Hey everyone, sorry for the radio silence, Spring Break and all that.

I’m going to update you on a few things that have been going on lately around our area, namely speaking events by Mark Steyn and Barak Obama. Much less famous than Obama, Mark Steyn is an author and commentator on world events. His blog, SteynOnline is home to book reviews, commentary on popular (and not so popular) culture, politics and world events in general. He is probably best known as the author of the book America Alone, and he was at Cal on March 14th as part of the Admiral Nimitz lecture series put on by the Naval ROTC (I believe, please correct me if i’m wrong, since it was two weeks ago I might not remember properly). His commentary that night concerned itself with the war in Iraq, America’s (and the West’s) place in global affairs, and the historical basis for the both.
Namely, that America has far and away the greatest military might of any other nation in the world (larger than the next 43 largest militaries combined), but we lack the will to use it. After 9-11, Steyn said we “belatedly found the will to use American power”, and that our hesitance in becoming a “bad guy” has actually made us weaker. When he references “us”, he means the West, or the “post 1945 global order” that espouses and enforces liberty, and encompasses “Western will, diplomatic muscle, intelligence, and civilizational confidence”, aka the lack of fear of promoting ones own culture.

On Iraq, Mr Steyn said that the left’s insistence on an exit strategy for the war is “the political equivalent to the kid in the back seat, saying ‘are we there yet’”. In his opinion (and my own), the best exit strategy is victory, and the fastest one is defeat. Which would you prefer?

Compare the physical muscle and hesitance of use of the US to North Korea, with it’s nuke-happy leader. He has the political will to exert his country, culture, and “values”, but hasn’t the physical, military strength to do it (say what you will about NK’s military, there is no danger of them getting very far). Another component of civilizational confidence, Steyn asserted, is demographics. The countries that are still having babies are those that are still growing. We all know what is happening in Japan, and most of Europe. Another factor that hampers exertion of American will and Western will in general, is that we train ourselves not to use it through education. Remember in an earlier post, where I referenced a Harvard student newspaper article about students helpless in the face of crime? Being taught to use our words, not to hit, to be “diverse” or “multicultural”, and being taught, more often than not, that the West is “Bad”. In our schools, we are taught all of this, which of course trains adults who will sacrifice their own culture, or like the Harvard student said, their personal safety, if they are not taught to respect it. Steyn called this “vitality”, or a survival instinct. I think we saw some of it after 9-11, but it’s been more dormant since then. Steyn said “multiculturalism is a unicultural phenomenon”, meaning you’d be hard pressed to find the kind of cultural acceptance the Western world promotes in a developing nation, like, say, China or North Korea. (caveat: diversity and multiculturalism are great in context. I’m talking at the expense of our own culture, here).

I loved this lecture, as I’ve been a fan of Steyn through his blog, and I converted my friend who had never heard of him before. However, you’d never guess by the audience. 145 Dwinelle was barely half full, and mostly of the different shades of ROTC students. For such a prominent and skilled speaker, I would have expected a bigger crowd.

On the other hand, Barak Obama drew a huge crowd (I can’t even estimate, as I was right in the middle of it) in Oakland city center on St Patrick’s day. The crowd was very diverse, and the speakers hammered this point relentlessly. Obama’s staff knew their demographic, and like the other carefully-worded points, took full advantage of this crowd.

We showed up around three, and took a spot in the grass in front of the City Hall building (I assume thats what it is, you know, the tall pretty one with the clock right in front of the Bart station). Luckily, my friend’s friend works for the campaign, so we got the coveted “blue” tickets, letting us be closer. However, as you can see from the photo, that was relative. Some aerial photos published on Drudge showed the massive crowd; even sitting on someone’s shoulders did not allow people where we were standing to actually see Obama. Music was playing, and it seemed almost like a 4th of july picnic. The music, like the speech, was geared towards the diverse audience, with “hyphy” rap, old school blues and oldies, Bob’s Dylan and Marley, etc. The first speaker was the Mayor of Oakland, proud to welcome the “most progressive congressional district”. He urged us to thank Barbara Lee for that honor of “having the audacity to see [our]self as a model for the entire U.S”.
Next up was an Iraq war veteran Greg someone, I couldn’t hear his last name. However, he was 180 degrees from what I expected, in that he mentioned the war only to set his time abroad as a frame of reference for the thing he missed the most, which was apparently the diversity of the bay area. The speakers, either by design or by co-incidence, didn’t mention anything about policy or any criticism.
Then Obama came out. He made some clever speech openers, anecdotes and the like, one about an Iowa or Illinois campaign rally when it was 8 degrees out (sorry, I can’t properly read my notes) where he was afraid that “no one would show up” (damn global warming). The bourgeoning crowd there suprised him, but not me. It was a clear display of his confidence and his support. Nothing breeds success more than talking about it, especially people braving cold and snow to support their local charismatic leader. Popularity and personality aside, onto issues.

Obama was convinced that we’ll be “a little poorer, and a little meaner” than the generation before us if we don’t “stand up”. His once-through hit healthcare, education, energy reform, global warming, the economy, and of course, the war. Let’s start where he did.

“We know what to do” was his refrain. On healthcare, we know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Obama’s desire to make preventative medicine and care for chronic illness more accessible sounds great, but his claim of “universal healthcare by the end of [his] first term” doesn’t. He also suggested e-billing to reduce price errors, but I’d rather see e-prescriptions to end mis-medication due to inability to read doctor’s handwriting.

In education, I was happy Obama mentioned the need to meet the world’s abilities in math and science. However, he claimed the current system is making it “harder to go to college”. I have serious beef with that. It’s harder to go to college because more students are enrolled than ever before. It’s competitive, which is good. Also, college is NOT a right. If I have to pay for it, it’s not a right. If I have to compete and earn my place, its not a right. No one expects citizens to earn their free speech or their right to a fair trial. (End of personal tangent). Obama also pushed early childhood education and criticised “no child left behind”, at which the crowd went wild. Two instances in his speech prompted this much applause, and the other was the war. I told you, he knew his audience well, there were a lot of students there. The crowd continued to cheer while he called for more teacher pay and “flexibility”, (no mention of accountability). Again, he said, we know what to do.

The energy crisis was blamed on the lack of an “energy strategy”. Compare to the Mark Steyn commentary above on “exit strategy”, just for kicks. He also said, to my suprise, “Oil money helps arabs oppress their own people”. Obama continued with the typical end-the-generation-of-gasses, find-alternatives-to-fossil-fuels bit, etc, and advised us not to melt the polar ice caps anymore.

On the economy, Obama suggested the great wealth of today is not “evenly spread”, and that “only some benefit”, and the usual about how the cost of living and wages don’t meet. Some statistics should clear this up quickly, but it appealed to the audience. He was very careful never to fault individuals or the general populace with any of these issues. They were all blamed on corporations and Washington. He suggested wireless should be implemented in every major city to give everyone access to the internet, but I don’t see how that helps if you can’t afford a computer. He also said we should “give unions a fair shot” which is more than redundant, as unions dominate not only local economies, but local politics, as see in the Schwarzenegger campaign. (Teachers union all but bankrupting themselves, getting water poured on me by union-member protesters at Schwarzenegger events, etc).

And of course, none of his plan can be implemented until the US is out of “the war that should have never been authorized”. The lack of war commentary at first was clearly to allow full impact of his statements, which was clear as the crowd went crazy and didn’t let up the entire time he talked about the war. Obama is proud to have been against the war since the beginning, saying we are now less safe, and our safety and power in the world are diminished. I take issue with his stance on this, a stance which focuses only on the lives lost and not on what has been gained, or the mission in general. He repeated that our troops were “in harms way”, which is why we should bring them home. This is a misnomer: yes the troops are in a dangerous place, but they are not IN danger. They ARE the danger to the terrorists, and they are on the offensive almost all the time. However, this is my knowledge based on research and personal testimonies of friends over in Iraq, not the sources that Obama’s writers probably want to emphasize. However, Obama also wants to improve resources for veterans, which is great, but the fact that he meets with Dick Durbin every Thursday to discuss it over coffee doesn’t give me much confidence in what he’ll accomplish. He is also right that the Iraqi government should stand up, but they aren’t ready to, just yet. Obama is also sponsoring a bill to withdraw starting May 1st, which I naturally don’t support, but he suprised me again when he said we should withdraw because “we have business in Afghanistan and Iran”.

Throughout all of this, Obama was very careful to lay the blame in high places. His criticism of poor policy and bureaucracy was aimed politicos in Washington “consumed by cynicism and pettiness”, who are “out of touch”, despite the fact that their decisions “aren’t smoke”. This is an important strategy, in order to avoid making enemies and appeal to the majority.

He ended with the obligatory reference to Selma, and made his campaign an clear allusion to the civil rights struggle. This went along with the themes of inclusion, not blaming the common folk, etc, although I would not go so far as to equate the two. The crowd seemed satisfied, and dispersed to an extremely crowded bart.

My overall opinion was a feeling of being largel unsuprised by the message, with small but rather radical suprises in what he said about Iran, etc. Obama definetly has the charisma and appeal that Hillary and Edwards sorely lack, and he certainly knows his audience, at least in the bay area. It was nice to hear the opposition, but I’m still glad I’m a conservative.