Had a fun time this evening attending a talk with Jeanie at the Center for Global Something Or Other down at USF. The speaker was a spry old guy from Princeton named Richard Falk who was supposed to talk about "Globalization, Democracy, and Human Rights," but instead decided to spend an hour railing on the unilateralist policies of the Bush administration!

Sister-mockery aside, my recent reading came in very handy, as Dr. Falk spent almost all his time covering the same materials I had recently seen in The End of History and Rogue Nation.

Sadly, they really hustled us through the Q&A portion of things (to Jeanie's dismay as well), and I wasn't able to get in on it. One of the questions I wanted to ask the guy is what sort of practical things he felt the citizenry could be doing to have the maximum impact this election year.

Overall, it was surprising to see such a partisan talk, and you could tell that certain people in the room were discomfited by it. It was reassuring, on the whole, to see that the USF audience seemed like a typical left-wing college crowd, but it was fun to trail one young woman who left the place berating herself for not walking out and, instead, sticking around to hear "that guy blast our President for 45 minutes!" Good blasting it was. Go, Dr. Falk!
- posted by John @ 11:48 PM