I came across this:
Republicans will not like it and Democrats fear it.
Quote:
| Originally Posted by Psalm 115 Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is now their God? ... Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not: They have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not: |
Quote:
| Originally Posted by John McCain I loved it (my country) because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's. |
We read how he had a low tolerance of the "Christian" right and their politics of superstition and hatred. Sure Obama was a polished liberal, but McCain would be a definite step up from Bush...and we heard how he was a change candidate...and we, in a world much influenced by a US election (though we only pay taxes when we visit and never get to vote) were relaxed about this "maverick" republican. After all he would face down the stupid, ugly, philistine part of their nation that had been given free rein in recent times to stomp the battlefields of the World. This was a "walk quietly and carry a big stick American". So we thought.
But McCain's cowardly and opportunistic surrender to the extreme right wing of the republican party shows us the lie. The "idea" of the United States is truly monumental. The concepts of individual freedom,the subservience of the State to the people, freedom of conscience and the separation of Church and State, the embrace of science and the rationalism of the Enlightenment, these ideas did develop into a nation which then guaranteed these values round the world and protected us in Europe from tyranny. This was indeed the mightiest cause that humans created in the second millenium after Christ.
We saw Huckabee sneer at Obama over his European trip. How he has forgotten: "European values", we might recall, built America. Enlightenment values and ideas firmly based on freethinking and free spirited minds from France and Scotland and England. And the USA is seen as the leader of the "free world" and the champion of those great ideas today. But now we wonder, not just about America but about the whole democratic ideal itself. That a country like the USA with the finest minds in the world, can like pigs around a trough slurp up the sensationalist superficiality of Palin and what she represents is truly shocking to those of us who look towards American hegemony and leadership. That politics can be taken so lightly that people value the gloss over the substance: a liar over the pork barrell bridge, a liar over nepotism in government, a bully to public servants, a rejector of science, a spender who left her little town in debt. In what some misleadingly call the world's oldest democracy, is this what democracy is all about?
McCain talks about the Democrats as "Me First" and himself as "Country First". We do wonder. Someone who wants to give tax cuts to millionnaires like himself - not me first? Someone who wants to impose his morality and his religion on the rest of the country, indeed the world (that's Palin) not me first? Someone who still stands for the interests of the Oil Establishment in the Republican Party by supporting endless drilling over sensible (European) policies of energy conservation, not me first?
This is a cabal of liars - even more than the Grand Old Liar Mr Bill Clinton. Liars that they have anything to do with God with their thirst for guns and their homophobic hatred. Liars that they have anything to do with patriotism with their policies consistently weighted towards the rich elite that they and their friends represent. And above all liars they they stand in any way shape or form for the ideals of the American revolution which stood against the corruption, nepotism, imperialism and superstitious values that the new republicans and apparently the American people love so much.
We foreign democrats have to ask ourselves the question: with the USA so blind to its own faults that it will choose folksiness over leadership AGAIN, is democracy an idea that is dying? With an electorate that sees serious political consideration as snobbish, elitist and and un-American, has the great democratic nation now fallen to a vulgar mob? With China hovering between democratic and authoritarian political paths, Russia descending into an ugly nationalistic autocracy, Europe corrupted by an isolationist instinct and the rest of the world threatened by a fascistic islamic fundamentalism, is America going to fail the critical test of Leadership AGAIN?
President McCain will kill the idea of America. The USA that fights foreign wars with Chinese money will continue to decline. Unencumbered by a strong internationalist America, in hock to the small town bigots, autocrats everywhere will thrive, as democracy is seen more and more as "Christian fundamentalism and hypocrisy" rather than the liberating force it was.
Where to then for us democrats? It will be a step into the dark for us then. Precisely what the anti-Christs in the doomsday seeking fundamentalist camps want. The American people, with idols of silver and gold, with eyes that cannot see, leading us ....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...08.barackobama
