Just because you aren’t Obama, you can be a hero

TO THE EDITOR:

Columnist Reed Watson’s recent “love letter” to our latest Nobel Peace Prize laureate (“You can do good too, without Nobel,” Oct. 12) left me feeling all kinds of queasy. By his arguments, we should be happy that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize because his life is really, really hard.

I mean, just imagine it! All anyone expects from you is to work obediently at a dreadful desk job for the rest of your life.

But not Obama! He gets up every morning with the whole world expecting him to fix their problems for them. And even if he miraculously does, there will always be some clearly unpatriotic hooligan who hates him.

Never mind that Obama hasn’t fixed global warming yet. And don’t worry about continuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or his request for renewal of surveillance provisions in the Patriot Act. Oh, and just forget about bailouts to the politically connected at our own expense. That stuff doesn’t matter. His intentions are good, so give him the prize!

The fact of the matter is that no one man — especially a politician — will solve our problems for us. Obama is not Superman, and neither he nor anyone else should be treated that way.

There are no magic policy solutions for every challenge our world faces. It’s up to each of us to make our world a better place. The truly great people aren’t the ones with Nobel Prizes, but the ones who forsake fame, fortune and power to pursue their dreams for a better world. Those men and women are the real heroes of our age, and there’s no reason you can’t be one of them.



Tom VanAntwerp
Senior
Business Administration