Something exciting happened this week. Hooray!

Well, maybe not hooray so much as harumph. John Ashcroft was the super-special guest speaker of the Skidmore Young Republican Association's Conservative Challenge week and, thanks to the seat-saving efforts of my good friends, I was able to attend the incredibly crowded talk. (They simulcasted it into an adjacent auditorium, in which students also resorted to sitting in the aisles and standing in the back.

As expected, the entire ordeal was a big propaganda-fest. He managed to talk for forty-five minutes and all he said, essentially, was that we are threatened by "evil chemistry, evil biology," terrorism, and that security enhances our liberty, liberty, liberty from the sinister forces trying to take away our liberty, that we need to change what we do to avoid getting results like 9/11, 9/11, 9/11.

The question and answer session, a veritable shit-storm, lasted thirty-five minutes. I hadn't sat down thinking that I would ask the former Attorney General anything, but in his talk, he got a word in about how war is no longer necessarily nation-state versus nation-state and talked about how, during the Cold War, Reagan threatened Gorbachev with technology and freed millions of people from the oppressive Communist regime without a shot being fired in Europe. I mentioned these statements before stating that "our involvement in Iraq has been compared to the Vietnam War" and asking how we can change our tactics to best battle an ideology. He didn't really answer my question, of course, but it was the only one he liked.

Here's why. The rest attacked him on issues like abortion, torture, gay marriage, and the USA PATRIOT Act (which he mentioned a number of times in his talk but didn't actually talk about). The gay marriage question specifically attacked his argument that it's the government's job to protect people's liberties; while his answer essentially labeled the LGBT community as second-class citizens, it was the only good attack made from the liberal audience. The other attacks were very broad and the questioners were attacked right back; all he could really do was share his moral standing and opinions regarding the livelihood of fetuses and methods of coercing information out of people.

Conclusion: Ashcroft is as good/terrible as the rest at talking around real issues. I went in knowing that I wouldn't agree with him, that he is probably the most conservative person I have ever interacted with, and that he would try to feed me as much fear as he did to the American people when he was in office, but left disappointed that he was a totally unprofessional douche-bag. He managed to interrupt and insult every person who asked him a question, even those who were more civil than the rest.

In other news, I am going to the city with Olive, Hannah, Chris, and Greg next Saturday on the Art Department-sponsored bus. New York Comic Con is the weekend after and I'm trying to get a group of people to go with. Stan Lee, Frank Miller, Chip Kidd, Jackson Publick, Doc Hammer, and a few Battlestar Galactica cast members are only a few of the very exciting people who will be present.