Socialism and Me

So I'm going to a Socialist meeting on Thursday.

Yeah.

I got the bright idea in my head to walk part way home before jumping on the 39 bus. You know, exercise, fresh air, blah, blah blah.

Near the Au Bon Pain on Northeastern University Campus there were a few college kids trying to engage passers-by into conversation. They were handing out copies of the International Socialist Review and looking to invite people to their weekly Thursday meetings.

I felt bad for the way they were being so blatantly ignored. Here they are, standing in below-freezing temperatures, trying to make a difference! Someday they'll be jaded middle-aged, middle-management individuals living in a three-bedroom ranch in the suburbs, and I didn't want to be responsible for that! And also, I can't help but agree with many socialist tenants.
One student in particular caught my attention by mentioning the now-more-than-infamous Mohammed cartoon.

Media institutions around the world babble about free speech in regards to the cartoon, but I have reservations. I firmly believe that if this cartoon had been drawn about Jews or Africans or Homosexuals with the same amount of animosity and bigotry that was displayed in the Mohammed cartoon, it would not have been printed to begin with--or at least it would have been looked on very negatively by the Western World.

Antagonizing -- even hating -- Muslims and Arabs seems to be socially acceptable around the world. Its couched in political terms of promoting "democracy" and "human rights" but I don't see how its acceptable to violently force revolution upon a society from the outside.

If in our post-modern (so called) "post-colonial" world we frown upon the 19th century idea of Kipling's "white man's burden" why is the Western (white) World so intent upon saddling ourselves with this new Islamic burden when we're so content to leave the Chinese/Darfur/North Korean/Cambodian/Human Trafficking/Malaria/Small Pox/Polio/AIDS/Global Warming/Endangered Species/Rain Forest/Wetlands burdens languishing along the road side?

Our government--and the Western World at large--is completely consumed with this notion of terrorism which really means Islam.

Frankly I'm scared by the current state of the world, not because of any terrorist threat, but because of the actions of my own government. And I don't find my fellow citizens to be any more reassuring because on en masse, they just don't seem to care.

Prove me wrong, people, please.