This morning we awaken to an election day all but certain to end in victory for Barack Obama. Two years ago, the certainty for today was that Hillary Clinton would be receiving the congratulatory call at the end of the evening from the vanquished Republican. Sen. Obama had entered the race most likely to build upon the name recognition that he had achieved from his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, with his eye set upon a future campaign and a future victory. A combination of factors, including a superior campaign organization, a well timed but vacuous promise of Hope and Change, a national press so eager to defeat a Republican that they would utterly fail to discharge their duty to fairly and evenly find and report the news, a Republican candidate who refused to point the finger of blame for the economic disaster we are enduring at the Democrats responsible and who further refused to discuss the effect of sitting for 20 years under the hate-America-first preaching of the Black Liberation Theologist Rev. Wright and who refused to discuss Sen. Obama’s antipathy for Second Amendment rights have, among other things, brought us to this point.
Somehow, the United States of America, the nation which became the greatest on earth based on principles of personal, economic and political freedoms is turning to a man who believes that all of those should be curtailed and limited because freedom produces inequality. He ignores the benefits of inequality – the incentive to self-improve and the trickle down of economic improvement. Freedom and prosperity are partners. One cannot advance too far beyond the other.
But, we cannot change the inevitable. Today, I will be at my local polling place at 8:00 a.m. to cast my vote. I hope that it and all legally cast votes are counted fairly. They won’t be. Voter fraud and election machine errors will mar this election, creating a clinghold for those who will spend years shouting that their candidate was unfairly deprived of the office he deserved. Unfortunately, some of those wll be right. Having a black man, or more accurately a half black man, in the White House will fire up the hate groups. As much as i oppose his policies and decry his vision of America, I fervently hope he remains safe and healthy throughout his tenure. America does not need tragedy and the race war that his assassination would bring. And while I would wish my political opponents from the stage, I do not wish them dead.
The economy will improve, but it will take a year or two. The military will be weakened. Our ability and desire to bring freedom to millions around the world will wane. Government will expand. Health care will become more and more a government function leading to a decrease in quality and to unnecessary rationing. Taxes and regulation will strangle businesses and stymy economic progress in ways reminiscent of overburdened European economies, economies now trying to throw off those limitations and grow free again. The nation will not get the needed energy plan that exploits currently available resources while pursuing new forms and sources of energy. Instead, we will leave oil in the ground and refuse to build new nuclear energy plants in hopes that some as yet unknown fuel will power our future.
Gay rights will continue their halting steps forward, not because of support from the administration but because attitudes change. As gay people become more visible in daily life, we become less of a threat and more accepted. Straights will reaize that we are more like them than they previously thought and we will change from an oddity to neighbors and co-workers and friends.
I wish I could be more optimistic. I wish I could believe that freedom and prosperity will flourish and democracy and capitalism will spread. Even more so, I wish that Barack Obama wanted those things. He doesn’t.
