I <3 Condi
Is it weird to have a girl crush on the Secretary of State? I hope not.
I know that I am a big IR geek (actually, that's not quite true. I went to college with a lot of big IR geeks. Comparatively, I know next to nothing about current foreign policy and international happenings. But I digress.)
Anyway, Condi spoke yesterday at Princeton's school of international affairs (to which I almost applied...but the application involved two brand new essays and I probably wouldn't have gotten in anyway). Tigerhawk describes the speech and links to the transcript here. Likemost other speeches that touch on turning democratic political ideals into reality, it gave me goose bumps.
She makes it clear that we are living in times of extraordinary potential. At the same time, she explains that we're not the first generation to be living in such times, and that the political climate our grandparents dealt with (the Depression, WWII, communism) was in many ways much bleaker than our own. Whenever I read things like that, I'm reminded that it is pretty remarkable that during the part of my lifetime when I could comprehend politics, I've seen the fall of communism throughout most of the world, plus the beginnings of what I believe will be a massive shift towards democracy in the middle east. Even China will most likely succumb entirely to capitalism in my lifetime.
The fact that all of these changes have happened in the last 15 years is unprecedented. Entire past generations lived without seeing a fraction of what we've experienced since I was a freshman in high school.
All of which, of course, is why I majored in international relations in the first place (good thing I have that degree to help me comprehend what I read on the internet...since that's about all I use it for).
Extraordinary times, indeed.
I know that I am a big IR geek (actually, that's not quite true. I went to college with a lot of big IR geeks. Comparatively, I know next to nothing about current foreign policy and international happenings. But I digress.)
Anyway, Condi spoke yesterday at Princeton's school of international affairs (to which I almost applied...but the application involved two brand new essays and I probably wouldn't have gotten in anyway). Tigerhawk describes the speech and links to the transcript here. Likemost other speeches that touch on turning democratic political ideals into reality, it gave me goose bumps.
She makes it clear that we are living in times of extraordinary potential. At the same time, she explains that we're not the first generation to be living in such times, and that the political climate our grandparents dealt with (the Depression, WWII, communism) was in many ways much bleaker than our own. Whenever I read things like that, I'm reminded that it is pretty remarkable that during the part of my lifetime when I could comprehend politics, I've seen the fall of communism throughout most of the world, plus the beginnings of what I believe will be a massive shift towards democracy in the middle east. Even China will most likely succumb entirely to capitalism in my lifetime.
The fact that all of these changes have happened in the last 15 years is unprecedented. Entire past generations lived without seeing a fraction of what we've experienced since I was a freshman in high school.
All of which, of course, is why I majored in international relations in the first place (good thing I have that degree to help me comprehend what I read on the internet...since that's about all I use it for).
Extraordinary times, indeed.
posted by Kit Pollard at
10:07 AM
1 Comments:
actually, they said I couldn't JUST major in AH. I had to double major.
But I didn't even know I liked AH until I got to college. I picked my major in 10th grade, after taking AP modern european history.
How do you think I graduated early? Being brilliant alone isn't enough...you have to know your major early enough to get all your required classes finished.
By
Kit Pollard, at 6:15 PM
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