Getting with the program

Recently, Republican senator Arlen Specter came to our college for a town hall meeting and remarked that you can fit all moderate Republican senators in a phone booth. When I asked about why that is the case when the American people voted for a change in direction, he said that it was because the Republican Party is run by the extreme right (he also said that the Democrats were run by the extreme left, but that's for another time), and those people are not as perceptive to change as other Americans. He suggested that young people from both sides of the aisle should get involved in their political parties and make them moderate their messages. His implication was that unless people get involved, it will take a long time for the Republican Party to moderate its message.

Judging by the articles in last week's installment of the Weekly, however, it does not appear that young Republicans, at least ones that go here, are willing to moderate their message. Take Adam Yu's article about the United Nations. Granted, the comments from the UN Secretary General about the United States are unfitting for a man of his stature, and I can't help but be a little upset about what he said either.

However, there is a basis for Ban-ki Moon's comment about the United States. In the past eight years, we have behaved in a way that is unfitting for the world's superpower living in a global community. We have invaded countries without the approval from most of the world's countries; we have tortured civilians, many of whom are innocent and some of whom are nationals of allied countries; and we have exuded arrogance and scorn towards the international community. Regardless of whether Adam is aware of that or not, that didn't stop him from hurling childish insults at the UN and acting as arrogant and scornful towards it as our country has in the past eight years. Even though it isn't perfect, pulling out of the United Nations would send a bad message to the rest of the world, as it does a lot of good by helping refugees, helping children through UNICEF, and by performing other actions. Ironically, Adam's statistics about the funding that the UN gets from the United States only backs up how much damage would be done to the institution by pulling out of it, making such good-natured operations nearly impossible.

Matt Cobaugh's article was equally reprehensible and ignorant of facts with regards to our standing in the global community. The fact that he refused to praise President Obama for the actions of the Marines fighting off the Somali pirates is not surprising, as Republicans have been loathe to give credit where credit to Democrats is due since the mid-'90s.

However, what really struck me about the article was how he was advocating more intrusion into other countries' affairs. Oddly enough, Republicans did not like Bill Clinton's involvement in Somalia in 1993, and yet he is calling for this in Somalia and other countries. It's as if he has been completely unaware of the consequences we've faced in similar excursions in Iraq and Afghanistan: destabilization, violence against our troops, and condemnation from the international community. We are in no position to go into Somalia with our troops stretched so thin and with much work to be done in Afghanistan and, for a year and a half at least, in Iraq.

Senator Specter seems to accept that moderation and change within the Republican Party is a long shot for the next decade, which is more than I can say about many members of his own party who are clinging on to an ideology which many Americans have rejected during last year's elections. If the party does not wish to marginalize itself, it would behoove people to change its leadership by getting active, as Senator Specter told those attending the meeting, which included some College Republicans. If the sampling of articles by Republicans in the previous edition of the Weekly is any indication, youthful Republicans are willing to ignore the past and cling to their ideology. This does not bode well for one of the two big political parties in the United States.