But first...
I was wrong. Five months ago, I predicted that Barack Obama "would be toast in three months". Well, I think we can all agree that was not exactly my smartest remark on these pages. As a matter of fact, while I claim to have, over the past five years, provided fairly good political forecasts with regards to "my native Europe", I must admit that all my predictions regarding the US Presidential elections could not have been farther from the truth. I was sure McCain was a spent force - he's the one who months ago already secured the Republican nomination. I was sure Romney would be the Republican frontrunner - despite a promising start, he dropped out early. And I was sure Obama would be a doner by now - but it looks more and more as if he will become the Democratic nominee.
While my predictions regarding the fight leading up to the 2008 elections may have been dead wrong, I still stand by my assessment of the democratic party's black candidate. An assessment I almost instantly formed back in 2004, when I first heard of the man - more precisely, after that "famous" Audacity of Hope speech. And an assessment which has not been altered since, to the contrary. Senator Barack Obama is, in my view, not only an airhead - he's a dangerous airhead. I am by far not the only one who thinks so, but I was surprised to read a piece last week in which the author, black himself, explains his likewise unfavorable view far more clearer than I could ever have done. Regular reader and commenter Mark/TC linked to a great piece by that grand seigneur of the Black Intellectual Right, Dr. Thomas Sowell. Here is a guy who will probably not see an endorsement from the NAACP anytime soon:
Many years ago, a great hitter named Paul Waner was nearing the end of his long career. He entered a ballgame with 2,999 hits — one hit away from the 3,000-hit landmark — which so many hitters want to reach, but which relatively few actually do reach.
Waner hit a ball that the fielder did not handle cleanly but the official scorer called it a hit, making it Waner’s 3,000th. Paul Waner then sent word to the official scorer that he did not want that questionable hit to be the one that put him over the top. The official scorer reversed himself and called it an error. Later Paul Waner got a clean hit for number 3,000.
What reminded me of this is the great fervor that many seem to feel over the prospect of the first black president of the United States.
No doubt it is only a matter of time before there is a black president, just as it was only a matter of time before Paul Waner got his 3,000th hit. The issue is whether we want to reach that landmark so badly that we are willing to overlook how questionably that landmark is reached. Paul Waner had too much pride to accept a scratch hit. Choosing a president of the United States is a lot more momentous than a baseball record. We the voters need to have far more concern about who we put in that office that holds the destiny of a nation and of generations yet unborn.
There is no reason why someone as arrogant, foolishly clever, and ultimately dangerous as Barack Obama should become president — especially not at a time when the threat of international terrorists with nuclear weapons looms over 300 million Americans.
Barack Obama has already indicated that he wants judges who make social policy instead of just applying the law. He has already tried to stop young violent criminals from being tried as adults.
Although Senator Obama has presented himself as the candidate of new things — using the mantra of “change” endlessly — the cold fact is that virtually everything he says about domestic policy is straight out of the 1960s and virtually everything he says about foreign policy is straight out of the 1930s. Protecting criminals, attacking business, increasing government spending, promoting a sense of envy and grievance, raising taxes on people who are productive, and subsidizing those who are not — all this is a re-run of the 1960s. We paid a terrible price for such 1960s notions in the years that followed, in the form of soaring crime rates, double-digit inflation, and double-digit unemployment. During the 1960s, ghettoes across the countries were ravaged by riots from which many have not fully recovered to this day.
The violence and destruction were concentrated not where there was the greatest poverty or injustice but where there were the most liberal politicians, promoting grievances, and hamstringing the police. Internationally, the approach that Senator Obama proposes — including the media magic of meetings between heads of state — was tried during the 1930s. That approach, in the name of peace, is what led to the most catastrophic war in human history. Everything seems new to those too young to remember the old and too ignorant of history to have heard about it...
As I have stated on these pages before, this is not a racist site. We do not oppose a Black becoming President of the United States. But when that day comes, it should be someone of great intellectual and moral stature, someone who is steadfast in his opinions and cautious but decisive in his actions, and someone who is a great manager of people. Plus, it wouldn't hurt if he had a certain gravitas and an aura of statemanship around him. In my opinion, Senator Obama has nothing of this all. And the environment in which he was bred - which produced him, so to say, is the one of the endlessly repeated lies in spite of all the evidence. Back in the sixties or even the seventies, less critical people could still be forgiven for buying the self-flagellating, self-marginalizing rhetoric of the Left. Today, there is no excuse anymore to offer the wrong reasons for the obvious problems of the black community, which deserves far better than the condescending, quintessentially racist-in-itself attitudes of liberals. No more affirmative action, but Self-Empowerment. No more blaming on the others, but introspection. No more lax or autodestructive lifestyles, but sound conservative family values. No more teen pregnancies, but math courses. And no more being content with the crumbles of welfare agencies, but making big money with your own business. THAT is the path the Black Community should follow, and not the dead ender of a spoiled brat groomed to be a poster boy for an ideology which failed decades ago.Dr. Thomas Sowell's landmark will be reached some day. Some day, possibly (probably?) not too far in the future, that hit will be achieved. But only a hit coming from this direction will make it an event worth to be remembered. The National Black Republican Association. In the other case, "a scratch hit" will probably prove to be the nicest of euphemisms.
MFBB.