Sunday, February 10, 2008

More on Obama

Barack Obama wins in Maine, and is closing in on Hillary very quickly in the delegate counts. I’m not particularly surprised. Hillary has always struck me as too fake and too, shall we say, tense a person to convince enough of America that she’s worthy of the office of president.

One thing that concerns me about the number of people voting for Obama, however, is the reasons that I often hear (both in one on one conversations and from individuals speaking on tv) people giving when asked why they think he’s a good candidate. The most common reason I hear is that they think he is a good speaker. They find him to be convincing and encouraging. Adolf Hitler was convincing and encouraging too, lest we forget. A person’s ability in oratory means nothing other than that he’s a convincing speaker. It says nothing about the value of the ideas he’s trying to convince you of. The saddest thing in my saying this, however, is that most people who would read this would think I was comparing Adolf Hitler and Barack Obama in a one to one correspondence, therefore implying that Obama is somehow a racist. It seems to me very obvious that he is not, and unless I were to say it that clearly, the aforementioned person who thought I was calling him a racist would miss it completely. So let me make it even clearer: Obama isn’t a racist. How’s that for clarity?

There is one other area in which Obama is very close to Hitler, however, and that is that they are/were both Socialists. But you can also list other Socialists with them, such as Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, George Bush Sr., George Bush Jr., John McCain, and Mike Huckabee. So the title of “Socialist” is actually of little distinction.

The other reason I hear people give for voting for Obama is that he’s black. That America has finally come to a place beyond its racially segregated days that a black man can run for president and have a very good chance of winning is a good thing. But to think that a person qualifies for president just because of their race shows the lack of wisdom that pervades our nation. It seems to me that it was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself who said he longed for the day when a man would be judged for his character and not for the color of his skin. It doesn’t matter if you’re judging a person to be evil simply because of the color of their skin, or if you’re judging them to be good because of the color of their skin. The color of one’s skin still has nothing to do with whether or not they’ll be a good president. Therefore, those who vote for Obama because he is black are not only betraying the legacy of Dr. King and dishonoring him, they are in effect seeking to lead America back to the racist era that Dr. King fought so hard to bring America out of.

The wisest thing for one to do then is to find out what the candidates believe, to the best of your ability, and vote for the one you think will best follow the requirements of the office of the president. Inasmuch as that means upholding the Constitution, there is only one candidate qualified for the job, and that is Ron Paul.

But if that isn’t good for you, check out this page that features the positions of the five major remaining candidates side by side. Take note especially of the bracket labeled “Proposed Government Spending Changes”. While Paul wants to cut spending by $150 billion, Obama wants to raise spending by $287 billion. And that isn’t money that the government has stored somewhere in Washington. That means Obama intends to raise taxes. Here is the page the information was derived from. You will find the various spending analyses of each candidate broken down in detail on that website.

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