“Never again…but I had just come from a place where history was repeating itself.” This is the statement that stood out to me the most at the recent Lehigh lecture by Paul Rusesabagina, whose story is told in the movie, Hotel Rwanda. Mr. Rusesabagina gave the packed Baker Hall auditorium a brief history of the simmering chaos in the decades leading up to the Rwandan genocide in 1994. He then described, in stark detail, the beginning of the carnage in April of that year. He remembers having dinner with his brother-in-law and his wife one evening, shaking hands good-bye that night, and finding out later that they had been killed on their way home. He remembers seeing his wife, whom he had sent along with his four young children to be evacuated, return in the evacuation vehicle beaten so badly they could hardly move for weeks. He remembers the dead bodies lying in scores on the side of the road, many with missing limbs and heads.

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Everyone who listened to the Presidential debates probably recognizes this phrase. Several times, both Obama and McCain used it in reference to issues on which they disagreed. Once or twice when McCain spoke, I saw a little glimmer of clarity on the real fundamental difference between the parties. (more…)

I was looking through the Wall Street Journal the other day when I saw the headline “Black Voters Fret Over Obama.” I wondered, when I saw the title, what black voters were ‘fretting over’, so I read on. One part of the article quoted a radio host talking about Obama losing, “My audience is upset. Some people said they would be so angry it would be reminiscent of the [1960s] riots – that is how despondent they would be.”¹ Another part quoted a Democratic governor, saying that blacks need to remember that “many Democrats have lost the Presidential race in recent decades and they were white.” Apparently, black voters are concerned that if Obama loses this election it will be partly due to the racism of white voters.

Excuse my naiveté, but I have a really hard time believing that this would be the case. First of all, let us look and see exactly who is being racist. Then humor me while I digress a bit and explain why I think conservatives get the majority vote of another group of people with whom I am much more familiar.

The above article says that, according to the latest Wall Street Journal poll, 88% of blacks support Obama. If we could point out that 88% of whites support McCain, we might be able to say that racism is a factor. However, this is not the case. Instead, McCain and Obama are evenly tied across the general population of voters.² Statistically, if we are going to decide between two candidates and we have tens of millions of people voting, popular opinion should be roughly 50/50. Based on the data, it is blacks who are heavily biased.

But we should not jump to conclusions. Historically, the large majority of blacks have supported the Democratic candidate. So chances are that blacks are not supporting the Democrat because he is black, but because he is a Democrat. The only good way to see if blacks vote based on race would be to have a black person run for office as a conservative and see how many blacks vote for him. My guess is that most blacks would still vote Democrat. So the real question is: why do almost all blacks vote Democrat?

One of the major problems in this country is the miserable state of the government-run urban education system. Over half of all children entering 9th grade in urban public schools never graduate. Of those kids who do go to school often enough to show up in test results, only a small minority can read at a level considered “proficient” for their grade level. Did I mention that a large majority of the poor kids at the mercy of the government system in urban schools are black?

Isn’t it rather ironic that the Democrats have the vast majority of the vote of a statistically poor and poorly-educated demographic, and then doubly ironic that those very people are so shoddily educated because of the very government they so ardently support?

These facts tell a sad story. Many blacks have subjected themselves to the mercy of a government that promises them all kinds of ‘free’ benefits from health care to education and food (all paid for with money coerced from you and me, incidentally).

Many blacks are on the “receiving” end of this bargain largely because of deficient education, which leads to lower average incomes. The deficient education is largely the fault of the U.S. Government. If you want statistics, the National Center for Education Statistics reports that 70% of all black fourth graders are eligible for free and reduced lunch in public schools as opposed to 24% of all white fourth graders.

There seems to be a pattern emerging. Who is exploiting whom here? A political party gets the votes of a people in a group largely through promises to meet the very needs that the government itself has encouraged or created!

Now if liberals want to berate Republicans for getting the majority vote of a particular group like working class evangelical Christians, can we pinpoint a similar pattern in which these Christians receive something from the government in exchange for their vote? I think not.

Perhaps, you say, Christians support the traditionally conservative party as part of a vast conspiracy to stuff religion and creationism down everyone’s throat. But, even if that were true (and, for the most part, it is not), it is unlikely to happen anytime soon and would be a pretty bad reason to vote conservative.

The more likely reason is just that we want freedom, and real conservative values let us have it. It is as simple as that.

Conservatives want freedom to choose the means and end recipients of our charity, and the freedom to keep what we earn. This provides the freedom to improve our homes and families before our resources go to improve someone else’s, and the freedom to choose the schools our children go to. Conservatives promise little in the way of handouts or ‘redistribution of wealth’, yet they are often supported by those who work the hardest for the least reward.

Many of these conservatives start out ‘under-privileged,’ yet work their tails off, often without paid vacations and cushioned chairs in air-conditioned offices, to have enough money to put an addition on their old house or to give their kids a couple hundred dollars to help them out from time to time.

Take it from me: working-class kids often would not think of expecting their parents to pay their way through college. They do not ask their parents for money to help with their first car to get them to their first job. Vacations for them might mean a family camping trip; not airfare to a beach complete with many hotels and dining establishments. They do not mind, however. Contrary to what some may believe, these people really live the American dream. Every cent they have, they worked for themselves and they are proud of it.

These people generally do not want any government benefits. If they do take advantage of any benefits, they are just getting back a little bit of what they have been forced to pay into the public system for years.

The working class knows how important it is to be allowed the freedom to keep that extra couple hundred dollars each year, or not worry about being taxed out of their house. They know the importance of keeping their hard-earned thousands, and would prefer to avoid sending their kids to a school with poor teaching and overly progressive ideology. They work the hardest for the least, and they want the freedom to benefit from it.

So, there it is – my observations on a couple groups who respectively support each dominant political ideology. If you have ever wondered why the working class votes for freedom while poor blacks vote for social welfare, I hope my observations make you think.

(Endnotes)

1. The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 12, 2008

2. CBS News Poll, Sept. 4, 2008

Women’s roles can be a super-touchy topic, and conservatives and liberals alike rarely give a good defense of their positions. Conservatives who advocate for women to play a different role than men often come across as advocating the repression of women, while liberals seem to automatically assume that saying there is a difference between the roles men and women play (especially when that word, gasp, submission, creeps into the conversation!) means that women have the less honorable or glorious role and men the dominant role.

With the clamor on this topic that seems to have arisen lately on campus, I thought I would present the opinion of a woman, and a conservative. I originally was just going to record a few thoughts on ‘women’s roles’. I realize, however, that because women would have no need for a role if men had not one either, and because the two are so inextricably interdependent, I must talk about them both. Besides, the arguments seem to always be about women, but, in my opinion, men’s roles have been just as sadly derided and twisted as women’s have been.

Men and women alike have equally vital roles to play to complement each other. Popular culture, though, has stripped both sexes of the honorable parts they should play by insisting that just because the parts are different, one is somehow more demeaning than the other. How ironic that a society that goes to such lengths to ‘celebrate diversity’ should be so scornful of differences!

My thoughts here are in defense of both real manhood as well as real womanhood. Popular culture pretends to liberate women while actually demeaning their value and at the same time shoving men aside as unneeded. Women are told that because they are capable of doing everything a man can do, they should do so. Men are left out in the cold, wondering who needs what they have to offer.

As this has happened, the natural characteristics of one sex have become exalted while the characteristics of the other sex have been ignored. An example that comes to mind is how women’s tendency to be more sensitive and emotional than men has been exalted to absolute ridiculousness rather than given a healthy dose of manly realism. Part of the result is a mushy, feel-good society where the kind of excellent character that remains steadfast for goodness sake rather than the sake of feeling good is rare.

By no means am I saying that a woman is not capable of having excellent character, I only mean that, working as a whole to make up society, each sex need to each be allowed its place to keep the strengths of one sex (like ease of talking about emotions and life, etc.) from turning into weaknesses, which they will inevitably do when not tempered by the strengths of the other sex (like logic, practicality, etc…).

Again, please do not misunderstand my example. Of course, men have emotions and can be good communicators and women likewise have logic. As a whole, however, women have strengths in some areas and men in others, and that is as it should be. They complement each other and should be allowed to do so.

One of the things that made me think of this whole topic, and another example of what I just described, was a Broadway show I saw with a friend last week. The show was Mamma Mia!, and while I enjoyed the music and the humor, I could not help but be a little bothered by the way men were treated in the story. The story is a comedy about a 20-year old girl raised by a single mother who runs a little hotel on an island in Greece. The girl is getting married, and after reading her mother’s diary of the year before she was born, writes letters to three men she decides could potentially be her father and invites them to her wedding. Each ends up figuring out why he got invited, decided he must be her father, and offers to give her away at her wedding. Eventually, the girl decides that she does not really need to know who her real father is and thanks her mother profusely for raising her alone and has her walk her down the aisle. At the altar she decides she does not need to get married after all since she and her fiance love each other and that is enough, and they head off into the sunset apparently happy and in love, but uncommitted.

It might sound like I am nitpicking, but it is in seemingly innocent places like comedy and entertainment where some of the most dangerous ideologies take hold and subsequently become entrenched in society’s mind. Throughout the story, the mother is not in favor of the wedding, in spite of liking her daughter’s fiancé because she thinks her daughter is throwing her life away by committing to him so young. One of the mother’s sisters is an independent woman who looks with scorn on settling down and having kids, and the other sister is a fashionable, beautiful woman who’s been married to three millionaires and is proud of it. To me, each of these women offers the subtle hint that making sure you are in control of your own life and not committing to sharing every bit of it with a man is the safest way for a woman to go.

Additionally, the fact that the mother was promiscuous (as were the men) and that it did not bother any of the men to find out she had slept with the other men, implied that the sexes were there for each there for each other’s sexual pleasure – no bothersome, old-fashioned morality or other such burdensome scruples attached.

Of course, the ending has everyone happy and feeling good and agreeing that a girl growing up without a father as a result of her mother’s promiscuousness is quite acceptable and that the mother should be praised for the good job she did raising her daughter alone.

The Broadway show is not the only place you can see this mentality of independent women and unnecessary men. In the very few minutes of television I pick up every few months, I have seen the same thing. Sitcoms abound with smart, educated, petite women and their overweight, TV-addicted, sex-hungry, not-very-bright husbands. What’s that all about? What would happen if the men were made out to be the good looking, sexy, smart ones while the women were fat, ugly, stupid, and lazy? What an uproar that would cause! Under the guise of women’s liberation, though, men have been relegated to an unnecessary and secondary place and, sadly, I don’t think many of them even know it.

The fact is that men have an intrinsic need to be respected while women have an intrinsic need to be loved. We women want some man to worship the ground we walk on, and plenty of men would probably do it if we made ourselves more worthy of their love and offered them something in return. They want to be respected and honored and to feel like what they are doing is necessary and something they can be proud of and something we will be proud of them for. Move over a little, ladies, and leave room for men to take back a respectable position.

Women, we have a responsibility to men, be they friends, fathers, brothers, boyfriends, or husbands. They need to know they are wanted and that their talents and abilities are something we need and appreciate. And we need to do so genuinely, not patronizingly. Stop shouting to men with actions and attitudes, if not with words, “we don’t need you, all you do is something we could do ourselves just as well. So step aside and let us do it all, thank you very much.” Where is the call for true manhood? Where is the call for men we can trust and lean on?

Admit it girls, we admire a strong, trustworthy, dependable, honest, and kind man. What’s wrong with that? We get all worked up feeling insecure if we admit wanting to be taken care of, but why? We reproach ourselves for such natural feelings and try to prove how capable and strong and independent we are. Meanwhile we do men a disservice and leave them wondering what they are needed for.

The popular little saying that ‘guys are jerks’ is sadly thrown around by women as if it were funny, and I know that there are men out there who really are jerks – lots of them, in fact. And, I know that throughout history, men that are jerks have indeed abused their roles and taken advantage of women and made them objects of their passions or anger or whatever. But, does that mean there is something wrong with the roles or something wrong with those men?

Take heart, girls, not all guys are jerks. And, take heart, guys, women need you to be kind, loving, strong, and manly.

Ladies, we have an immense responsibility. We need to act like ladies and present ourselves as worthy of the love we keep looking for. In this way, we can calmly and quietly demand to be treated with love and value, and at the same time do the immensely important job of helping the men around us step up to the roles they need and want to fill.

This week has been a crazy week for me. I have said that before in my life, but this time I really mean it. At 4 am Sunday morning last week, I woke up to the sound of a smoke detector going off in my attic bedroom in the off-campus house on Fourth Street that I share with four other girls. Less than ten minutes later, we stood on the other side of our street in pajamas and slippers, with 10 degree wind whipping around us, watching flames shoot out of every window of the second story of our neighbor’s half of the house. We stood there with a million thoughts going though our heads: Would the firemen get our neighbor’s loveable black lab out of the house in time? Were flames going to be shooting out of our bedroom windows any minute? What was going to happen to everything we own? Where would we sleep that night and would we have any clothes to put on that day? And, how could this possibly be happening in the house where we had all, just that day, spent the afternoon eating chili with friends after a hike, and then playing Scrabble and watching a movie?

At 6:30 am, I found myself still clad in my flannel pajamas and blue fuzzy slippers sitting with my housemates in a hotel lobby talking to five wonderful people from the Red Cross. They sat down with each of us for a few minutes and, next thing we knew, we each had little bags with toothbrushes and shampoo and soap in one hand, and a voucher in the other for food and clothing.

Every time there is a big disaster like Hurricane Katrina or the tsunami in Southeast Asia, I read about the Red Cross being there. Sometime in elementary school, I think I wrote a report on Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross. I always thought something along the lines of “Oh, the Red Cross, they help people when there’s a big flood or something.” Sitting in the hotel lobby, though, still not knowing if what I had on my back at that moment was all the material possessions I had left, the Red Cross became five friendly faces who gave my housemates and I a few small comforts like a toothbrush and toothpaste and soap that I have taken for granted almost every other morning of my life. Never was I more grateful for such simple things!

It turns out that our neighbor’s dog and cats did not get rescued in time, and his house, with so much of the art that was his life, was completely destroyed. Two of us lost almost all of our clothes because the fire caught into the roof above our attic closet. The rest of us have extensive smoke, soot, and water damage to our things. The next day, my bedroom had a gaping hole in the roof and was covered in broken glass and burnt timbers, while literally everything in the house was blackened with soot, soaked in dirty water, and reeked of smoke.

Somewhere in the whirlwind of things I had to do in the next few days, an email reminded me that I was supposed to write an article for the Patriot this month. I thought there would be no better way I could make use of my chance to write something a few other eyes would read than to remind people what a wonderful organization the Red Cross is. Many others, including Lehigh University, have been unbelievably helpful to us, and I realize that most people who lose their house and belongings in a fire do not have nearly the support that we have had from our friends, churches, and the University. As blessed as we have been with all this help, I will not forget that the Red Cross were the very first there to help us and that they had the things we needed right at that moment, along with the assurance that we would have clothes, food, and somewhere to stay in the next few days. How much more must those who are less fortunate place value on what the Red Cross provides?

I have already taken up most of my space for this article telling part of our little story, and I almost erased some of it to make more room for facts about the Red Cross. On second thought, though, I left it in hopes that telling a personal story makes what the Red Cross does, even on as small and common a scale as a house fire (according to the Red Cross website, there are 150 families every day that the Red Cross helps out after a house fire), more real and personal than mere statistics about it could do. Since I have hopefully stirred your curiosity about the Red Cross a little now, I will give you a few facts about their history and other things that they do in order to inform you of who they are and what you might be able to do to help them.

The Red Cross was started in America by Clara Barton in the early 1880s. She had been a nurse on the front lines of a few wars fought in Europe and had seen the drastic need for trained ‘first-responders’ to deal with wounded soldiers right on the front lines. She also saw the work of the Swiss Red Cross and came back to the U.S. to campaign in Washington D.C. for an American branch. She succeeded, and led it for more than two decades. The organization grew tremendously during WWI and the tragic influenza epidemic of those years; and then again during WWII. Since then, they have become an integral provider of “blood services”, as well as tissue banking, various health and safety training programs, and extensive support for victims of disaster. They rely almost completely on volunteers, as I found out personally from the five who so willingly showed up at 5 am on a Sunday morning to help us out.

Whether one family loses a few belongings in a house fire, a military family needs help with contact and support, thousands of people in a town get wiped out by a flood or storm, or a lone person’s life depends on getting a blood transfusion after an accident, these fantastic volunteers are there and ready to help. My housemates and I have discovered from the donations and other help coming from so many directions how wonderfully generous and kind people can be. So, let me encourage you, the next time you have a few extra hours or dollars to give, picture yourself as a person in any kind of imminent need, think how tremendously grateful you would be to have someone there to help you, and give a little to the Red Cross.