Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, December 19, 2005 at about 11pm CST - Segment 3
Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, December 19, 2005 at about 11pm CST
Segment 3
I saw three things this week that are interrelated. There's this country called Ukraine. They had the Orange revolution last year. The people showed up in the square of their capital and required their government to redo an election. The guy who headed the revolution was poisoned in the process. from being a sharp looking man, he became a rather unsightly fellow. It irritated people around the world that the opposition had tried to kill the leader of the rebellion. Right now, the Ukraine is having LOTS of trouble and the rebel leader is having to confront the problem that all democratically elected leaders have: Not everyone agrees with him. He's trying to walk a tightrope between appeasing Russia and aligning with the West with goal of joining NATO and the European Union. Under his leadership the government has stopped attacking critics and jailing everyone and his dog. The reporter was amazed that normalcy had been established in the Ukraine.
I also saw this story about this guy writing for the Wall Street Journal who at 31, decided he wanted to join the Marines. He had been to China and spoke Chinese fluently. In China he saw firsthand how a government could oppress its own people and anyone else that it chose. What we take for normalcy in the United State is abnormal everywhere else in the world. So this writer started doing physical training, because the Marines have a physical requirement. I don't how long it took, but the guy actually was accepted into the Marines. In essence, he joined to fight for normalcy in other countries.
The third story has to do with a woman I met a while back. She was from Calcutta, India and her husband was from Bombay. She got her PhD at A&M and her in-laws were intimidated by her because of that. That always struck me as weird, because she is about 4'8" tall. She pointed out to me that when she was growing up in India she had to stand in line for everything and there was LOTS of pushing and shoving, just to buy something. You had to pay off people to get just about any service. She said that people were always crabby and out of sorts because they had to put up with this constant struggle. Every time she got back to College Station from trips home, she felt relief, because she had decided what she wanted to be normalcy.
What I am getting at with these three stories is that people around the world want what we have in this country, normalcy. They want their governments to leave them in peace to do as they want. They want a civil society where your neighbor cannot easily poke his nose into your affairs. We in America are so used to that concept that it's transparent to us. We complain about government intrusion in our lives, but our government does not intrude as much as other governments do. Why is that a bad thing to wish for other people in the world? Normalcy by our standards.
Multiculturalism has taken over our political discourse. The idea that we must not judge another culture, because... it would be wrong. Well, if they do not get results, then how can they be a better or as good a culture as ours. If the majority of people in your country or locality are starving to death, then how can you say your way works as well as the US. The only way you can say that is if you say that starving to death is a cultural artifact.
As I have said before the biggest problem people have in the Third World is corruption. If they would just put into place a reform agenda, rule of law and property rights, then your economy starts turning around.
I want to point out something about Central and South America. In Bolivia as we speak the people of Bolivia are about to shoot their economy in the foot. They perceive that capitalism is the reason they are poor. They have turned to socialism to improve their lot. They have billions of cubic feet of natural gas, but feel that selling it to foreigners is a bad idea. I wonder how it is going to turn out. Most of Central and South of America is going socialist. When their economies collapse, I wonder what they will think. They'll probably say it's George Bush's fault. He gets blamed for everything nowadays.
Segment 3
I saw three things this week that are interrelated. There's this country called Ukraine. They had the Orange revolution last year. The people showed up in the square of their capital and required their government to redo an election. The guy who headed the revolution was poisoned in the process. from being a sharp looking man, he became a rather unsightly fellow. It irritated people around the world that the opposition had tried to kill the leader of the rebellion. Right now, the Ukraine is having LOTS of trouble and the rebel leader is having to confront the problem that all democratically elected leaders have: Not everyone agrees with him. He's trying to walk a tightrope between appeasing Russia and aligning with the West with goal of joining NATO and the European Union. Under his leadership the government has stopped attacking critics and jailing everyone and his dog. The reporter was amazed that normalcy had been established in the Ukraine.
I also saw this story about this guy writing for the Wall Street Journal who at 31, decided he wanted to join the Marines. He had been to China and spoke Chinese fluently. In China he saw firsthand how a government could oppress its own people and anyone else that it chose. What we take for normalcy in the United State is abnormal everywhere else in the world. So this writer started doing physical training, because the Marines have a physical requirement. I don't how long it took, but the guy actually was accepted into the Marines. In essence, he joined to fight for normalcy in other countries.
The third story has to do with a woman I met a while back. She was from Calcutta, India and her husband was from Bombay. She got her PhD at A&M and her in-laws were intimidated by her because of that. That always struck me as weird, because she is about 4'8" tall. She pointed out to me that when she was growing up in India she had to stand in line for everything and there was LOTS of pushing and shoving, just to buy something. You had to pay off people to get just about any service. She said that people were always crabby and out of sorts because they had to put up with this constant struggle. Every time she got back to College Station from trips home, she felt relief, because she had decided what she wanted to be normalcy.
What I am getting at with these three stories is that people around the world want what we have in this country, normalcy. They want their governments to leave them in peace to do as they want. They want a civil society where your neighbor cannot easily poke his nose into your affairs. We in America are so used to that concept that it's transparent to us. We complain about government intrusion in our lives, but our government does not intrude as much as other governments do. Why is that a bad thing to wish for other people in the world? Normalcy by our standards.
Multiculturalism has taken over our political discourse. The idea that we must not judge another culture, because... it would be wrong. Well, if they do not get results, then how can they be a better or as good a culture as ours. If the majority of people in your country or locality are starving to death, then how can you say your way works as well as the US. The only way you can say that is if you say that starving to death is a cultural artifact.
As I have said before the biggest problem people have in the Third World is corruption. If they would just put into place a reform agenda, rule of law and property rights, then your economy starts turning around.
I want to point out something about Central and South America. In Bolivia as we speak the people of Bolivia are about to shoot their economy in the foot. They perceive that capitalism is the reason they are poor. They have turned to socialism to improve their lot. They have billions of cubic feet of natural gas, but feel that selling it to foreigners is a bad idea. I wonder how it is going to turn out. Most of Central and South of America is going socialist. When their economies collapse, I wonder what they will think. They'll probably say it's George Bush's fault. He gets blamed for everything nowadays.
posted by aRandomTexan at
10:23 AM
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