Day One, Paris

11:00 Wake up and realize I just slept 12 hours. My roommate is surprised to find out I was in my room the whole time (I told her I’d probably wake up at 8am).

12:00 Look for the nearby supermarket, starting in the opposite direction I was supposed to go. Yeahhh…

1:00 Supermarket shopping

1:30 Cook lunch at the apartment. Eat lunch while reading our recently delivered yellow pages. Highlight: There are go-karts in Paris!

2:30 Go on internet.

4:00 Subwayyyyy and general wandering until my meeting

5:00 Meet with the professor I will be working with for my thesis, feel comforted (and therefore complacent :O) about where I am in the process.

5:30 Buy pens, consider making my own furniture out of wooden planks

7:00 Paris Zen Center

8:30 Back to the apartment, frowning at men who catcall in the street. I will probably be doing this continuously for the next three months until I come up with a better response.

9:30 Internet, figure out plans for the week

French word of the day: overbooké. Guess what it means.

In Love with Palin

Ok, not really. But I am quite fascinated with the Republican VP candidate. I left Shanghai on August 30 and came back to 100 new emails, all about the unknown Governor from Alaska. Since Sarah Palin was introduced a few days ago, everyone has been talking about her. Is she ready to lead, only “a heartbeat away” from the Presidency? Is her son really her son? Is Alaska’s proximity to Russia really relevant?

I’ve heard all the reasons people are cynical. Most importantly, she has been Governor for less than two years and has no foreign policy experience when McCain’s main attack on Obama has been his lack of experience. But I still think she’s being underestimated.

She proved herself in her RNC speech. One thing that struck me was her critique of Obama describing working class Americans as “clinging bitterly” to their religion and guns. So many times, I have heard Democrats complain that Bush won because most Americans are idiots, that "value voters" are uninformed or don’t care about the important political issues. It is an attitude I wish Democrats could keep in check, to disprove Republican accusations of elitism.

Of course, Palin made problematic comments too. A low point, for most of us, was her mockery of community organizing. It was not only insulting of community service, it wasn’t the smartest political choice. She didn't need to stoop that low to diss Obama. She should have criticized the concept of "community organizing" as a liberal buzz word that doesn’t mean anything but the local politics she’s been involved with her entire life, PTA and all. But nobody asked me. (By the way, Obama’s response was pretty badass.)

Here’s another thought on her selection: Palin was selected not because she is like Hillary Clinton, as many are assuming, but because she is like Obama. Somebody else noticed it too. They have reputations as young, up-and-coming politicians who challenge the political status quo. (Whether or not that's actually true is, unfortunately, not the point.) McCain and Biden get to share their extensive foreign policy experience and white hair.

Lastly, I have been baffled by the way her issue stances are used to argue that she is an unwise VP choice. Of course Democrats don’t agree with her; she was chosen for her conservative values. I am more interested in her character as a politician, and I suspect she’ll be able to hold her own.

Call me conservative

Growing up in Massachusetts has made me somewhat of a liberal by default, but I’ve recently started putting pressure on a number of my views. I have realized I am actually rather conservative on two issues: abstinence and abortion. That is, I support abstinence as a personal choice, and I believe that abortion is not the right solution in most cases, though I believe it should be legal.

Rather than get into the details of my stances, I am more curious why these two issues in particular stand out. Sexual promiscuity and pro-choice stances are usually associated with a set of “liberal” values. Maybe the link, for me, is family. My particular brand of social conservatism idealizes mature, long-term, monogamous relationships. In my head, the logical link is made to the value of waiting for physical intimacy and embracing unplanned pregnancies. Perhaps these two issues are especially personal. After all, they involve one of the most taboo subjects in American society: sex.

The only reason I remain on the left side of things is my belief that it is not my place to enforce a certain lifestyle. If someone sleeps around in self-destructive ways, or casually uses abortion like birth control, it is not my place to legally stop them, even as I find such behavior morally wrong. We are more comfortable regulating other morals: do not kill, do not drive recklessly, do not commit suicide, etc…So being pro-choice does not mean I support abortion, or that I trust women’s ability to decide what is best. It is only a stance on governmental intervention.

While this is not out of line with the true meaning of liberalism, self-proclaimed liberals today often force their views onto others, as they criticize right-wingers for their moralizing. What side does that put me on? Guess that just makes me a socially conservative Foucaultian feminist.

You figure it out.