. I wanted to just get up and go to some place that was relatively quieter and away from all the stuff at school. I think it is a good thing to go do something far away from the things that represent stress in life. I went by myself, which may seem rather lonely, but it was actually kind of nice. I got to wander about, not having to stay with anyone, being able to do whatever I felt like. I guess it was while I walked around out on the sand that I thought about things, as I often do.

As my mind wandered, which also happens often, I thought about my friends and I thought about this girl. That always happens as a single guy right, you start thinking about the girl you like? I have felt lonely quite a bit here at school, missing friends and such, and I was feeling it a little more as I walked about on the beach. But as I kept thinking about this stuff, I came to a novel realization. For those of us people who are single, I realized it's fine to be single and not to lose heart. Not to be downtrodden by the loneliness. This is probably the shortest period of life we will face.

I think that from the time we first start "noticing" the opposite gender, we want to be with them. This is natural, of course. Chemicals start mixing and sensors start going off all over the brain. We get into middle school, high school, and college and find ourselves sick with the desire for companionship from the opposite sex. This is all very good, and I look forward to the day when I finally know that it is time to begin a relationship, but I have an interesting idea to introduce here.

When I said "this is probably the shortest period life we will face" I meant it, and here is why. If I was to say get married at age 25, and then only live to be 60, I would still have lived more than half of my life married, in a relationship. I would have spent 35 years in a relationship compared to the 25 I was not in one. Since the life expectancy for even a male in America is far higher than 60, it looks like I have a good chance of this happening. My point here is that it is OK to not be with someone right now if you are not. For those of you who have found someone, great! I hope it works out. I am talking to those of you who are sad and lonely because you do not have a man or a woman in your life. Do not be dismayed by all of this.

I guess the first thing that got me wanting to write this and started me down this line of thinking was a status update I read on Valentine's Day from a girl I went to high school with. It was lamenting the fact that she was not with someone. I know it is a hard thing to be single, I have done it for almost 19 years now, but this strange new thought came to me after I read it. Today at the beach only reaffirmed it I suppose. Think about the good things of being single.

The very fact that I was able to escape to the coast on my own was only possible because I am single. Think about it, if I had a girlfriend or wife and went to the coast by myself either without telling her or telling her that she could not come, I would be in major trouble. On the one hand she would be angry I did not tell her where I was going. On the other hand, she would be mad I did not want her to come along. There are other things about being single that are good things. If I wanted to do something with like "the guys" it is incredibly easy now. It's like this: you call up your buddy and say "hey, I'm gonna go climb a mountain, wanna come?" and he's like, "sure, when are we going?" "I was thinking about an hour." "Cool, let's go!" It's that easy.

If I want to travel, there is nothing holding me back besides money. I have all the time in the world because I do not have to devote it to anyone else. Now don't get me wrong here, it's awesome to be in a relationship and spend time with another person. It is great to meet someone else's needs. But this season in life, this relatively short time of being single (though it does not feel short now) is going to be over before you know it.

For those of you who are single, I challenge you to live life to the fullest now without another person for just a little while longer. Do not just rush into a relationship because you "need" to be with someone. I challenge you to go do some of the things you have always wanted to do. I myself would love to go study in Europe, and I think I am going to go do it next year. I am probably going to spend two months this summer in Canada working with a church plant. I know I could not achieve many of my dreams that I have if I were already committed to someone else. That is just the harsh reality of life.

Being in a relationship or being married is awesome, but do not forget to enjoy being single as well. This is a short time in life, and once it is over, it will not come back. There is life after being single, but there is also life during it. Live it to the fullest, realize your potential. Do the things you want to do while you still can. Remember to have as much fun single as you will in a relationship. If you take nothing more away from this, just remember that this is the short time in life; have fun living it.

All Men Should Be Feminists

You probably stared at the title of this post for a long time wondering what the red-blooded conservative Christian male writing this knows about feminism. Men should be feminists? Is he crazy? I hope that at the very least you do not think I am a chauvinist going into this. I hope to elaborate on the statement for which this post is titled. I think that men should definitely be feminists. So here I go.

I guess that the best place to start is with a definition of feminism. Feminism, according to Webster's Dictionary, is the belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. Throughout modern history feminists have championed the rights of women where those rights had been withheld. I believe that it is the duty of real men to strive to protect femininity. I think that as men, we should stand up and fight for women.

It seems to me that today there are the extreme feminists who are against that notion. They feel that a man who stands up for a woman is anti-feminist or a chauvinist because he wants to protect a woman. I would like to argue that this is not only not a chauvinist attitude, but is very pro-women. The idea that standing up for a woman is bad and against women is going to the extreme of what Rush Limbaugh calls "feminazism". I do not have a lot of respect for old Rush, but I do have to say that the term "feminazi" applies to some elements of society today. I think they have twisted the good intentions of some men who genuinely want to protect women (not just because they are "weaker") and turned it against them.

I do not think there are many people out there today who would argue that men and women are the same. I do not think that if I asked a random person off the streets if men and women are the same that they would tell me yes. Men and women are completely different emotionally. Women get up in herds to go to the bathroom while men will not even speak, look around, or acknowledge another man in the bathroom. Women talk a lot (many thousands of words a day) while men do not talk very much (only a few thousand words a day). I do not think any guy, or any girl, would tell me that guys in general are more emotional than girls. Guys do not show emotion, girls can show a lot. I am not going to get into the idea of gender roles in this text. I just choose to recognize that there are differences between men and women.

One thing I really want to emphasize, though, is that I think that the differences are good. I think that the difference is beautiful! God created man and said he was good. God created women and said she was very good. If we all acted like men, we would all be very empty. If we all acted like women, we would hate each other for talking all the time; there would never be any rest. I think that men and women compliment each other in their very existence. I think that we are complete as men and women together. You need both sides of the equation.

Having said this, I return to what I feel is what a man should do: be a protector of femininity. I think that all too much today men see women as something to be conquered. They see women as just objects to chase after to meet their needs and desires. Not all men feel this way, I certainly do not. But you see it everyday on TV, on billboards, in stores. It has permeated our society. I believe that men should be champions of women. They should be promoting ALL women as beautiful creatures that deserve all respect and decency.

I heard it in health classes I think; the question of "why it is OK for a male to sleep around but a female who does it is called derogatory names?" While I do not think either one is good, there is a good point brought up in the question. Why IS it OK, socially acceptable for men and not for women. I have an answer: men are not protecting femininity. In locker rooms and other male gatherings we support the guy who is bedding all the women. We talk about women as if they are objects. We say derogatory things about them in the privacy of that gathering of guys. I am not saying that I want it to be OK for both men and women to be promiscuous, my readers know me better than that, but what I am saying is that a guy who thinks with a feminist attitude is not OK with the dichotomy.

From the time we are young, all of us guys somewhere along the line want to be a hero. We play all kinds of games in our heads or with others where we want to be heroic. A lot of girls want to be the princess that is rescued. I am not saying that you girls never want to be heroines, but what movie where the prince rescues the princess or the dashing knight downs the dragon to save the damsel does not stir something in you? I think that in mistaking the natural desires of a little boy's heart or a little girl's heart as being a product of a chauvinist society we have missed the point. Men want to protect women, not just because they might be physically weaker, but because it is part of a man.

Over the last 40 years or so we have tried to turn our male population into one that no longer fights for women. We have told men that it is chauvinistic to want to. In a lot of ways I think we have made men like women: we turn them into beings that are just nice and polite but do not stand up for anything. A true feminist man, or maybe just a true man, champions and upholds femininity. He does not go after it like a conquerer. Men should cherish women for the beautiful things they are. And I mean all women, not just the ones you think are "hot".

I am very much for the equality of women. It was always God's will that women be equal to, just different from men. Adam and Eve were both created in God's image. God is not male or female, he is Spirit. Men and women are both equally in the image of God and should be equal in all aspects of life. Men should be feminists because they should always fight to protect femininity, to protect women. What would it look like if more men stepped up and did this? How drastically would crimes against women decrease? How many fewer women would be hurt by men, either physically or emotionally? Some women out there might think I am a chauvinist for saying some of the things I have said in here, but my hope is that you see that to my deepest core I seek to promote femininity as something to be cherished and held dear. I support women, and I think that all men should do the same.