Day 316: Pepperdineee!

 

November 12th, 2011Today was the 2011 Students For Liberty Southern California Regional Conference at none other than Pepperdine, pictured above. As me, Bee-John, Simeon, Joel, Cody, Carolin, and Alexsandra woke up in the morning we all took turns getting ready showering and such. After 30 minutes of failing to iron a shirt despite repeated advice from Simeon, Cody ultimately helped me out and did it for me. When my dress shirt was now clean and straight, Simeon helped me put on a tie. I hopped into Alexsandra’s car with Bee-John as we prepared a short trip to Pepperdine! It was my first time there, and the campus was very gorgeous. In comparison to UCSD, it looked much more compact while at the same time much more appealing in terms of apperance. We all parked, and got our way inside to the main room where we would be for a majority of the day. I said my hellos to Elizabeth, Paul, and Amy who joined us from driving up in the early hours of the morning. Eventually throughout the course of the day I would get a scarf, a t-shirt, various books, and various possible internships/jobs I can apply to upon graduation.

In terms of the overall conference here’s what went down: We checked in and had some delicious breakfast in the form of bagels (I spread strawberry all over mine and had coffee for the first time in months). Chelsea Krafve gave opening introductions. David Nott gave a speech on ending the war on drugs. Harris Kenny gave a speech on the need for privitization. We all took a group picture outside before having subway for lunch. Not that great, but still relatively filling in my stomach (and much better than Norms). Dr. Tom Bell than gave a talk on seasteading and the consensual constitution before breakout sessions occured. I went with Bee-John to a debate between the Chicago school of economics vs. the austrian school of economics. Unfortunately, the debate didn’t go quite as well as I had hoped: with one person clearly reading from a piece of paper. SAD TIMES. I was a bit disappointed they didn’t dumb it down for me though. Gary Chartier than gave an excellent talk on Peace, Love and Understanding where where he said the natural liberal should automatically find much common ground with the libertarian movements. (as opposed to ones who claim to be liberal but don’t). He was really energetic and definitely my favorite speaker. Sanjay, Hannah, and YAL’s very own Angad Walia than gave some information about Student Activism, before Bob Dowdon gave some insightful information about The Cartel and education reform in the United States. We had delicious dinner in the form of pasta before listening to Adrian Moore’s keynote speech, which really bored me the most. During his talk though I found out via Elizabeth’s phone that Ron Paul got only 89 seconds in the debate. That really upset me and made me angry that the media would do that to him, but it wasn’t very surprising… Alexander Mccobin gave an inspirational closing speech before I said goodbye to my peers. I really enjoyed the conference and it definitely made up for the mess that was yesterday. Definitely a positive learning and growing experience in my life, much more so than PACURH was last year (which was full of annoying and useless cheers). Somehow, the fight for political activism to me seems much more important the the fight to make residential life programs better… but maybe that’s just me….

Me, Alexsandra, and Bee-John decided to leave tonight instead of waiting till tomorrow (cause then we’d have to wake up early and probably would get back at noon). We had things to doooooooooo…. Along the way, we got some Volcano Tea in Garden Grove, but eventually Alexsandra drove us both home where I relaxed for the rest of the night.

On this day in 1954, Ellis Island, the gateway to America, shuts it doors after processing more than 12 million immigrants since opening in 1892. Today, an estimated 40 percent of all Americans can trace their roots through Ellis Island, located in New York Harbor off the New Jersey coast and named for merchant Samuel Ellis, who owned the land in the 1770s. SAD.

Both Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann are crying foul after what they said were unfair efforts to limit their air time during CBS’ Republican presidential debate on Saturday night. In an email sent out after the debate entitled “What a Joke,” the Paul campaign ripped CBS for allowing the Texas Congressman only a minute and a half of air time in the 90 minute debate. “It literally made me sick watching the mainstream media once again silence the one sane voice in this election,” said Campaign Manager John Tate. “The one dissenter to a decade of unchecked war. The one candidate who stands for true defense and actual constitutional government. Ron Paul was silenced, in perhaps the most important debate of the cycle.” SO EFF’ING TRUE.

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