I just read Robin’s post about the Land of the Free, and I wanted to add a few of my thoughts. This is a country of huge excesses and yet somehow a large percentage of the population, even those that admit that this is a country of excess, seems to not even realize how extremely excessive we are as a nation.

Having gotten an engineering degree in the United States, I encountered what many American engineering students encounter - a large population of foriegn students in my classes. This in and of itself is not all that unusual, and as a result it’s easy to think of foriegn students in much the same way we think of American students. However, that’s a rather large mistake.

I found there were two major types of foriegn students: the filthy rich and the abysmally poor. The filthy rich would come to college and buy extremely expensive cars, computers, clothes, and housing. They were often not really that different from super rich American students.

On the other hand, the abysmally poor were very different. Many times they would come to the United States with their entire family’s life savings in their pockets. I have talked to a number of foriegn students who said the dorm fees alone were enough to make their hearts leap out of their chests. These students cherish the chance to become educated in a way that I don’t think any American can ever really appreciate. When you speak to people from this kind of background, it’s easy to see the excess of American society.

I’m not advocating a total departure from American culture, but I am advocating, and would love to see, more civic responsibility.

A political topic that I don’t believe I have addressed specifically is Abortion. I mention it now because of the debate over whether or not John Roberts should become the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

Personally, I believe elective abortion is murder. I also believe elective abortions should be illegal. I equate the Roe v. Wade decision to be essentially the same as the Dred Scott decision.

There are a lot of gray areas in the abortion debate, such as rape, incest or medical emergencies. I believe pregnancies resulting from rape could be beautiful examples of overcoming hardship, but they are obviously at their base level a very difficult hardship to bear. It’s hard for me to say that the law should force a woman to keep a child conceived in rape.

I don’t know that I would say the same in the case of incest. It’s hard to say that willing participants in an incestual pregnancy should be forced to destroy the child because there are many people who are born naturally with disabilities. If we destroy an incestual pregnancy because of the likelyhood of the child’s furture medical problems, what does that say to people who were born with medical issues that were not the result of incest?

Medical emergencies are another difficult area to handle. What exactly is a medical emergency and who decides when a particular situation is an emergency? Also, who picks if the mother or the child lives or dies when no family can be reached and a decision must be made? These are difficult questions, and I would be fine letting the medical community answer these questions if they don’t view a fetus as a sub-human with less right to life than a pregnant woman.

I know a lot of people think my beliefs are extreme, but there are also a lot of people who see them as rational. It’s important to remember that only with compassion and understanding can people of different beliefs get along. People who are pushy with their beliefs are mostly looking for validation that they somehow made the right choice. Only through rational and compassionate discussion of beliefs will anyone manage to truly convince someone else of their position.

Anyhow, the whole point of my talking about this is that I recently learned of Ted Kennedy’s original views on abortion. These are particularly intersting in light of the fact that he’s now a huge supporter of abortion.