If you vote for Obama because he’s black, you’re a racist or stupid or both.
If you vote for Obama because doing so will make you “feel good about yourself”, you shouldn’t be allowed to vote, period. You’re supposed to vote for the candidate who will best lead your nation, not because you want to be “part of” some vague “something”. Your country’s future is more important than your feelings. Unfortunately, this view makes me a minority…
Christopher Hitchens on Obama:
“All this easy talk about being a ‘uniter’ and not a ‘divider’ is piffle if people are talking out of both sides of their mouths. (…)
“The unspoken agreement to concede the black community to the sway of the pulpit is itself a form of racist condescension. The sickly canonization of Martin Luther King Jr. has led to a crude rewriting of history that obliterates the great black and white secularists — Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, Walter Reuther — who actually organized the March on Washington. It has also allowed a free pass to any demagogue who can manage to get the word reverend in front of his name. The white voters who subconsciously make the allowance that black folks sure love to hear their preachers are not only patronizing their black brothers and sisters but also helping to empower white ministers or deacons who make the same pitch, from Jimmy Carter to Mike Huckabee. The Iowa caucuses of 2008 were not the end of our long national nightmare about race, but another stage in our protracted national nightmare of piety, ‘uplift,’ and deceptive optimistic windbaggery.”
“I do not doubt Mr. Obama’s sincerity. The wish that all people be united is an elemental human desire. But there are two major problems with it. First, it is not truly honest. Second, it is childish.
“Take any important issue that divides Americans and explain exactly how unity can be achieved without one of the two sides giving up its values and embracing the other side’s values.
(…)
“It is fascinating how little introspection Sen. Obama’s ‘unity’ supporters engage in — they are usually the very people who most forcefully advocate multiculturalism, who scoff at the idea of an American melting pot and who oppose something as basic to American unity as declaring English the country’s national language.
(…)
“Their advocacy of multiculturalism and opposition to declaring English the national language are proof that the calls of the left-wing supporters of Barack Obama for American unity are one or more of three things: 1. A call for all Americans to agree with them and become fellow leftists. 2. A nice-sounding cover for their left-wing policies. 3. A way to further their demonizing of the Bush administration as ‘divisive.’
(…)
“Second, the craving for unity is frequently childish. As we mature we understand that decent people will differ politically and theologically. The mature yearn for unity only on a handful of fundamental values, such as: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’ Beyond such basics, we yearn for civil discourse and tolerance, not unity.”
