Sorry, But Obama Scares Me
Jonah Goldberg
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
The prospect of a Barack Obama presidency makes me very nervous.
Obama's entire campaign has been based on the need for radical, transformational change, which implies there is something very wrong with America.
It's hardly surprising, then, that he has painted the bleakest picture of America instead of acknowledging, as a starting point, that we are still the greatest nation in the world.
For the past eight years, Democrats have slandered America as an imperialistic country that always prefers force to diplomacy; that attacks nations without provocation to enrich itself and to project its power; that intentionally targets civilian lives; that encourages sadistic torture of enemy prisoners, as opposed to tough interrogation techniques to extract information to save the lives of its people; that eavesdrops on private conversations among its citizens rather than monitoring terrorist communications into its borders; and that abuses rather than goes out of its way to accommodate the savages in Guantanamo's prison.
None of it is true.
For eight years, Democrats have poor-mouthed the mostly growing economy. They've lied that Bush's tax cuts for all income groups were only for the wealthy and that the cuts reduced revenues. They pretend to be deficit hawks, when Obama's new spending plans alone will make Bush look like Scrooge. They said Bush wanted to destroy Social Security, when he's the only one in the past 20 years who had the courage to try to reform it.
All lies.
They've preached bipartisanship while exhibiting the nastiest partisanship in my lifetime, calling Bush "King George III," "Hitler," a "murderer," a "war criminal," a "reckless cowboy," a "moron" and a "Christian throwback." They've caricatured Bush as an unbending partisan who wouldn't reach across the aisle, in the face of his countless and mostly rebuffed bipartisan overtures and legislation.
More disinformation.
They've deliberately divided this nation on the basis of race, class, gender and religion while telling us, falsely, that conservatives are racists, greedy, sexists, homophobes and religious bigots.
The propaganda triumvirate -- Democrats, the liberal media and leftist bloggers -- have portrayed President Bush, Vice President Cheney and America as dark and evil forces and have whipped the country into a frenzy of desperation, setting the table for a charismatic leader to deliver us from the despair they've manufactured with relentless precision.
Barack Obama, with his mysterious past and messianic aura, then burst upon the scene with the focused purpose of capitalizing on the public's perceived woes by offering dramatic change and unspecified hope. As if the script had been written just for him, he stepped right into his role, expanding on this theme of despair. He stressed how bleak conditions are, how unfair America is to the less fortunate and middle class, how ugly America is in foreign affairs, how the values of average Americans are warped (bitter clingers), how hardworking producers who oppose confiscatory tax rates but who contribute more to charity than Obama and his running mate even contemplate are selfish, and how America is a global environmental menace.
With all respect, almost everything about Obama's campaign is fraudulent. He masquerades as a uniter while dividing, polarizing and alienating us. He denies he's liberal, when objective sources score him as the most liberal senator. He says he barely knows militants and radicals with whom he has spent his lifetime cavorting and whose worldviews -- horrifyingly -- he shares. He brazenly disguises welfare redistributions as tax cuts. He and his surrogates keep changing his tax plan.
With his ideas about spreading the wealth, entrepreneurial selfishness, the ongoing "original sin" in our Constitution, the inherent evil of corporations, nationalized health care, and the civil rights movement not doing enough to bring about "economic justice" -- a euphemism for "Marxism" used by radicals, such as Bill Ayers, who still hate America -- are you not concerned at just how far Obama might go if he's got a nearly veto-proof Democratic majority at his back?
With his known discomfort with American exceptionalism, his naive mindset about good and evil in the world, his reckless underestimation of threats to America, his stated intention to disarm our nuclear weapons unilaterally, his open-borders extremism, his willingness to relax our intelligence monitoring, and his misguided concern for terrorists' rights, how can America be as secure under his watch?
With his sordid background in "community organizing" and his symbiotic relationship with an organization that is engaged in a systematic effort to steal this election, his thug tactics to investigate and silence his critics, and his Democratic colleagues' willingness to use government to shut down conservative talk radio, are you not worried about our liberties under an Obama administration?
Before our very eyes, America stands poised to elect as president the most radical man ever to run for this office credibly.
Don't say we didn't warn you.
This was my horoscope today! I found it beautifully apropos:
ReplyDeleteAs you listen to viewpoints that differ from your own today, you may find yourself feeling accepting and tolerant. Since you understand the value of remaining open-minded and listening to other perspectives, you don’t feel threatened by a different philosophy. Instead, the additional information helps you discover ways to move the dialogue closer to a point of agreement. When we can see the world like a diamond, beautifully reflecting the same light from different facets, we can understand that different philosophies are just another way of understanding a common idea. Without those different facets, the diamond would not sparkle with such brilliance. Our world is better for having such variety in nature, culture, experience, and philosophy among other things. Today your understanding may help others to see the value of acceptance and an open mind, bringing peace to any discussion.
Maybe it would be a good idea to publish political and religious comments from your own personal e-mail address. I agree with Sara. "At the Kitchen Sink" is a beautiful creation where warm family pictures and happenings appear. Ugly, negative, offending political or religious vomit doesn't belong here.
ReplyDeleteLove, Cookie
Hey, isn't this fun. I am surprised the National Review let Jonah Goldberg out of his cage, but anything is possible once Buckley passed on.
ReplyDeleteI just read 80 pages of Franks' "The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Govern" and threw it away because -- well, because it was just the kind of drivel just posted on the sink, only from an equally and opposite view.
I liked all your POLITE responses and was cheered to see how you jumped to the fore. 'Fraid it ain't gonna have any effect, however.
Comment from Cousin Ann:
ReplyDeleteBonnie
In response to Ike's article, which he apparently believes:
Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of National Review Online, I would guess actually believes what he is writing is true. The founder of the National Review, Wm. Buckley, was a highly respected, ntellectual conservative. He helped to fuse
political conservatism with laissez faire economics. The fear mongering that has kept an ineffective economic theory in place, starting with Reagan, brought us to the unfortunate state we now face. The British found out in the 19th century that "laissez faire" economics [trickle down] was faulty as an economic policy. Do we not need to learn from history, or just go on with the same policies expecting a felicitous outcome?
Author Christopher Buckley, son of William, has left the National Review, and is supporting Obama. He said in an interview what most influenced him to depart from support of McCain was his choice of Palin for his VP.
I went to a Fidelity Investments quarterly meeting last Friday, and the representative giving our overview showed a graph of projection of the economy under a Republican presidency with a Demo congress and under a Democratic presidency with a Demo congress. From past history, under the first scenario the economy was far less than the second, which was up in all areas.
Four Nobel Laureate economists, Stiglitz, Phelps, MacFadden and Solow,support Obama. Also Warren Buffett and many respected finance people who are not economists.
Having lived through 8 decades, I have watched what has happened to
a great Republican party. In my opinion, the last truly statesman-president was Dwight Eisenhower, a distinquished General of World War II, and an intelligent man. The Republican party was one of integrity then and would not have been guilty of the kind of chicanery that has happened starting with the Watergate duplicity. He warned all of us of the danger of the military industrial complex and people who would ally themselves with it, for whatever rationalizations.
Just like a teenager who is still caught in egocentricity, our nation needs to mature. The arrogance practiced by some of our political leaders has lost us our fine standing in the world. We do not mature or regain that standing by
clinging to a narcissistic stance, where we cannot face our wrongs and seek to right them. Just with great leaders of the past, our nation and our people need to call ourselves to courage and find our humility. Yes, some of our
political leaders, in our name, have behaved in imperialistic ways and brought shame to our country, the assassination of Allende with which our CIA was involved, the decimation of Iraq. Yes, it is calmer now since the "surge." Paying the Sunni insurgents $3,000/mo. as police makes a difference. In other words, we are paying them out of our tax dollars to stop shooting and bombing our military people. You do not read this in our media. One has to
read books being written by the journalists working in Iraq.
We need intelligent, educated people to pull us out of this hole we are now inhabiting--not two of the same political persuasions who brought us to this crisis. I echo Lindsay's dismay with the ignorance of our media about such matters as socialism. The dogmatism of so many of the vocal people, defining Reality with such certainty, is puzzling to me. Are they simply playing psychological games
and consciously endeavoring to manipulate people, or are they simply unaware of what they are doing?
Love,
Ann
My dear dear family,
ReplyDeleteI repeat myself . . . sorry:
"No difference exists between myself and all others.
No one desires the slightest suffering
And no one is content with the happiness [s]he has.
Please bless me to grow in the happiness of giving joy to others."
much love,
mickey