There is probably a lot one could say about the piece The New York Times ran yesterday about Barack Obama’s 12-year tenure teaching law at the University of Chicago. That Obama “never completed a single work of legal scholarship” may seem surprising given that he was teaching at a major research university where, as the Times notes, “most colleagues published by the pound.” Unsurprising is that, even back then, Obama exuded an aura of “self-absorption” and was surrounded by “groupies.” Also unsurprising is that fact that much of his teaching concerned issues of race and that, as the Times puts it, he “was especially eager for his charges to understand the horrors of the past, students say.” Just this past Sunday, at a Chicago fundraiser, he lectured his audience about the “sad,” even “tragic” nature of America’s past. “I personally would want to see our tragic history, or the tragic elements of our history, acknowledged,” he said.
Glenn Reynolds asks two pertinent questions:
(1) Does Barack Obama think that American history is unusually “tragic” as compared to the history of other great nations? And (2), what does it tell us that journalists were cheering him when he said that?
Regarding the first, how does American history stack up against other countries you know about when it comes to sadness and tragedy. Take Germany–no, that’s too easy. Take France and start in the time of Julius Caesar or, if that is too long ago, in the time of the Cathars and move forward noting the sadnesses and tragedy. Remember Arnaud-Amaury, the papal legate who over saw the siege of Béziers in 1209? Asked by one of his soldiers how they should distinguish the innocents from the Cathars, Arnaud-Amaury memorably replied, “Tuez-les tous. Dieu reconnaîtra les siens,” “Kill ‘em all. God will know his own.” Or take a look a French life under Louis XIV, or under Robespierre and his fellow virtucrats, or under Napoleon. Ask Alfred Dreyfus about sadness and tragedy. The Dreyfus affair is also convenient for those who thrill, as do many readers of the Times, at the prospect of an orgy of national guilt. And speaking of national guilt, let’s not forget Vichy France: there are lots of opportunities there to indulge in a bit of moral masturbation.
Not that France has a monopoly or even a majority interest in such sadness and tragedy, as a look at the history of the Balkans, or Russia, or India, or China, or Japan, or the entire continent of Africa demonstrates. Indeed, when it comes to the sort of sadness and tragedy that Obama dilated on in Chicago, America has been conspicuously on the mild end of such things. I don’t deny the sordidness of slavery, the horrors of the Civil War, and all the other blemishes one might exhibit to show that America has not been perfect and has suffered its share of historical unpleasantness. But in the scheme of things, does it not seem to be an unusually blessed society, one that has been unusually spared the sorts of sadness and tragedy that form such a grim recitative in many, maybe most other countries?
Obama mentions slavery early and often, but what is more significant: the fact that slavery existed in America in the 18th and half of the 19th centuries (as it did in many other parts of the world) or that Americans took it upon themselves to end it and that today Barack Obama is a millionaire and the presumptive Democratic candidate for President?
And as for “acknowledging” the bad things from the past, what else have we been doing for the last three decades. How much expiation does Barack Obama, or Al Sharpton, or Jesse Jackson want? Just a few days ago, the U.S. Congress formally “apologized” for slavery: I employ scare quotes, because the apology is as meaningless as it is hypocritical. Really, I suspect, what is wanted is not “acknowledgment” but perpetual obeisance to an ever receding, impossible ideal of political rectitude.
Which brings me back to the Times’s story on Obama’s career at the University of Chicago. In the course of that story, the reporter confronts the reader with “what may be the ultimate test of racial equality–whether Americans will elect a black president.”
I stopped short reading that because I think it gets the issue 100% wrong. The implication is that if Obama is not elected, then Americans fail the test. But that, I submit, is a racist idea. How many liberals do you know who plan to vote for Barack Obama because he is black, that is to say, for a racist reason? Sure, they also like the fact that he plans to institute a European-style confiscatory tax plan. They approve of his socialistic plans to increase the size and intrusiveness of the government. They share his skepticism about our presence in Iraq and contemplate his call for “civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the United States military with equanimity, even pleasure. Really, though, all that is icing on the cake. They have closed ranks around Obama on account of the very thing that Obama pretends he wishes to transcend: the color of his skin.
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59 Comments
peterlittman:Bang on Target.Surely most people know it but many are too flayed by the PC barrage to whimper the plain truth.
Jul 31, 2008 - 1:27 pm Chad:Shhhh. Can’t have facts disrupt the narrative.
Jul 31, 2008 - 1:40 pm Algen:I agree wholeheartedly. Obama and his supporters are the ones who continually play the race card. I have stopped trying to reason with one of my neighbors who is going to vote for Obama because he is such a good looking black man and is going to bring change. When I asked her just what kind of change she thought Obama would bring she had no idea. What is even worse when I asked her what kind of change she wanted, she did not know but was sure Obama would bring us a good change. The liberal socialist teachers have succeeded in producing people who can not think for themselves and are content to let others control all aspects of their lives. The Sheeple are here.
Jul 31, 2008 - 1:40 pm matt:Hi Roger;
You forgot Ireland and England and the various and sundry wars between Jutes, Angles, Welsh, Saxons, Northmen, etc. civil wars, the subjugation of the Scots, Orangemen vs Papists, a civil war in there somewhere, the enclosure laws, etc…..and all of those wars with the Papal States by various and sundry Lombards, Neopolitans, Sardinians, oh yeah, and what about the Siege of Vienna, or Battle of Kosovo or all the German religious civil wars?
On the flip side, ya gots yer various Indian moghul wars, Thais vs Burmese vs Cambodians, myriad and sundry civil wars, exterminations, man made famines, and other repressions in China, and of course lest we forget, the civil wars, Christian eradication programs, etc in Japan….I’m sure one can find plenty along those lines among the various Pre-Columbian civilizations as well…or just take the Sioux vs everyone else; Blackfeet vs Crow, Utes, vs whoevers here in the good ole US of A…..everbodee be hatin’ on everbodee else for a long time, son….
Jul 31, 2008 - 1:45 pm anon on this:Obama is clearly a repeat beneficiary of affirmative action’s programmatic injustice, yet he avoids acknowledging it and is not being asked with any vehemence to do so. I would actually respect him more if he were to acknowledge the benefits he has accrued on the grounds of his racial identity. But he needn’t do that so long as others remain silent. I think most people are actually terrified to say what they really think on the subject.
Jul 31, 2008 - 1:47 pm thomas:The reason people of colour wants the gov’t. to apologize “officially” is so they can then demand “reparations” from the gov’t. that has admitted their guilt. And “reparations” is another word for MONEY!! obama has already said “the apology is the first step in reparation” for the crimes committed against us. My parents came to the U.S. about ten years ago…so do my tax dollars go towards the “reparations” of a crime I had NOTHING to do with? Or will there be a check box to mark if you were not born here? thomas
Jul 31, 2008 - 1:47 pm apetra:How about simply taking the Americas?
The U.S. and its history are a beckon of light and hope.
Let’s not let Barack succeed in extinguishing that.
Jul 31, 2008 - 1:54 pm Morris:The true test of “post- racism” is when a black candidate can LOSE to a white candidate, without recriminations of racism.
Jul 31, 2008 - 1:56 pm matt:oh, I forgot….I’m supposed to be sorry about slavery….whoops…all that other stuff got me going for a minute there….all of Mr. Obama’s European friends at the time of the Civil War were also in many cases the covert (British) and occasionally overt supporters (France/Maximilian) of the Southern Cause in the Civil War.
I guess the virtual bankruptcy of the Union, 650,000 deaths, XIIIth, XIVth, XVth, and XVIIIth Amendments had no real palliative effect either….
and those darn Krauts, Ukranians, Jews, Eyetalians, Micks, Bohemians, Chinese, Japs, etc all had it sooo easy when they immigrated and were handed a big bag ‘o cash when they arrived never faced discrimination….
Jul 31, 2008 - 1:59 pm jim:Benedict Obama is a smug, condescending bastard. The man is just morally repugnant.
Jul 31, 2008 - 2:05 pm iowahawk:Roger - one bit I believe needs clarification: as I understand it Obama was initially hired by Chicago as an (non-tenure track) adjunct lecturer, and as such it would not be unusual for him to have a thin or blank publication record. Unlike tenure track faculty, there isn’t much incentive for adjuncts to lard up their CV’s with academic publications because they are short-contract and evaluated primarily on teaching record.
That said, what is somewhat unusual is that (1) Obama was offered the same salary as a tenure track, and (2) UC offered him “tenure” after his unsuccessful run, even with a blank pub record. I put “tenure” in quotes because he was promoted to Senior Lecturer, and it’s unclear whether tenured adjunct status confers the same benefits as tenured professorship.
Jul 31, 2008 - 2:16 pm Genny:If you listen carefully to his narratives it is very reflective of ‘Black Liberation Theology’. You don’t hear this stuff for 20 years and not internalize some of it.
Jul 31, 2008 - 2:17 pm Jungus:Does this include the slavery that I am doing for all of those government transfer funds?
Jul 31, 2008 - 2:17 pm Rich:Obama is not a descendant of an American slave, his father a an immigrant from Africa. Obama is not an “African-American”, a desendant of a slave in the United States. He does not have the heritage of slavery in his background, for him to say he feels the “stain” of slavery is an insult to the Americans who have ancestors who were really slaves in this country.
Jul 31, 2008 - 2:18 pm Jungus:Reparations can only to paid to those individuals who actually suffered from being slaves. Their decendants are now living are in a country that offers ( not guarranted) the most opportunity for them.
Move on.. get on with striving to better ourselves.
Sorry, does this include the slavery that I am doing to pay for all of those government transfer funds?
Jul 31, 2008 - 2:19 pm Zelsdorf Ragshaft III:Reparations should be accompanied with repatriation. If this nation owes the distant relatives of those who were sold in to slavery by their own brothers, not mine. I know not what indignities were suffered by the offspring of slavery, but I am aware of the opportunity afforded being born in the United States of America. If you think opportunity is more available in Nigeria, wonderful. Ask for reparations and you will be reunited with those who sold you originally
Jul 31, 2008 - 2:19 pm Huntman:Obama: Everything he says is a lie, including the “thank” and the “you.”
Jul 31, 2008 - 2:19 pm Moody Deep Thinker:This situation has so many paradoxes and ironies involved that one’s head could spin for hours if foolish enough to delve into them.
A man who has risen to his position either by virtue of actual or legislated affirmative action continues to maintain that age old racial perceptions and biases persist will prove that they don’t by virtue of his presidential candidacy. Yet he will be defeated not by virtue of the race card but simply by a better and more experienced candidate. The aftermath will do miracles to solidify racial relations in America when a man is allowed to lose based on lack of experience rather than the color of his skin.
The one thing no affirmative action program can provide is actual experience, just the opportunity to gain it. What Obama has to contribute is the courage to accept that in an equal world race has no meaning, but experience does. What Obama does and says in defeat after the election will have far more meaning for America than anything he has said or done up to now.
Jul 31, 2008 - 2:22 pm MaggieW:It’s about one thing only. Money.
Jul 31, 2008 - 2:30 pm RKV:“The true test of “post- racism” is when a black candidate can LOSE to a white candidate, without recriminations of racism.”
When it happens to B. Hussein Obama, there are going to be PLENTY of recriminations, so I guess we ain’t post-racist. Yet. For my part, IT’S THE POLICY, not the pigmentation.
Jul 31, 2008 - 2:32 pm franglo:Mr. Kimball: You, sir, are a damned liar. Show the quote in which Obama claims the U.S. has the most tragic history in the world. If you didn’t have the cognition of a toddler you might grasp the fact that to acknowledge and seek to better the wounds of the American past is not to denigrate the nation, but to serve it. Furthermore, I would like to see proof of Obama’s socialist “confiscatory tax-plan.” Unless you are making over $250,000 you will be paying less, not more, in taxes, and even those above that threshold will see their taxes return to levels last seen before the reckless, irresponsible budgeting of the Bush administration which has sunk the country into HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of dollars in debt, notably to China. The current tax system is a ponzi scheme that enriches the top 1% at the expense of everyone else– speaking of redistribution of wealth. John McCain with his beer magnate wife, his 11 houses and $500 shoes, may not grasp this reality. But I believe Obama does, which is why I’m voting for him. Not because he’s black, YOU TWIT.
Jul 31, 2008 - 2:37 pm John K.:Absolutely right, Mr. Kimball. This emphasis–indeed the exlusive focus–upon the shortcomings of this, the “Last Best Hope of Earth,” is deeply depressing and unfair.
As a history major at a putatively top-10 university, I see every day the intellectual bankrupcy of political correctness and victimology on the field of history. In all honesty, if one chooses his/her courses wrongly (or correctly, in the minds of today’s pampered and lazy students), it is not an impossiblity to learn nothing, save the empty platitudes of race theory, race conflict, and social constructism.
And God help us, Obama has stated his hope to integrate more of this material into curricula. How can a nation–even as great as ours–endure when so many (and even a President Obama), have so little faith in it and lack the conviction to renew and reaffirm our experiment in liberty?
Jul 31, 2008 - 2:40 pm Spurgeon Smith:We all know that voting against a man because of his race would send to Hell an angel from on high.
So what about voting FOR a man because of his race??
Jul 31, 2008 - 2:43 pm K T Cat:I apologized. So should you.
Jul 31, 2008 - 2:48 pm Alex Bensky:I’m not sure what good a formal apology for slavery would be, but I am astonished at the historical illiteracy of people who say one should be offered. It has been:
“Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”
what is that if not an apology, and delivered by a president, at that?
Jul 31, 2008 - 2:51 pm anon on this:On the subject of Obama’s strange law school career: I am taken aback that faculty with tenure — thus, specially protected to exercise speech — have not been more out-front and candid about what everybody knows to be the truth: universal and obsessive “affirmative action” dictates have literally destroyed any expectation of fairness, meritocracy, and equal opportunity for an entire generation of non-minorities in academia (and you might as well add in politics, city, state and federal jobs, and jobs in many large institutions).
Worse, what is done to non-minorities, we are told, is done in the name of justice — and on the other end of the narrowly allowable conversation, those who dare to challenge or even vaguely criticize the practice are subjected to severely limited opportunities and vigorous re-education, particularly in academia.
I have been told to my face not to bother to apply for a city job because I am white, and “they” won’t hire whites (statistically, relative to city demographics, this bore out to an extreme degree). I have been asked, in a job interview, if I knew any black people who might also like to also apply for the job. I’ve been forced to sit through dozens of racially hostile “diversity trainings” and once even forced to listen to a black fellow academic complain (this was supposed to be a “lecture” on the subject of racism in academia) that she was being offered too many jobs and she felt they were being offered in a spirit that somehow discriminated against her. This in a room full of white academics fully aware that they they would be lucky as hell to get even one offer. And most didn’t. We, of course, said nothing. We couldn’t.
I’ve been put through the sun people/ice people thing, the blue-eye thing, you name it. It was sheer insanity; it was ubiquitous; most people simply shut down in the face of it (including many minorities no more comfortable with the raw racism of the “diversity” crowd than non-minorities), and now I’m watching the same insanity I witnessed in grad school unfold on a national scale, in the form of a presidential election. What a nightmare — but I don’t dare talk about it.
Where are the people who established themselves before this madness and reverse-prejudice became the status quo, particularly tenured professors? They need to speak up because on this issue, many literally cannot do so and hope to ever gain employment. I was encouraged to see the New York Times article (and imagine the Times being the ones out front on this!), but in the blogs and websites, with the exception of RK, there’s largely been silence, or quite uncharacteristic shying away.
Jul 31, 2008 - 2:52 pm ic:thomas: “My parents came to the U.S. about ten years ago…so do my tax dollars go towards the “reparations” of a crime I had NOTHING to do with?”
Obama’s parents never suffered from slavery, yet he reaped all the affirmative action benefits, and may profit from “reparations”. If my ancestors were slaves, I would be plenty mad at someone profiting from my “inherited indignities” just because he has my skin color.
Jul 31, 2008 - 3:02 pm KenB:In terms of righting historical wrongs, rather than start with American transgressions, I’ve often suggested starting with the Norman Conquest. Let’s set that right and move on through the historical calendar from there.
Jul 31, 2008 - 3:13 pm Greg Toombs:What about acknowledging current tragedies perpetuated against members of non-Muslim religions throughout the Islamic Middle East? Or Shia v Sunni? Darfur? Against Hindus in India? And so on, and so on.
nb- I’m descended from Scots. The stories I could tell you about the English…
Anyway, what’s the damn point of constantly re-acknowledging these grievances?
And aren’t the Democrats the part of ‘let’s move on’?
Jul 31, 2008 - 3:14 pm Taeyoung:“Tuez-les tous. Dieu reconnaîtra les siens”
Is that correct? I learned the quote as the Latin: “Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet.”
Jul 31, 2008 - 3:15 pm Techie:I presumptively denounce you all as racists. All criticism of our Glorious Leader is now hate speech.
And you thought that dissent was patriotic. In a Obama administration, dissent will be hate-speech.
Jul 31, 2008 - 3:16 pm Mike K:The Democrat Congressman who introduced this “apology” measure is white, running for re-election in a majority black district in Tennessee and has a black primary opponent.
QED, as they say in geometry.
Jul 31, 2008 - 3:20 pm Franko:I have several ancestors that died fighting for the Union in the Civil War… Don’t their descendants deserve some compensation or at least thanks too for the sacrifice they made to bring freedom to the enslaved? It was their famlies that suffered so that others might be made free.
Jul 31, 2008 - 3:20 pm submandave:I fully acknowledge that slavery was an abomination (and still is throughout regions fo Africa and the ME where it is still practiced all too often). But considering that Sen. Obama’s mother is white (not a descendant of US slaves) and his father is Kenyan (not a descendant of US slaves) I fail to understand his frequent use of first person plural in discussing past racial injustices. Hell, his ancestors most likely either sold the slaves to traders in Africa or bought them once they reached this shore.
Jul 31, 2008 - 3:40 pm rrr:Obviously, you all don’t understand. Criticism of Obama is racist because no rational thinking being would see any cogent reason to find fault with the blessedness of his thinking. Therefore, disagreement, by definition, is racist.
Jul 31, 2008 - 3:56 pm Lou Shumaker:If Obama is half-black, does that still count toward having a “black president”?
Jul 31, 2008 - 4:01 pm Fen:“My parents came to the U.S. about ten years ago…so do my tax dollars go towards the “reparations” of a crime I had NOTHING to do with?”
Yup. And America, when you’re done paying of the blacks, all of you please vacate the land your ancestors stole from my people and go back to your home country.
Gee what a fun game. Maybe Obama can run for office in Kenya?
Jul 31, 2008 - 4:44 pm ChknLtL:It’s not about race; it’s about character. Does anyone imagine we’d even be having this conversation if the candidate were Colin Powell rather than Barack Obama?
Jul 31, 2008 - 4:46 pm Bob_R:Roger, I’m surprised. I don’t expect that Obama would have the classical definition of tragedy anywhere in his empty suit, but you shouldn’t be drawn into this. In the classical sense, the US does have an exceptionally tragic history. Tragedy is embodied by the great brought low by a mistake. The US was founded on the greatest principles of the enlightenment and has been brought low by allowing the institution of slavery to exist in contradiction to its principles. The other nations you mention are ethnic enclaves founded on the principle of killing as many of their neighbors as possible and taking their land. Their history may be sad, but I don’t see how it fits the classical definition of tragedy. You have to be an exceptional nation to be exceptionally tragic. We are.
Jul 31, 2008 - 5:18 pm Porkov:If the U.S. Congress apologizes for original sin, will my hangover go away? Should Golden Chocolate Creme Oreos be banned from the grocery shelves? How many knees must a Negro grow? That’s why I’m voting for Pat Paulsen again.
Jul 31, 2008 - 5:19 pm Bob_R:P.S. If Obama want to quote me the next time he gives a speech in Germany, please give him my email address.
Jul 31, 2008 - 5:20 pm Donald Sensing:I explained on my own blog why Obama is post-racial no more.
Jul 31, 2008 - 5:35 pm Greg Toombs:BTW, the next phase of the program to exert leverage and extract rents from “the majority” is known as “white privilege”.
Yes, everyone who is white is guilty of too much privilege in life.
As if.
Jul 31, 2008 - 6:23 pm anon on this:Bob_R
Tragedy as you define it denies the strong strain of irony that raises it above sheer suffering while involving great brought low (both of which brings into question whether we should valorize tragedy above other suffering at all, frankly). The irony in this case, however, is unhelpful: the automatic default to skin color that denies that tragedy could exist under conditions, and ironies, other than “otherness.”
A better measure is justice or its absence. Tragedy is just too gaudy, or romantic, at this point. In reality and the present tense, where we all live, since we’re still, tragically, incapable of altering the past, much as we’d wish to do so.
Jul 31, 2008 - 7:39 pm srlucado:Those who feel that America has a “tragic” past are astoundingly ignorant of world history. We have definite tragic events in our past, but no country in world history has brought peace and prosperity to more people than the U. S. of A., and that can’t be said often enough.
We aren’t perfect, but we’re way ahead of whoever’s in second place. Let’s not ever forget that–and let’s elect a president who knows it.
Scott
Jul 31, 2008 - 7:42 pm Polemicscat:How long will we have to endure hucksters trying to use race as a ticket to personal advancement?
Jul 31, 2008 - 8:19 pm battler:Forty years ago Martin Luther King, Jr., looked forward to the day when people “will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
I can hardly wait.
Franglo, you are obviously an Obamaphile, hence your penchant for Obamisms (i.e. LIES) - Roger did NOT say that “Obama claims the U.S. has the most tragic history in the world”, just that the way he carries on would make one THINK that it did. Even a child could make that distinction, but its obviously beyond your left-wing capabilities which consist entirely of bile-spewing hatred for anyone remotely interested in securing America’s interests rather than some idealistic European or “world” ideology. Ever since independence, America has given her tens of millions of citizens an amazing set of opportunities matched by nowhere else in the world. We don’t need to be browbeaten into submission by some half-witted fool who needs our “sorrow” and “reparations” to validate his narrow, bigoted, megalomaniac worldview. Berlin was just a taste of that. Is that what you mean by your other Obamism (vague meaningless ramble), “to better the wounds of the American past” ??? Means about as much as “change you can believe in” !!
Jul 31, 2008 - 11:30 pm Norm Roth:I think we should force the Italians and the Irish to pay all the reparations, after all the streets were paved with gold when they arrived, and those greedy bastards took up all that gold and replaced them with cobblestones. No, lets just have the Jews pay for reparations; after all we know they have always owned all the banks in America.
Aug 1, 2008 - 12:14 am Porkov:מנא ,מנא, תקל, ופרסין. If we’re going for Tragedy of the type that distinguishes Shakespeare and the Greek playwrights, let’s not give Obama the opportunity the Babylonians gave Belshazzar. However, I am all for putting theater back into the Olympics.
Aug 1, 2008 - 2:13 am william (not a prince):If the South had triumphed, I would give more credence to Obama’s statement. America is a melodrama and occasionally a farce but not yet a tragedy.
Aug 1, 2008 - 2:25 am Bill:One problem with condemning America’s tragic past is that on the flip side of most every tragic event one can find a display of America’s glory and ideals. Slavery begat the Civil War. Shaara said it best in The Killer Angels: “This is a different kind of army. If you look at history you’ll see men fight for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. They fight for land, or because a king makes them, or just because they like killing. But we’re here for something new. This hasn’t happened much in the history of the world. We are an army out to set other men free…” US imperialism in Central America begat the Panama Canal and the expansion of commerce.The pollution and dehumanization wrought by the commericalization of the internal combustion engine and the assembly line begat the middle class. It goes on and on and on. Obama is unfit to be President because he sees America as a glass forever half full. Though he pays lip service to it in his speeches because he knows he must, I do not think Obama truly appreciates the exceptionalism and greatness of America.
Aug 1, 2008 - 3:25 am JP:When will Jesse, Al, et al, demand reparations from the People who Sold their ancestors into slavery?
Aug 1, 2008 - 3:39 am Broadsword:Slave traders bought slaves from Arabs, and victorious Chieftains. The Arabs also bought many slaves from tribes who had captured rivals in battle or ambush. The Dutch and other slavers didn’t go chasing after people in the jungles, as portrayed in Roots. That method was a good way to end up dead.
The demand I apologize for something that happened before most all my ancestors even made it onto the continent, and when none were in the country, is absurd.
I am opposed to the candidacy of His Inflated-ness, for the same reason some 90% of those Americans whose past greats- and great-greats endured slavery are in support. They wish to see a ‘Black’ President and I do not. I pause… allowing the howls to die away. If skin color does not indicate a lack of character, neither can it be a repository of character. To vote for or against based on something so stupid as skin color while ignoring character and judgement, shows neither judgement nor character. Yes, yes, yes, I know. It’s got a nice beat, and you can dance to it.
Aug 1, 2008 - 4:14 am mRed:Ponzi rules:
Whites give land and money to blacks.
Blacks give land and money to Indians.
Indians sell land back to whites for profit.
Indians enlarge reservations.
Blacks scream ‘we were screwed again.’
Start money and land transfer cycle again.
Muslim Africans pissed they missed out on slave profit this time around.
Aug 1, 2008 - 5:38 am FreedomLover:One of these guys will lose. Whose supporters are more likely to accept defeat with equanimity, continue their lives as normal, and be grateful to live in a country with free elections?
Whose supporters are more likely to charge fraud, engage in lawsuites, destroy property, and exhibit hateful behavior and speech for the winner’s entire term?
What do your answers tell you about the two candidates and the messages they are sending their supporters?
Aug 1, 2008 - 5:43 am