I've had 24 hours to contemplate yesterday's election. I had a few things to say, and then I found that Dirty Harry had already said them so well, to his own (left-leaning) mother, no less:
While some of my readers are understandably and bitterly disappointed, even at me for not being so, not a single one will ever cross the many unholy lines your side has over the last eight years.
We will never summon all the powers at our disposal to advocate for chaos and massacre and defeat in a foreign country.
We will never hurl the blackest of lies to win a news cycle.
We will never refuse to grant Barack Obama his humanity.
We will never refuse to acknowledge President Obama has done something right when he does something right.
And we will never consider a doctrine that would silence your side.
For the sake of power, your side went against country, undermined our military, sided with the enemy, and sold the souls they don’t believe in.
Unlike your side, I can afford to be magnanimous to Barack Obama for a day because my love and faith in this country and its people transcends politics. But I also believe in God and take enormous comfort in knowing this to be true:
“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”
[...]
I wish Barack Obama the best because my own humanity is not so far gone as to not allow me to recognize his.
I treat Barack Obama with respect, because unlike your side I recognize a hard-earned victory.
And I wish Barack Obama success because unlike your side I choose country over political gain.
Yes, some here are angry, but they’re not damned. Not like your side.
Amen.
I would add that Obama's election puts the lie to the assertion that the American dream is dead, that it impossible for an individual to achieve. Obama started life with...what? Little to nothing? And now he's president of the most powerful nation the world has ever seen.
And he's black, an African-American, elected president a bare 44 years after the signing of the Civil Rights Act. Glory be, what an amazing thing, what an amazing country!
What I'll remember most about Obama's acceptance speech wasn't the words but his appearance. He didn't gloat. He didn't wear a shit-eating grin. Rather, he looked somber, as though he was just beginning to feel the impact of the moment. Neither his voice nor his rhetoric soared as they had during the campaign. Instead, he sounded almost restrained, his voice tinged with humility.
Lord, I hope he's the centrist he claims to be, and not the socialist his diminutive record would seem to indicate.
It is perhaps ironic that one of the first negative comments I saw about Obama's election came from the far, far, far loony left:
But his choice, basically, is whether he's going to be Uncle Sam for the people of this country, or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations.
And with that quote, Ralph Nader demonstrated why he's one of two men whom I hold in utter contempt. The other is Jimmy Carter, appropriate for the moment because I dread that the next four years will, in effect, be Jimmy Carter's second term, an era of ruination and national self-destruction. I lived through the Carter years and remember double-digit inflation and double-digit unemployment. What I remember most of all was the utter lack of leadership from Jimmy Carter or anyone else in the White House.
Much of Obama's rhetoric echoes Carter, and so I fear he'll trot down that path of failure. But that glimmer last night gives me -- oh God, I can't believe I'm saying this -- hope.
So if he proves my worries unfounded, no one will be happier than me.
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