Bukran's Blog
Guess Who's Coming to Graduation?
So Dick Cheney is coming to speak at commencement...
I have mixed feelings.
Like most BYU students, I identify myself as a conservative and a Republican. It's quite a prestigious honor to have the Vice President come--after all, it's one of only two commencement speeches he's going to give this spring.
But talk about a low point... The man Cheney and the institution he represents have never been more unpopular. Once again, BYU is asserting the stereotype that it is an ultraconservative institution that will slap the backs of the far right in this country regardless of the current national political tenor. The 60's saw the Y holding forums that encouraged students to support the Vietnam War. The 00's have seen the university maintain itself of a bastion of Bush. Some things never change...
Don't get me wrong--as an organization founded upon the gospel it is proper for us to avoid the whims of the world and be seen as a relatively unwavering place.
But just for once, can BYU not display the most egregious alliance in all the land with institutional hyper-conservatism?
In theory I should be ecstatic that the executive branch's #2 is coming. But instead, I'm embarrassed. Not because I consider Cheney to be evil, sinister, or corrupt--but because this visit only will embolden the critics of BYU. It will also certainly be a boon for a certain small contingent of anti-war and anti-Bush protesters who shadow the VP.
The time period of my college education has witnessed a total reversal of presidential fortune. Two weeks into my freshman year the attacks of 9/11 vaulted the Bush/Cheney team into a position of glory. Six years later, Bush is a lame duck and his ideology is synonymous amongst the global public with hubris and cronyism--and one of the most prominent figureheads of that ideology is speaking at my senior graduation. Karma, I suppose...
Granted, not many people in the future will ask me who spoke at my college graduation. But when I do tell folks, I suspect their reaction will include a cynical smirk indicative of history's often unkind hindsight.
What, was Thomas S. Monson or Donny Osmond not available?
My Response:
Talk about caving into peer pressure... why should you care what the global political spectrum is crying out?
So what if people say BYU is an ultraconservative bastion for higher education? Heaven forbid we actually refer to the black kettle as black...
The Bush administrations legacy may be tarnished in the world's (and in a large part the country's) eyes over the handling of the war in Iraq, but that comes from an incomplete understanding of the situation and the goals of the administration. Is America safer with Saddam out of power? Yes, so the administration succeeded. Would America be safer if any government who has ever harbored terrorists (think Libya, Syria, and the like) were overthrown and a democracy put in place? Yes, and the whole world (at least the Old World and an all its former colonies) would revert to their gossiping ways and bad-mouth the US, even though it is in the interest of the country to protect itself. Bush protected the interests of the country, and while he may not have done a perfect job (or even far from it), he did the best job he could given the circumstances and his information. Conversely, the critics are looking at everything in hindsight with the knowledge that a corrupt dictator is already removed from power (unless he comes back as a ghost to order about Nancy Pelosi...) and they actually care what the former world powers say in their left wing papers. The real world powers think much more highly of the Bush administration and its efforts to protect its own interests. There's a reason that the European gossips can't match the economy and production of the nationalistic Chinese and Japanese.
