Election 2008: Obama’s Rev. Wrong

Whenever I vote for President of the United States I know I am voting for the lesser of two evils. My vote has always gone to the candidate who threatens my freedom less. In April of 2008, I find myself stuck with a somewhat larger task. I have to determine which of the candidates threatens my freedom least. That’s right. There are still three candidates out there with a real shot at winning the presidency.

The Republicans are set. They’ve nominated John McCain. The Democrats have two candidates who have split the popular vote and the elected delegates more or less down the middle, making it impossible for either one of them to secure the nomination without the votes of the Democratic establishment, the super delegates. If the nomination is left to the party establishment, I think, that is a scenario that favors Hilary Clinton. She and Bill have been rubbing elbows with these people for far longer than newcomer, Barack Obama. Of course, it’s more complicated than that. If Hilary does manage to win the nomination, by hook and by crook, the Democratic Party will be DOA come November as blacks and young people stay home disgusted, feeling betrayed. The Democratic Party is not going to let that happen. The party super delegates are going to decide in favor of Obama, and [if they know what’s good for them] they’re going to do so before the party convention.

Will they have made the better choice?

There are no important differences between Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama on the domestice front. Both would-be presidents deny the virtues of the capitalist economy that made each of them possible. Both tell Americans that they have a right to food, clothing, shelter, and health care, and that it is the government’s responsibility to provide these things. Both demand European-style social safety nets be constructed, ignoring and denying the fact that such nets may be woven only with the fibers of our freedom. Both would create a nation of beggars, losers, and looters—people who willing give up their rights as free men in order to create a government equipped to spare them the responsibility of living in the real world. The only question left then is which of the two has a better understanding of the world in which we live?

Maybe it’s because she was a Senator from New York on 9/11; maybe it’s because of her service on the Senate Armed Services Committee; maybe it’s because she watched her husband wage war for eight years as President of the United States; but Hilary Clinton [despite her movement to the left during the primaries] has a much less dangerous view of America’s standing in the world. She understands we have to fight to preserve what we have created here and around the world. She will fight. Conversely, Barach Obama has said he will meet with our enemies without precondition. He will lend credibility to the likes of Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meeting with them as “equals.” He would crawl into the United Nations and beg forgiveness for American arrogance during the Bush Administration. He would empower our enemies to bold action against us all in the name of peace…unconditional peace that hands the world over to thugs and assassins.

While Clinton and Obama have dangerous, socialist economic policies in common, Obama is by far the more dangerous of the two. He embodies the kind of subjectivism possible only in America where liberty seems free and survival is relatively easy. He is a man who can not, or refuses to, distinguish between good and evil. He will not disassociate himself from the later. He will compromise his values. Barack Obama suffered twenty years of hatred and racism spewed from the pulpit by the “man of the cloth” who taught him about Jesus. He sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church for twenty years and spoke not one word in protest. He brought his two beautiful daughters there to be educated by this racist. Twenty years of silence in the face of evil is sanction, and I think, disqualifying.

I’ve had my eye on Barack Obama since the 2004 Democratic Convention. After his red-America, blue-America, one-America speech, I told my students that I thought Obama would in fact be the first black president of the United States. I told them that I thought he’d run in 2112 or 2116. I was surprised when he decided to run from his freshman seat in the senate in 2008. I was even more surprised when he won Iowa and Super Tuesday.
But I was pleased…and I’ll tell you why. I thought an Obama presidency [perhaps even a nomination] would be enough to shut up all of the racist “civil rights” leaders who dominate politics in Tavis Smiley’s “Black America.” To shut up Jesse Jackson, Luis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, Cornell West…to shut up all of these racists, I might vote for Barack Obama!

I’ve spent the past twenty years explaining to my students why black candidates win seats in the house but fail to win seats in the senate. “Civil rights” candidates can win in congressional districts where a half-million or more black people live: “Civil rights” candidates cannot win seats in the senate because blacks are a minority in nearly every state. Typical white people will not vote for a candidate who represents only the black people of the state. For blacks to win in the senate they must become candidates who represent all of the people of the state. The Illinois senator won his seat in the senate [virtually unopposed, with all due respect to Alan Keyes] when his Republican opponent’s messy divorce undid his candidacy. But I remember thinking, if Obama made it to the senate he is not a product of “Black America.”

For the first time in American history [because Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice refuse to run], I thought we had a black man who could actually win the White House. Rev. Wright’s words and Barack Obama’s silence convinced me otherwise.