Well Obama won the election by a landslide. The time has come to begin healing and bringing America together, but I’m not so sure that will be the case in the months and years to come.
First, let me say, I view his election with mixed emotions. I see a great time in our country for electing the first black as President. This is, as Obama himself said, a defining moment.
However, electing the wrong black man could turn back the hands of time. Obama has an enormous task in front of him and I have serious doubts about his ability to accomplish even a small portion of his promises. His failure may be seen by some, as one of race and not the fact that he was just not the right person for the job.
To me, Americans elected Obama because he was “Not McCain” and Not a Republican”. They did not elect him because they thought he was the best person for the job. Yes, I know some said that, but I really think Americans were so disgusted with Bush and the Republicans, that anyone could have won. Obama just happened to be black and a great talker, which made it even more interesting. People came out of the woodwork to vote for the “first black man”, not to vote for the best person to be President of the United States.
Martin Luther King said it best, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” This is exactly the issue I have with Obama. It is clear that he was “judged” or “elected” by the color of his skin and not by the “content of his character”. With so many unresolved issues about judgment, character and associates, how can this man be President?
Now that the American people have spoken, what can they look forward to in the coming months and years? Well I’m not a fortune teller, but I do think it will be interesting to see what happens with the following issues:
1. The full power of the Democratic agenda is about to take America by storm. We now have a Democratic President and Democrats dominate both the House and Senate by an even greater majority. It will be interesting to see how all those folks who voted for Obama will feel about their decision when Illegal Aliens begin receiving Social Security, Driver’s Licenses, increased free health care and our country is overrun with Illegal Aliens.
2. I would like to see how all those gun toting, Pennsylvanian’s and Ohioan’s are going to react when they have had most, if not all their gun rights taken away.
3. I would like to know how all those blue-collar workers are going to make their tax cut or tax credit rebate stretch to pay their bills when they no longer have a job due to Obama’s tax increases and health care mandates.
4. I would like to hear what all those folks who agree with Obama’s timetable for withdrawal from Iraq are going to say when we are back over there trying to finish the job we didn’t finish after a 25% cut in defense spending by Barney Frank and all his nut buddies.
5. I want to know what all the people who voted for “Free Corn” think when they begin to see the very freedoms they screamed about Bush taking away, are slyly pulled out from under their noses by Obama as they greedily eat from the government-subsidized trough.
Now I really hope I am wrong in my predictions, but somehow I can’t help but believing America has made a terrible mistake. In closing, I’ll leave you with a few quotes to consider that seem to fit this election.
"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." Eugene V. Debs
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” Thomas Jefferson
“The government you elect is government you deserve.” Thomas Jefferson
Lenno,
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment.
I cannot find any original source citation for the quote:
"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
Can you provide one, or did you just copy/paste an apocryphal attribution?
Hey knight,
Did you try Google? If you're looking for the actual document, I suggest you try Library of Congress , I did not feel like wasting my time looking for a specific document citation for someone who is too lazy or is just trying to be a smart ass. If this is an apocryphal attribution, than it is one of the biggest.
Showing me where you copy/pasted the falsely attributed quotation from? You have not proffered an original source citation, and you will not be able to provide one. I have searched for one one Google, as well as looked in my own personal Jefferson references.
Jefferson Never said this. See: Monticello dot org.
knight,
Ok, I stand corrected. I have removed the quote from my post. I just find it amazing there are so many references to this being a quote by Thomas Jefferson, but only one says it was not him.
I apologize for the rude comment and thank you for bringing this to my attention.
I would have given you the Monticello dot org link in my first post, but did not find it until the next day. At least you have the intelligence and integrity to understand that it is not a proper quote, and correct the error when presented with the evidence. I have read quite a bit of Jefferson, and when first encountering this quote about a week ago, was struck with how un-Jeffersonian it sounded. Many years ago, I OCR scanned a personal collection of the full 20 volume set of "The Writings of Thomas Jefferson" Memorial Edition, into text files, and multiple searches did not return any matches (the OCR is not 100% accurate-in fact, even with corrections over the years is more like about 95%). I also searched through the online Google Books of any Jefferson collections I am aware of, and that returned nothing. A first run regular Google search did not return any source attribution for the quote. That is when I started commenting on recent blog posts. I found the Monticello dot or page on a 2nd search.
A bit of digging using Google Books turned up the exact quote in just a few books, the oldest having been published in 1986. How is your Ayn Rand knowledge? The "author" of the book is John Galt.
This quote resonates with many Americans, and many want to believe that Jefferson said it, because it adds an authoritative aura to it. It gets propagated, because most quotation sites do not care if their published work is authentic. I messaged thinkexist.com three days ago with the Monticello dot org link, and have not had a reply, nor has the quote been removed from their database. I do not know whether they are motivated by ideology, sloth or profits. This is a way misquotes are propagated. This is the first Con.Founder misquote, not related to religion, that I've ever encountered on the web, BTW. I've found many of those, quite a few started by one David Barton. My best advice is to not trust any Con.Founder quote that does not also come with a recognizable attribution to a respected reference work, and even with that, always double check it. Google Books probably has it in their database, if it is accurate.
The University of Virginia hosts an extensive collection of Jefferson quotes, most fully referenced to original sources. If you dig around in it, you'll probably be able to come up with a replacement for this errant quotation, which suits your purposes. Might want to start in the Property Rights section. Jefferson was an odd sort about redistribution of wealth. He was certainly opposed to tyrannical taxation, and an overreaching Federal Power, yet at the same time supported a progressive porperty tax to pay for a public school system, which included Universities in the liberal arts as well as sciences. He believed that education should be free to all capable individuals, regardless of their personal wealth. This ins't far from what Thomas Paine and Adam Smith believed either. Both felt that poverty was resultant from the powerful preying upon the workers. This should not be mistaken for Marxism/Socialism, and instead flowed from Natural Rights property theory.
In case you cannot tell; I refuse to engage in dialectic political positioning. The Left/Right, Conservative/Liberal, Whig/Tory linear dichotomies need to be transcended. It only serves the status quo, and who amongst us are satisfied with that? Long enough of a musing for now. The given email is a real pop3 that I check every day if you care to continue the discussion. Just don't title it anything silly. it is a heavily spammed account, and the filters would probably toss it without my seeing it. cheers.
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Unfortunately I agree with your predictions. The choice of Americans itself shows that much will change and I'm not sure if it will be for the better.