Updating, because I forgot about this

So, updates in general. I am still in college, yay. I am still paying for it myself and hating money woes. My interesting thought for today. Have you ever met someone for the first time and managed to communicate a lot of information about yourself to him/her in a very short period of time? What I'm thinking of is when you might answer a question in a discussion. The question is supposed to be way past where the class material is, but then someone answers it pretty much completely. This happened to me recently with a TA in my history class. He asked if anyone knew anything about Plato. Some kid said he was a guy who advocated for taking kids away from their parents and raising them separate in order to be good at certain tasks. True, but not the point. I then gave a nice little summary of Plato and my TA, who definitely has a bit of an attitude was kind of surprised. About a week later we were talking about the advent of classical learning and schools, which is where he guessed how I knew about Plato. Pretty funny, actually, because now he realizes how much I know. Of course, he also wants to push me harder than the other kids, so that's a drawback, but still it was funny how in only a few sentences from each person, quite a bit more was communicated than was actually said.

College Life Update and some surprising things that challenge a person's Conservative upbringing

Well this is now my second month of college and it's going pretty well except for my financial woes. I have fortunately found a well paying job, but not quickly enough to avoid my eventual late payment next month. I will make just enough money from this job to get by in college. I mentioned in the title some things that challenged my Conservative upbringing and this is it. While I will not say that racism has no effect in societal judgement, I have found something that I think has a greater effect. That thing is money. All my life I have heard rich and not so rich Republicans talk about how anyone can make it well in life, you just have to work hard and get good grades. Well what they are not considering is what happens when working hard(at a job) starts to compete with getting good grades. I am experiencing this right now. I have a job that will pay me enough to get by in college with very little debt, but I am making a HUGE time sacrifice in order to do it. This sacrifice can and at some times will cut into my study time, which will affect my grades. While I am making this sacrifice, others around me who are carying on the family tradition of triple majoring and being a doctor, have no money woes at all. Not only do they have their tuition payed for them, mommy and daddy give them spending money. And these kids are the ones out partying and p***ing away the amazing opportunity they have. How disgusting is that? I'm over here busting my butt, sleeping little, and worrying constantly while they have the time to go get drunk and be involved in all kinds of different things. And even with all that, they still have more free time for studying than I do. It all adds up to a simple thing: Money, while not the definitive factor, does play a HUGE!!!! role in how far you can get in life. Not all the people who choose a route like mine will make it, I don't even know if I will make it. But if I had the opportunity that the kids with rich parents do, I would make darn sure I was putting out a 4.0 and making something good out of myself. Some people just have no grasp of reality.

Racism in America: Because you definitely asked for a downer subject

With the recent death of a certain singer, whom I have vowed not to mention while on the internet, I have been considering a subject that always gets me irked up. In light of this singer's death, two figure have reemerged from their regular, but temperary, boughts with social irrelevance, and their names are always mentioned alongside my topic. They are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and my topic is, you guessed it, racism. Racism, and specifically the issues of slavery and civil rights in relation to it, have given life to countless, supposedly not-for-profit organizations. The promotion of minorities in this country is an important step if you want to be considered as legitimate in business, Hollywood, and even as an individual. I think part of the reason for this is that many white people would like to make up for the many, horrible, horrible things that they did to African-Americans all the way up to, but not ending with, the '60's. I will be the first to admit that these things were horrible and despicable. Some will try to defend even our nation's founders for what they did and how they had slaves. I'm not one of those people. I will readily acknowledge that our founding fathers were bigotous men who's grasp of equality stretched only as far as their tax documents. They did not at all fully understand how true and important the words they spoke were.
I fear, though, that the desire to defend white people will turn into an obligation to place miorities first. I don't say that meaning that I wish for whites to be first, I mean that there should be no preferential treatment at all because of race. Forty years ago, preferential treatment meant that whites were always first, now it's completely changed. In America today, being a minority will give you a statistically better chance of getting accepted to college, getting financial aid for that college, playing in the NBA, and a whole host of other things. What is more, there are countless organizations that are considered noble because they support minority issues. If there were white-oriented counterparts of these organizations, there would be huge public uproar. Think about colleges that offer 'African American Heritage Scholarships', or about our official African American History month. What would happen if we had 'Causcasian History Month' or a 'Caucasian Heritage' Scholarship? What about the 'national association for the advancement of white people'? How many of you laughed just reading that? Those suggestions would be positively offensive if they were true. There is no denying it. So why the heck does our society put up with it? When I looked at the named scholarships for the University of Missouri, there were 16 total, a whopping 12 of which required you to be a minority and 2 required you be a minority AND a woman. What is this crap? If 12 scholarships required you to be white, there would total uproar.
So I ask you, is there racism in America? You bet there is. The land of the free and the home of the brave harbors an angry grudge and facilitates a double standard against those of the caucasian decent. Yeah, that's right, I said it. What is more, I can prove it.

Go ahead and leave me angry comments, I'm ready.

College Stuff and more

Sooooooo, having not posted in absolutely forever, I have now decided to actually do something and give an update on my college situation. I have decided to attend Saint Louis University next fall(no, I was not wait-listed like the one commenter so rudely suggested). I am excited to be living close to home, but also excited to live outside the house. I will be up for some new scenerey and new challenges. I will be going pre-med at SLU, but I might major in some sort of language, we'll see.
On a political note, I'm very interested in how this new judge Obama has chosen will turn out. There's no doubt whatsoever that she will get confirmed, seeing as how she has at least some moderate viewpoints to her name, so she will appeal to Republicans, because she's about as good as they could have hoped for. Debate about her will be very pointless in the long run. What I and everyone else am interested in is her stance on abortion. Funnily enough, it seems that she has managed to be a high-profile judge and not ruled significantly on the issue. We'll have to see about that one. What I am also interested in seeing is her views on Gay Marriage and Eminent Domain. Given that she has described herself as a 'NewYorkrican', I am going to bet she's pretty liberal socially, but might have some common sense when it comes to economics. In other words, she's probably pro-gay marriage but anti-eminent domain. Here's hoping she turns out to be a reverse Sandra Day O'Connor and surprises Obama(can I call him O'Bama and make him Irish, that would be awesome). The court already leans right, given that we just came off a two-term Republican, and Sotormayor's appointment won't change that. But if she turns out to be at least marginally conservative, this court could be one of the most right-leaning ones ever.

Why yes, I would like a strong dose of Political Theory!

As I was listening tonight to President Obama's speech to Congress, I was reminded of the key reason why I and others disagree with his principles. I already knew what it was, it's just that I had'nt managed to put it all to words yet.

The phrase 'the ends justify the means' means that if doing something can accomplish something really good, then it does not matter what you do to accomplish those good things. Many countries around the world use this principle when governing. China keeps its citizens from watching pornographic, lewd, and anti-government material on the internet which produces citizens that are not expsoed to those things and who are unlikely to revolt against the government. The Chinese care not about the fact that they denied what we would call basic freedoms to their people, they only have eyes for what it does.

In America, however, the ends don't often justify the means. In fact, I would say that the ends virtually never justify the means. We live by our basic freedoms. It's why our country is so different from everyone else and why our form of government has so much left to prove to itself, to its citizens, and to history. Whenever politicians start to bring up cases where they look ahead to the result of what they are doing, but fail to see the wrongs inherent in the means, they make a fatal error(If you are wondering how I am going to bring this back to Barack Obama, then hold on for just a second).

I would venture to guess that many Americans out there want the same things. The problems and differences start when we use different means to get them. Most Americans believe in equality for everyone and fairness, its just that not all of us think that must be played out in the abortion of millions of human babies, or gay marriage, or a whole host of other things.

Back to politicians making fatal errors....When I watched President Obama's speech tonight, I was struck by his frequent use of the phrase 'whatever it takes'. This really denotes two things, both of which show his inexperience and his ultimate inaedequacy for his position: First, that he probably does not know what it will take to accomplish what he wants; Second, that he is willing to let his ends justify his means.
Hello Socialism.

America needs a President who has a developed plan, who will surround himself with knowledgeable and trained professionals, and who is willing to work through proper means to accomplish the ends that we all probably want anyway.

Politics Revisited (Finally)

I apologize for making few posts lately, but I have recently gotten worked over the idea of universal healthcare, so I decided to write about it.
In America, our doctors have in their best interest the proper treatment and/or healing of their patients. If they do their jobs, we get better and they get money. This works very well, albeit I will admit that not everyone can afford treatment(I will talk about this later). Because doctors want to get paid and patients are willing to balance quality with price, we have a competitve market for the best and the cheapest doctors(although they are not necessarily different entities). Despite this, some countries have decided to insitute universal healthcare, which means that all the doctors get paid virtually the same amount, and the one who pays them is the government through our tax dollars. Now, as you might expect, when the government is paying bills, they always look for ways to cut costs. They can't cut the doctors' pay, but they can cut down on the number of doctors and the number of patients treated. This means that it is in the governments best interest financially to tell you that you are not sick, or else that they have no room for you. There are plenty of examples of people in Canada(which has a form of socialized medicine) getting flown into the US for simple medical procedures that would have been performed if the doctors were able to compete by means of multiple health insurance companies. We don't want this in the US. It will not help us at all.
Now, regarding those who cannot pay. I propose that we use universally available healthcare. If we offer healthcare to those who are not able to pay for it as it is, then we can solve the real issue in this problem. Now to address the problem I pointed out before: The government in this case would not be able to offer horrible coverage to those who use the healthcare, because the people would see the coverage given by other companies and demand something similar, in the same way a union works.
Personally, I think this is a good happy medium that will fix our problem.

College

Just a small update on my college progress: I did not get into Duke. They said they received twice as many early decision applicants as usual and they still can only use the 500 spots that they reserved for it. Also, on a lighter note, and contrary to what the random commenter said on my other post, I was accepted into SLU today. I am not on the waiting list, so there.