The crisis that has occurred at Penn State has definitely taught me a few valuable lessons. First and foremost, this crisis has taught me never to deify men. I think that is one of the biggest problems that students here at Penn State are having right now. We all considered Joe Paterno to be more than just a legendary football coach, he was as close to a god that any man can be. For this reason, a lot of people at Penn State has problems wrapping their head around the idea that JoePa could do wrong. I know that we don’t know the full story or all of the details, but as it looks right now, Joe Paterno should have done more to be the voice of the victims. And that is where from this point forward, I will never again put an individual on a pedestal like we all did with Coach Paterno. Everyone, even the best of us, makes mistakes. This way, I will never again be crushed when the truth comes out that a great individual has made a mistake.
The second lesson I have learned from the events of the past week and a half is to try to not make up my mind about an issue before I know both sides of the story. Even up to this point, very little is known about the Curley/Shultz/Spanier/Paterno side of the case. So far, only the victims’ allegations have been made public. Now I am in no way saying that the alleged victims are lying, because I don’t think this many victims over such a long time period would all be lying. But what I am saying, is that if the media had its way, Curley, Shultz, Spanier, and especially Paterno, would already be condemned for their alleged wrongs, without so much as hearing their side of the case. Everything in life has at least two sides to it, and so far the world’s mind has been made up based upon the only one side of the case.
The third main lesson I have taken from this crisis is that a group cannot be judged as a whole by the actions of a few. As a White male, I have always lived in the majority race and sex. As a result, I’ve never really had to deal with the majority group judging me a male or as a White person based on the actions of a few White males. But right now, the world has labeled all Penn Staters as immoral rioting idiots. Penn State is so much more than Jerry Sandusky and the tipping over of a news van. These events have taught me to not label a group based upon the actions of just a few members of that group.

In light of the recent events, the world’s view of Penn Staters as changed. I’m not all that sure what the general opinion of Penn State was before the scandal broke open, but I would imagine that the average person considered us to be just like any other major university in the country. But after this crazy week, the world’s view of Penn State has shifted. We are seen as a university that would rather protect its image and football program than acknowledge the deeply disturbing facts of the Sandusky case. Penn State students, already known for our heavy and frequent partying, are now seen as an illogical, rage-filled mob that has drank the Penn State Kool-Aid and has forgotten about the victimized children. And on one hand, I can see where they are coming from. The only thing I’ve seen on a news or sports channel over the past few days is either images of the news van being flipped, or commentators asking, “Why did the leadership cover up the abuse?” But on the other hand, I truly believe that the world’s opinion of Penn State is far from the truth about this place. The images that are filling the TV screens show Penn State at its absolute darkest hour. Penn State was the model institution, one built around JoePa’s motto “Success with Honor” and the words in the alma mater, “For the Glory of Old State”. While these may seem like just two phrases that places like Penn State throw around without thought, every Penn Stater would agree that those two phrases were the ideals to always live up to. But now that we’ve learned that President Spanier, Coach Paterno, and the rest of the administration has failed to live up to those ideals when the victims, the children, needed honorable men to be their advocates, it has shaken every Penn Stater to their core. Penn State students and alumni truly believed in those two core values, and now that we’ve learned that our leaders have not always lived their lives true to those values, every Penn Stater is having an identity crisis, that the world is seeing live on ESPN. So with all due respect to the world, they’re opinion on Penn State is wrong. We are more than a rioting mass of angry students. We are more than the failings of our administration. We are more than the heinous crimes committed by one man. We still believe in the idea of Honor for Old State. We are a family working our way through a crisis, and we just need time to deal with the raging storm of emotions. We are Penn State, and we will come back from this.

As Sam has said on numerous occasions, this is just the opinion of one knucklehead, but I don’t think that the Tea Party movement and the Occupy movement are the same thing. From what I understand about the Tea Party movement, it originally started out as a movement for decreasing the size of government. The original Tea Party wanted to limit the size of government because at the time that it was started, there were a lot of costly social programs being enacted. This movement started in response to the Universal Health Care law, and the expensive bank bailouts and the bailout of the Detroit auto companies. In contrast to the Tea Party movement, the Occupy Wall Street movement started out as a protest against the growing economic gap in the U.S. The Occupy movement was borne out of frustration over the fact that richest 1% of the population controls a widely disproportionate amount of the wealth, and therefore that one percent has a far greater influence than the remaining 99 percent. So the original Tea Party and Occupy movements had different ideals and central philosophies. That being said, the people who supported the Tea Party movement and Occupy movement were similar in some ways. Generally speaking, the Tea Party supporters were people from the upper middle class to lower high class. These people had money, and felt that the government was increasing taxes and taking more of their money than it should. The upper middle class who joined the Tea Party movement felt like the government was taking their money as punishment for being more successful and having more wealth. The Occupy movement protesters were, generally speaking, were the lower middle class or even low class on the U.S. economic scale. These protesters feel that the rich have all the clout and political pull in the U.S., even though they make up a smaller percentage of the population. The Occupy movement supporters wanted their voice to be heard, even though they were not as wealthy as the top 1%. But while the supporters of the Tea Party and Occupy movements are generally on different sides of the economic scale, as a whole both groups supporters share the fact that they feel alienated by the current political system. Our government has increasingly become politically polarized over the past decade, with Republicans and Democrats refusing to ever compromise and the average person who is more towards the middle of the political spectrum doesn’t identify with either Republican or Democratic polarized views. So the Tea Party and Occupy supporters are all drawn from this political middle ground. They are pissed at the government for the inefficiency of a polarized political system, and wish to drop the Republican and Democratic labels and instead identify with a more middle ground.

When Sam said in class that within 35 or so years Whites would be in the minority, I’ll be completely honest and say that my initial reaction was uncertainty and fear. I just never pictured an America where the statistically average American was Black or Brown. It just seems so odd to think about. The U.S. population has been majority White basically since the dawn of the nation. So the shift from White to Black and Brown majority seems so odd because it is a dramatic turn of events from the historical norm. And as a White person, I think some of the fear is justified. White people have been shitting on the Black and Brown people for even longer than America has been existence. We have been prejudiced and downright cruel at times, and now I guess my fear stems from the fact that I’m sure the Black and Brown people have not completely forgotten about the past, and that they might try to “get back” at the Whites. But after this initial ‘Oh Shit’ moment, I realized that those fears are irrational and plain stupid. It’s not like when the White population in America hits 49.9%, suddenly the former minority groups are going to start slaughtering the White people. The average day to day life of Americans will not suddenly change in 35 years when Whites are no longer in the majority. But I do think that in 35 years when the majority population shifts from White to Black and Brown, that it will be a milestone for how much and how quickly the world is changing. For much of recent history, the world has been a White dominated world. The world’s superpowers were in Europe and the U.S., which were all majority White countries. But the world has seen a dramatic power shift, especially in the past 50 years. The world’s new superpowers are in Southeast Asia with China and Japan, in India, the Arab world, and even in South America with Brazil. The world’s elite is no longer composed of just predominately White countries, instead the superpowers are an increasingly colorful group of countries. Even outside of the world’s superpowers, the largest growth worldwide is in developing nations in Central America, in Northern Africa, and in the Middle East. These countries are all experiencing massive growth through the empowerment of the individual and the desire for an exponentially better quality of life. The world is no longer ruled by the good old boys of Europe and America, instead massive growth is being seen on continents made up of mostly non-White people. This change in the world is reflected in the population shift that will occur shortly in the U.S.

I don’t think that a person is not necessarily a poser when they hang out with a group of people that is not composed of their own race. Just because someone isn’t hanging out with their own race doesn’t tell anything about that person. We’ve all heard the saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Well that saying applies in situations like these. An outsider can’t judge someone by what race their friends are. You don’t know what story that person has to tell. It’s very possible that that person could have grown up in an area that where he was the minority and he’s comfortable being around people of other races. It could also be that that person has a mixed race or very diverse family, and that he may look one race but he identifies with multiple races. You can’t just blindly label someone as being a poser if they aren’t hanging out with their own race because you don’t know that person’s background and how they view race. Secondly, even if you knew that person well and knew that they had no previous experience with people of that particular race, what does it matter if they hang out with people of a different race. Isn’t that what America is all about? People from every race and walk of life live amiably together every day. If someone wants to go outside their general comfort zone and associate with people of other races, how can you judge them? We’re all in college. We’re all experimenting all the time, trying new things in order to see what we like and what we don’t like. You can’t say you don’t like something until you’ve tried it, so you should always be open to new experiences like trying to associate with another race.

The video, Tax Dollars at War, was very intriguing to me for many reasons. First of all, I never realized until viewing the video that the U.S. spent that much money on national defense. For the sake of this blog, I’ll will accept all of the numbers given in the video as completely true. With that in mind, one and a half trillion dollars on national defense each year is completely astronomical. I doubt that any of us can truly understand how much money that is, and that total is being spent each and every year. While that does seem like an exorbitant amount of money to spend on national defense, in my opinion that is just the price you pay for having the most powerful military the world has ever seen. Every branch of our military is better trained and better equipped than any other military in the world, and the overall level of technology used for intelligence purposes is far superior to every other nation in the world. And every country in the world knows that we the U.S. military is far superior. So for one and half trillion dollars, Americans get the peace of mind each and every day that no other country is going to fuck with us. But while America’s defense spending has funded the creation of the strongest military in the world, I do believe that we need to find ways to save money without putting the safety and security of the U.S. in jeopardy. For instance, we could stop fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars that after 10 and 8 years still have no clear endgame. That would save us money not only right now, but years down the road by limiting the number of service members needing medical attention throughout their life. Another way to save money would be to stop paying the civilian contractors sometimes 5 or 10 times the amount of what we pay the average soldier to do the exact same job. It just doesn’t make sense to outsource the defense work to civilian contractors when they perform the same tasks our military is trained for. Those two common sense suggestions are just a couple of examples of all the ways for the U.S. to stop spending so much money on national defense. The biggest thing the government needs to do is to thoroughly examine the spending. Military spending always goes up and up, and I doubt that all 1.5 trillion dollars a year being spent is getting the American taxpayers 1.5 trillions dollars worth of national defense. If the government could just look at each expenditure and decide if each one is worth the money, countless amounts of money could be saved.

How would I feel if my child was gay? I don’t think there is one clear cut answer to this question. The circumstances would determine my different feelings, and I also think I would have conflicting opinions within a particular circumstance. As a guy, I naturally want my son to be similar to me. I share a lot of the same interests and hobbies as my father. So if I had a gay son, I would be afraid that he wouldn’t like to go hunting or fishing like I do with my Dad. So in one way, I guess I would be kind of disappointed that he didn’t turn out the way I expected him to. I think this would be my initial reaction if my son was gay. But then in another way, I think I would be happy for my son overall. It can’t be easy at all for a child to go to their parents and come out, so if a child is willing to risk not having their parent’s support in order to be happy then I can respect that. At the end of the day, I just hope my son is happy. If being gay is how he will truly be happy, then I have to accept that. While I would feel disappointment and eventual acceptance if my son was gay, my feelings would be different if my daughter came out. I would be skeptical if my daughter said she was gay at first. It’s more socially acceptable for women to experiment or be a little bicurious, especially when they’re teenagers or go off to college. Therefore, I would be skeptical at first just because I would want to know that she was for sure on Team Gay and not just exploring her options when she was young. But if she was serious about the whole thing, then I would definitely support her. Just like in the case of a son, I would still want to be supportive for my children no matter what sexual orientation they end up being. I guess what it all boils down to is that once you have children, you have to love them unconditionally. As a parent, you might not always like what they are doing, and you might not always agree with their beliefs or life decisions, but once they’re an adult it’s their life. A parent just wants the best for their children, but who really knows what’s best for someone better than that person. What someone does in their own personal life doesn’t affect the love that a parent has for their children. So no matter if my children end up gay or straight, I would love them unconditionally either way.

When disasters strike foreign countries all across the globe, it always seems as though the United State has to lead the way with foreign aid. From sending money or needed supplies to actually sending manpower, the United States spends a lot of time and resources to help other countries in their time of need. After the lecture where Sam talked about how the aid money intended to go to other countries is in reality mostly given to America’s workers and industries, I began to think about this video question of how can the U.S. best send aid. In my opinion, the answer to that question is not cut and dry. First of all, the United States should not have to always lead the way in terms of aid given to foreign countries. From my perspective, it seems like when a country is in trouble they call on the United States for money or aid, but then they go back to burning the stars and stripes within a week. It makes no sense to me why the U.S. has to always help those in need, when the U.N. is there to step in and help. It should be the collaboration of all of the countries in the U.N. and not the U.S. to lead the way when aid is needed. Secondly, when the U.S. sends aid to foreign nations, I think that it would be best to send people. In lecture, Sam showed the statistic that of the 3 billion dollars intended for African aid, only 1/12 of that ended up in aid to Africa. The rest was used to pay for transportation and for workers in both the public and private sectors to organize the aid. Another point that Sam made was that to a lot of countries where we send aid, especially to developing nations, the aid ends up in the hands of the ruling few, and not to the general public who truly need the aid. These two points show that simply throwing money at a problem is not the best way of aiding foreign countries. Instead, sending people to aid in rebuilding or distributing aid would better help the general public. Finally, I think that the best way for the U.S. to send aid is to limit the amount of aid that the government sends. Instead, rely on the American public to help people in need. When the Haiti earthquake hit, Americans raised a boatload of money by donating $10 through a text message. In addition, Americans traveled to Haiti to help out in person. The world doesn’t need the government to spend billions of dollars to not see that aid help out at all, they just need people to have some compassion and help out when they are in need.

After watching a few of the videos about Haiti, there seems to be a lot of different business ideas that are already in place that we as students could aid by donating to. But the more I watched the videos, the more I began to think about this project as a whole. So while this may sound cold and heartless, my thoughts have shifted to, why is this project only focusing on helping Haiti? There is a whole world full of impoverished people living in deplorable conditions, so why is Sam forcing Haiti on us? I mean, I understand that Haiti is a third world country trying to recover from a recent natural disaster, but aren’t there also plenty of people in the United States that are just as deserving of our aid and support. Instead of trying to find new and creative ways to help the people of Haiti, why not focus our attention on victims of natural disasters or the poor here in the U.S. In the past few months, there has been major flooding in the Northeast, historic droughts in Oklahoma, and wildfires in Texas. So many people have been affected by all of this, and this is not even considering all of the United States citizens who have been bankrupt or left without a home after the economic downturn of the past few years. With all of this need for assistance present in our own backyard, why are we all hellbent on focusing our charity on the rest of the world? I’ve experienced this same scenario in my own life. My church, while it is quite small, is big on doing charity work and mission trips. But the focus is always on helping the people of Africa or sending aid to Central America. Where does this desire for exporting our charity dollars stem from? Personally, I think it’s all about what the donor of the aid or assistance gets in return. No one ever does anything just out of the goodness of their heart. Instead, they always want something in return for their so called good deed. On a macro level, nations provide aid and assistance in order to expand their sphere of influence and to foster export opportunities. On a micro level, people generally donate to foreign aid causes because it’s not trendy to help your neighbor. Americans have gotten away from those good old family values and instead have adopted an individualist attitude. While it is not “cool” to provide aid for another American in need, it is cool to send some money to a foundation and get a picture to hang on the fridge of the poor African child that is being sponsored by your donation. To me, people need to take a step back and think about whether sponsoring a floral design company or an evening gown business in Haiti is more worthy of their limited charity dollars over an American who is a victim of flooding or other natural disasters.

When asked whether free will or determinism generally shaped people’s lives at the the beginning of class, I answered that I strongly believed that free will was the cause. I originally thought this because I thought that people’s lives were shaped by their own choices. After Thursday’s lecture, I do concede that I did shift back towards the middle of the spectrum a bit. For example, I do agree that President Obama’s kids will have more opportunities than almost anyone else I’ll ever know. But I still do strongly lean towards the idea that free will is the determining factor in one’s life. No matter how poor the circumstances one is born into are, everyone can always work their way up the ladder by making good decisions. I was not born into the ideal situation. I was the youngest of five children and neither of my parents attended any college. My Dad is a factory worker, my Mom is a bank teller, so we never had a ton of money. While my family is not in the higher income brackets, and my parents had only a high school education, all four of my older siblings graduated from college, and I’m here at Penn State. Nothing in my life was handed to me, but I worked hard and achieved more than a typical low middle class kid would. This is why I believe that your choices determine your course in life. People who believe that determinism is the main cause for their problems in life are just blaming their bad choices on society. Generally, people who are not successful blame their problems on forces outside of their control, and those who are successful realize that it was through their hard work and good choices that they became successful. One example is the idea of social welfare programs. In class, some students said that people lose their jobs for reasons out of their control, and they need social welfare programs like unemployment insurance because they can have problems transitioning from one job to another. And while I can agree that people don’t go from one job seamlessly into another, but people are on unemployment for way too long. In August, the average duration of unemployment was forty weeks, or almost ten months. People are blaming society for their lack of a job, but then are not making good choices in order to get another job. To me, the life you lead is determined almost completely by the choices that you make and how hard you work. Thinking that one’s circumstances are deterring them from the life they want to lead is just an excuse to justify the bad choices and laziness of the unsuccessful.