December 2009

College campuses, especially in Florida, are engaged in a new movement, fighting for the right of students who are here illegally for a number of years to stay in the U.S. They have been organizing formally and in some cases demonstrating. United We Dream is an example, it is a network of current and former such students. Carlos Saavedra, its national coordinator, describes the issue this way, “maybe our parents feel like immigrants, but we feel like Americans because we have been raised here on American values.” Being here illegally, such students are subject to any of the laws and problems of others also here without proper documentation.
Many legal immigrants come to the United States for a better life, motivated by economic rather than philosophical reasons. Many still feel an allegiance to their home country and some do not choose citizenship because their status as legal immigrants enables them to better enjoy the benefits of both countries.
As we decide what to do with these young students who may be deported unless laws are changed, we need to ask ourselves: Who’s the better American, who will make the better citizen, someone who already has a stake in the country, or someone whose allegiance is based on self-interest?

President Obama in Oslo to accept his Nobel Peace Prize made a speech in part invoking the notion of just war and defending the U.S.’s fight in Afghanistan on humanitarian grounds. There’s no doubt there’s good in what he said, but still it wasn’t the speech he could have made, the speech some, including me, expected from a Nobel Peace Laureate. He has in the recent past shown courage and foresight in calling for nuclear disarmament, and done so on more than one occasion. If not the most dangerous issue of our time, nuclear weapons are one of the most. What Mr. Obama could have said is: I pledge myself to this cause. As President I will endeavor to do all I can with nuclear powers and with non-nuclear ones to stop their spread and influence and work toward disarmament. And when my time in office ends, I will take this prize money and begin a foundation to continue this work. In fact my wife and partner will join me in making this cause ours and in doing our absolute best to make the world safer from these weapons and all they can do.
Wouldn’t that have been inspiring?

A new study says people in the US throw away 40% of their food. It is a figure that includes the waste of not only consumers but also manufacturers and distributors. How they arrived at the figure is tricky and opens questions. But it does not matter, the fact is that regardless of the percentage, which is said to be 25% higher than studies done in recent years, we waste a lot of food. It’s become trendy to link that waste to the environment and how we are harming ourselves when we do. There’s also those who juxtapose this finding to the recent one that food insecurity in America is far higher than many thought. Yet, behind these worthwhile issues there are the values this waste speaks to and what it says about us. It may sound moralistic, and if it does so be it, but it does seem that so much waste speaks of disrespect for our surroundings and for those with less, of our capriciousness about food, maybe even our gluttony, our lack of discipline, with food as well as with money, and last, if not least, it speaks of out of kilter priorities.