I wish I could budget like this.

I was reading the news, because I like to be well informed and hate doing homework. But I stumbled upon this. (Thats a hyperlink you can click it. I am proud that i figured out how to do this. Hey future employer call me and hire me! Look at how good i am at the internet!) Anyhoo, as I was reading I stumbled across this little story.

On the surface it seems good, then you think about it and it is bad then it gets better then worse. Let me take you through my thought process while reading it. For those of you too lazy to click the button, here is the title and my thoughts will be italicized.
 "US to give Libyan rebels $25 million in aid"
Ohhhhhh thats nice of us. We need to help out and rid the world of dictators and make the world as free as america.........wait $25 million.......thats a lot.

It goes on to read that we will be donating items that are needed for the Libyan people that we already have in stock. While this is great and we should be looking to help our neighbors, there should be other ways that we can do this. The government was just on the verge of a shut down and only agreed on a budget to take us through to the fall, but then we will be facing the same sort of issuses again. To me, it doesnt seem like donating $25 million is the best thing for the government. Does our government not realize that they dont get tax write-offs? that they are still going to be in debt when the new financial year comes and that they wont be recieving any money back? Hiliary Clinton was one of the people who advised Obama to sign on this, and i am going to keep bi-partisianship out of this, because helping out those who need it is a noble cause. But what if we are close to being one who needs help.

France, Italy and The United Kingdom all pledged soldiers to help in the "battlefield stalemate"

This is a scary world that we are living in. America has been a superpower for so long that now we feel like we are invincible. However, we are not the prosperous country that we used to be. Our money has flown away and we are on the verge of bankruptcy and owe more money than we are worth. Can we really afford to help Lybia financially? Is this another example of us spending money that we dont have? or is this America taking the stand for what is right?

It is tough to deny help, we have always been support for the weak, we have always helped those in need and surly with our own wars to fight we cannot spare many men to go over and help in the fighting like our European brothers are doing, but is exhausting an already exhausted account the way to do it?

Social Change

Last night I was in our student union building and I saw a group sitting in a circle reading and writing poems about equality and fairness in laws. The demographics of this group were as follows a man who is openly gay on our campus, a black student, two women who are also openly homosexual, and then an Asian student. The subjects of their poems was about equality and about feeling underrepresented and oppressed. They talked about how it feels to be underrepresented and how much harder they have to work at it. They then went on to criticize our forefathers for not figuring it out earlier.

 This is good. Spread awareness, but as I was listening to them I began to get irritated with them because I wanted to know how they thought that this help.

Awareness on CLU's campus is fairly high, we are a fairly supportive campus, and even if we aren't actively fighting for the rights of homosexuals we are indifferent. So what is the point of a forum of talking about your feelings?

Civil Rights movement, Women's Suffrage, even the revolutions going on in Egypt, all have one thing in common. Action. This is not a blog about my position on any of these issues nor about my political stance, just my thoughts on the actual movement.

What is the point? The types of people who will attend forums or will come to hear people speak on issues are the type of people who agree with what is being taught or spoken about. So in doing a presentation like this, your supporters will show up, but it wont be reaching the audience that they were hoping for. They arent going to be changing any minds, it was sounding like complaining. Dr. Martin Luther King didn't just talk about how it felt to be a black American, he encouraged people to peacefully resist things that made them feel oppressed. Not riding the bus, have a peaceful march, start integrating schools, and a great movement happened.

On May 17, 1954 Brown v the Board of Education passed the law that made segregation in schools unconstitutional in Virginia. A year and a half later, Rosa Parks resists moving on a bus and mothers the Montgomery bus movement. In 1957 they desegregated Little Rock, after that, the movement took off with sit-ins, voter-registration and many nonviolent marches. All of this is ACTION. No one remembers when the black mammys talked about feeling oppressed or discriminated against. Talking about how your feeling only is effective after you have had some sort of action to go with it.

The Women's suffrage movement was the same way, they protested and did things that were radically frowned upon to gain awareness and support, but they did it in a way that they were still respected members of society and they showed how strong and independent they were as women.

All this to say. Any new movement in the world, it takes action with the willingness to talk to actually change anything. You cant talk about your feelings as the minority and then expect that people will be willing to step outside of their comfort zone and make a huge change. You have to pressure them.

Finally, you absolutely cannot blame the sins of our fathers on us today. Do not say that because 600 years ago, when Christopher Columbus "discovered" America and then started the movement to colonizing America, that i should still feel guilty about it. I don't think I should feel guilty that my forefathers committed crimes and stole the land from native Americans, because there is nothing I can do about that. noting I can do to change it. And if my forefathers hadn't taken it, then someone else would have. Don't say that because African American's are not completely equal that that is a failing of our forefathers, that is a failing of us. Our forefathers, in the course of less than 30 years, African Americans went from being the butt of the joke and the subservient race, not allowed to go to school with white kids, to becoming prominent figures in society. That is a major win.

I am not saying that the movement should be finished or has completed a goal, but don't criticize the work of our forefathers, changing the views of a whole nation is a lot harder than you think.