Museland

 Another day, another world.

                      BFTF is so much fun. Yesterday in the Constitution Class we had a debate where the proposition was: The US Constitution and its Constitutional Traditions should be viewed in most respects as a model for emerging democracies in Europe and Eurasia. I was on the negative side and the points we made were (at least in my opinion) awesome and very logical. But of course, with our five lay judges, they voted for the affirmative when it was clear that we as the negative had valid and well-justified points. As negative, we first brought up the flaws of the constitution such as the fact that it is outdated and unsuited for the modern world as it was created 200 years ago. Furthermore, the voting system, which is a byproduct of the US Constitution is extremely ineffective as one can duly note from the corruption and problems embedded within it. As the voting procedure in every state differs, the votes are open to mistakes and corruption. And the usage of the electoral college enables presidential canadiates to win even when they lost in the popular vote such as was the case of the 2000 election between George Bush Jr. and Al Gore. Secondly, it is unnecessary to use the US Constitution as a model as within the international community, numerous other constitution would serve as a better and more efficient model. The constitutions belonging to developed countries within Europe and Eurasia would serve as a much better model as they contain more rights and their constitutions have already adapted to the regional problems that these emerging democracies are located. Consequently, if these developing democracies had a similar constitution say to a developed country they are located close to, it would be easier for them to join alliances such as the European Union which would enable to gain a better foothold within the international community quicker.  We used Norway as an example and the affirmative fixated on it. I think the problem was that the affirmative as well as the judges decision was based more on the small, insignifcant details which includes the examples we used to support our points. Among these details was the death penalty, the usage of Norway, the 2nd amendment, etc. Basically in conclusion of this debate, I’ll just state: Why US? There’s nothing special about the US. The US is one of the strongest world powers. So? So are numerous democratic countries such as Spain, France, UK, Norway, etc. and some of them such as Norway and Denmark have even higher living standards then we do. So in the end do you want the sugar cookie(US constitution) or the chocolate chip cookie(Other constitutions that include more rights)?

                   It rained last night too. A sudden rain shower, pretty cool. I also spent some time just hanging out with people in the evening and doing laundry. Haha, doing laundry was…interesting. Let’s just say there was enough people in there to say, party in the laundry room! Haha. Later in the night, an arguement on whether Alexander the Great was Greek or not got started and that was very heated, but amusing nonetheless. Well, I have no philosophical thoughts for you today as I’m slightly tired so I’ll come back later maybe with more interesting things.                                                                                                          

                   postscript: Washington DC tomorrow!! =]

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                                                                                                                                                                Hey Everyone,

               My name is Vicki Peng and I’m from the lovely place of Chandler, Arizona (the human over…literally). I’m 16 years old and I’m going to be in 11th grade next year at Chandler High School. At school, I’m in Speech and Debate and tennis. But otherwise, I like philosophy, politics, and history, which gets crazy when you put them all together, haha.

                   Right now, I’m a Founder at BFTF, hosted at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC. The weather here is amazing and definatly not the human oven that AZ is. And furthermore, there are trees! and green stuff! so much green stuff that some people and I have created the green monster that hides in trees, haha.  But the days are so nice and cool with wind and etc. 

               The classes are interesting. The debate within the Citizenship class was fun although the lure of power from being a strong country was unexpected. The Constitution class furthered my knowledge within American History and this blogging class that I am in currently revises old ideas into new ones. Aka determinism- no free will, but within a non-philosophical perspective is that all your actions are dictated by the history of humanity, by what has happened before you, so are your thoughts truly your own?

                  As for writers under psuedonyms like Ben Franklin, they leave me on the doorstep of Voltaire, thinking about his accomplishments. Voltaire chose to use a psuedonym, but attached a name to the face, thus making it almost a second name, a second personality. He rebelled against the government, but flaunted it and even joined in the censoring of his work, knowing what many historical analysts have discovered today that words are eternal and no amount of censorship can erase the words (though I’m sure it is possible, and has happened at least once throughout history). I just finished reading We the Living by Ayn Rand, and knowing Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, I’ve linked Voltaire and Ben Franklin’s usage of psuedonyms and have discovered interesting results. Who is the higher being, the better man, the individualist? The man who hides behind his words, but sells his soul to the world, or the man who sells his soul to the world and flaunts it for all to see with no fear, with a confindence that others precieve as a shameful pride or arragonce.

                        Which brings me to the next thing that’s always present within my writing. Words, words, words. When you write, it’s not the writer that writes the words, its the words that writes the words. Being surrounded by numerous languages here at BFTF only brings this to the forefront of my thoughts once again. Seperating words from there connotations can do so much. Especially with words with negative connotations. Ayn Rand’s philosophy is hard to understand at first because when one sees the words of arragonce or pride, the mind automatically shifts to a negative connotation based due to societal influence (btw, I don’t know if this is true within other languages, but having English as my first language, I’ll use examples from there). Wow, that was a slight tangent. And I just realized that the point of psyedonyms are to make sure that ideas are treated just for ideas and are seperated from the person who wrote them (hence the power of words), while I’m going off about Ayn Rand.  Um, I shall go and leave you with some awesome BFTF pictures before I hurt my head going places I’m not supposed to go. Haha. =]

                                                                                                                                                    postscript: Now we’re talking about George Orwell and 1984, one of my favorite books. And by chance, newspeak, words being turned upside down.  One way to make me happy, dystopia and utopia related books!

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