Boy did I have a fun weekend! And when I say fun, what I mean is... definitely not fun. To count, I have spent 19 hours in the past 4 days in the library. Why, do you ask? Because Tufts decided that I was simply enjoying Tufts too much, and therefore it should kick my butt. Thanks for putting me in my place Tufts, I'll never enjoy you again.
But in my hours of brain-numbing research, writing, and moments of insanity, I did come across some interesting tidbits which I would like to share with you, my readers who quite possibly could not care less.
Quite simply, Barry Goldwater changed my life. That Arizona cowboy completely changed my entire understanding of current day politics, and I now know why the Bush administration makes some of its decisions. Now, I know what you are thinking. I am a huge loser. I accept this. But any person who is interested in politics today, in my opinion, will appreciate this trip through the New York Times from 1964. It will blow your mind.
Why? Because certain political actions of the Republican Party confuse me. Well, almost all aspects of the Bush administration confuse me. For instance, the day that Bush announced that he wanted to go to Mars, and then never mentioned it again. Did anyone else laugh? I laughed. I mean, Mars is not exactly the moon, and Bush is not exactly Kennedy, and the '00s are not exactly the '60s. I thought it was ridiculous, and I'm pro-NASA! I mean, Space Center Houston? It's like my favorite tourist attraction!
On a more serious note, the war in Iraq confuses me. I wish I could say that we all know that there is no connection between 9/11 and Iraq, but sadly, we don't all know that. I know that, and you probably know that. But the majority of the American public was misled into believing that Iraq was retaliation and therefore supporting the war. I still don't know the real reason why we are there, because it clearly was not to prevent the production of WMD's. It confuses and saddens me, because while I sit here in the library of my cushy prestigious university, people my exact age are sitting in a foxhole, and our President can't even explain why.
I found something that might start to explain why these actions are being taken with little background cause and, it appears, little forethought. In the article "Goldwater Challenges the '4-Party System'" in the New York Times written in 1964, James Madison Burns basically predicts what is happening today in 2005. He is addressing Barry Goldwater's attempt to make the Republican Party strongly conservative.
"If the conservatives won, the real danger to the nation would not lie in their attempts to reverse history by repealing the income tax or pulling out of our United Nations commitments. The crisis would come when such efforts failed to solve anything and when the conservatives, frustrated in making headway and embarrassed by their reckless promises to the voters, turned to some dangerous adventure at home or abroad."
Stop. Go back. Read that again.
Anyone who tries to tell me that that statement does not address our current situation spot-on is lying to himself. I could not believe my eyes when I read it for the first time. That was written in 1964. The author goes on to claim that the conservatives could never accomplish party realignment, and they would not actually want to. Boy, was he wrong.
So the next time you watch the news and see the Daily report on the death toll in Iraq, think to yourself, is this worth it and well thought-out, or is this simply an adventure designed to disguise that we never found Osama Bin Laden, our economy is not strong, and there are millions of starving Americans living in this country?
Honestly, I do not want to believe that this is true. And I do not believe that President Bush is a senseless man who would maliciously put American soldiers in harm's way. But the party stretches much further than Bush, and this is what worries me. With each day that passes and each member of my generation who will not see tomorrow, I grow more and more resigned to the thought that this war was a grand adventure out of the Republican failure to improve American life. I'm sad, and I'm inspired to work to change this failure in the system.
Please join me in thinking critically about this topic, because this is our America and our generation, and we cannot afford to sit by and be toyed with. Think about this the next time you are sitting in the library, or especially, the next time you vote.
Meredith Pickett is a sophomore majoring in history. Se can be reached via e-mail at Meredith.Pickett@tufts.edu.
