So, President Obama gave the commencement speech here yesterday. Here is the complete text and video:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/01/obama-michigan-graduation_n_559688.html
Here are a few pictures:
This Big House was pretty full. It was pretty neat. If you click on this picture, you should be able to get it bigger.
These guys set up the teleprompters before the speech. It was interesting. This was perhaps the most important job anyone had. If these guys didnt get it right, things would have been very, very bad.
It was neat to see Marine Corps One come in. There was 3 separate Heckacopters that came, and He was apparently on one of them.
Here is POTUS sitting next to the Governor and the President of the University. It was interesting to watch them just sitting there. President Obama, for example was very stoic and serious during the National Anthem (in contrast to previous incedents, for example, here http://www.snopes.com/politics/graphics/anthem.jpg), but Mary Sue was not, she just stood there with her hands at her side. It was intriguing.
Here are a few parts of the speech that I liked, and that I didn’t like, and a few comments on why. The non-italicized words are quotes from President Obama.
Since the days of our founding, American politics has never been a particularly nice business - and it's always been a little less gentle during times of great change… So before we get too down
on the current state of our politics, we need to remember our history.
I read a lot of things about how critical people are, and how people wish we could go to the good old days of politics. Politics have always been nasty.
The democracy designed by Jefferson and the other founders was never intended to solve every problem with a new law or a new program. Having thrown off the tyranny of the British Empire, the first Americans were understandably skeptical of government. Ever since, we have held fast to the belief that government doesn't have all the answers, and we have cherished and fiercely defended our individual freedom. That is a strand of our nation's DNA.
This quote was obviously followed up with “But…”. But, before he got to the “but” part, I liked it.
For many years, we had a welfare system that too often discouraged people from taking responsibility for their own upward mobility. At times, we've neglected the role that parents, rather than government, can play in cultivating a child's education. Sometimes regulation fails,and sometimes its benefits do not justify its costs.
This was also followed up with a big “but”. Anyways.
The second way to keep our democracy healthy is to maintain a basic level of civility in our public debate. These arguments we're having over government and health care and war and taxes are serious arguments. They should arouse people's passions, and it's important for everyone to join in the debate, with all the rigor that a free people require.
This is very true. I feel like very little actual good debate goes on, and mostly just little one line sentences made to get people riled up are thrown around. This applied to both sides. We really just done have deep discussions about things, as the publics short attention span just does not want to deal with the complexity this requires.
But we cannot expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down. You can disagree with a certain policy without demonizing the person who espouses it.
I agree with this, and wish it were universally honored.
Throwing around phrases like "socialist" and "Soviet-style takeover;" "fascist" and "right-wing nut" may grab headlines, but it also has the effect of comparing our government, or our political opponents, to authoritarian, and even murderous regimes.
This is something that really frustrates me, when I hear Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh talking about how Obama is a socialist, or a fascist, or these types of things. Throwing around terms like socialist or fascist or Nazi suggests a complete lack of understanding about those systems, and what they have been like where they have been implemented. Worst case scenario is that Obama wants to impose huge taxes on rich people to give all the money to poor people. He is not abdicating taking all wealth from everyone,
redistributing it, killing tens of millions of people he does not like, implementing policies where tens of millions of people starve to death…
Still, if you're someone who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in awhile. If you're a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website.
I think this is important. In fact, I kind of feel like if you are a Conservative, there is no reason to listen to Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh. Listen to the other side, and that is all, as far as I am concerned.
None of this came easy. None of it was preordained. The men and women who sat in your chairs ten years ago and fifty years ago and one hundred years ago - they made America possible. And there is no guarantee that the graduates who will sit here in ten or fifty or one hundred years from now will enjoy the same freedoms and opportunities that we do. America's success has never been a given. Our nation's destiny has never been certain.
This was great. I feel like far too many people think that we have all this stuff, and will continue to have all this stuff, and will continue to be what we are as a nation forever. This is certainly not the case. 100 year ago, the U.S. was by no means a world super-power, and countries that are currently a joke (super-power wise) were extremely powerful. Things can change for the worst. I feel like a lot of things that are happening are going to lead to these changes.
Didn’t Like
When America expanded from a few colonies to an entire continent, and we needed a way to reach the Pacific, our government helped build the railroads. When we transitioned from an economy based on farms to one based in factories, and workers needed new skills and training, our nation set up a system of public high schools. When the markets crashed during the Depression and people lost their life savings, our government put in place a set of rules and safeguards to make sure that such a crisis never happened again.
The government paid to build rail-roads by the mile, and as a result, we got FAR more miles that we would have had there been some other incentive scheme. High schools were primarily developed by state and local governments, and our high school system is horrible. Many economists assert that the governments “help” made the Great Depression even worst (See A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 by Friedman and Schwartz. Then, read good ol’ Paul’s quick critique, http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/friedman-and-schwartz-were-wrong/).
Government is the police officers who are here protecting us and the service men and women who are defending us abroad.
Like these snipers who were there to shoot you if you got out of hand, or the SS guy who was there and told me to delete some videos I had taken. This was taken completely zoomed in on my camera, with the camera lens held up through my binoculars.
Government is this extraordinary public university - a place that is doing life-saving research, catalyzing economic growth, and graduating students who will change the world around them in ways big and small.
The general feeling I get coming from my side of the University is that we are great in spite of being a public University, and most competing Universities at the top are all private.
But we've also seen clearly the dangers of too little government - like when a lack of accountability on Wall Street nearly led to the collapse of our entire economy.
There were several statements like this that were so frustrating. There were 80,000 there clapping, cheering, and so excited when things like this were said. But, in the end, the story was much more complicated than this, no one really understands it, and there is A LOT of reason to believe that several governmental policies helped create the problem. It is just frustrating to see something that will literally yield tens of thousands of pages of academic research boiled down to a sentence, have tens of thousands of people think it is as simple as that sentence, and given the simplicity, the solution is equally as simple—let government fix it.
