The Conservative Soldier

The current political season has intensified my love for a country that is revered by some and reviled by others. I can not be convinced, even amid the drumbeat of “change”, that America no longer is a shining city on a hill.

Our nation certainly is not invulnerable to internal conflict, as we learned so painfully in the mid-19th century. It is not immune to catastrophic economic downturns (1930s), or to severe economic bubbles (1907, 2008). It is not always on guard when enemies visit (1941, 2001).

The strength of this union will be tested again on Tuesday on an election day that is historic by any measure.

Sen. Barack Obama’s candidacy for President represents a serious crossroads for the United States. If he is elected, the power Obama will inherit and how he wields it poses a serious, long term threat to the economic and physical security of our nation.

Opposition to Obama has drawn sharp criticism, evidenced by the vitriolic posts to this site. Predictably, many left wings citizens, and neighbors, assume that concern voiced openly about Obama’s candidacy equates to racism. This illogical leap was, sadly, inevitable.

I am not, to quote comedian Dennis Miller, worried about the color of Obama’s skin. I am worried about the thinness of it. I am not concerned by his blood lines. But I am gravely concerned about Obama’s blood oaths (Ayers, Khalidi, Rezko, Wright, et al).

Some say Obama has turned the race for the White House into American Idol. I fear more his idle, empty social welfare rhetoric, and ideologically cluttered foreign policy vision.

Sen. John McCain prepared to become President of the United States by living, serving and persevering. Sen. Obama prepared by endearing himself to powerful and wealthy mentors, memorizing every page of the Democrat playbook and reciting it to the adoring masses with undeniable eloquence.

Before you vote on Tuesday, and if you are at all undecided, consider the eloquence of commentator Charles Krauthammer, who offers the most concise description of the Obama phenomenon I have read (below). Most of all remember that, while we are strong and resilient as a nation, we are not invulnerable, even to trifling, ambitious, unqualified political candidates.

Krauthammer, August 2008:
“Barack Obama is an immensely talented man whose talents have been largely devoted to crafting, and chronicling, his own life. Not things. Not ideas. Not institutions. But himself.

“Nothing wrong or even terribly odd about that, except that he is laying claim to the job of crafting the coming history of the United States. A leap of such audacity is odd. The air of unease at the Democratic convention … was not just a result of the Clinton psychodrama. The deeper anxiety was that the party was nominating a man of many gifts but precious few accomplishments – bearing even fewer witnesses.”

What are we going to do if Obama wins?

Now there’s an excellent question, direct from the uncluttered mind of my 11-year-old.

She has processed all of the clear arguments against presumptions that the unqualified, inexperienced junior Senator from Illinois, Barack H. Obama, could or would be President of the United States.

I have reiterated these points during chats in the car, banter at the dinner table, and during conversations about social studies homework.

What are we going to do:

If the next U.S. President has no moral compass guiding his response to a threat against our national security?

If the leader of the free world welcomes conversations with brutal dictators who want only to destroy us and our way of life?

If an unproven former Senator, working with a fully compliant Congress, redistributes the wealth by raising taxes on people and businesses that drive America’s economic engine, while sending tax rebates to others who currently pay ZERO income taxes?

If Obama is afforded unfettered opportunities to bankrupt the Government through nationalized healthcare programs and other entitlements that will be almost impossible to undo, even if proven misguided and ineffective?

If this “Socialist Messiah” seats radical left wing judges on the Supreme Court, one by one, until the deck is stacked against the majority of Americans for generations?

The thought of Barack Obama standing with his hand on a Bible, swearing before God and everybody that he will protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, is unsettling at best. How do you protect or defend something you seek to weaken and marginalize?

What are we going to do if that January day comes?

I’d like to re-locate to Australia for a few months, lie on a beach, and see if the knots in my stomach and the throbbing in my head go away.

But that’s not a strategy.

So, here is what we will do. Those who choose to participate in democracy, rather than exploit it, will do what we always do in this country. We’ll remind ourselves that politics is local. Slowly but surely, district by district, region by region, state by state, we will “throw the bums out”, replacing the Chris Dodds, Barney Franks, Nancy Pelosis, Harry Reids and Chuck Schumers with effective Senators and Representatives. Shouldn’t we demand legislators who can sustain reasonable approval ratings, rather than sustain 74% DISAPPROVAL ratings?

We will engage time-tested American democracy, and we’ll start in the voting booths. It might not happen in 2008, but it will happen.

We will unseat members of Congress who cheered Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as these organizations diluted lending standards, deliberately creating legions of unqualified homeowners and fueling the era of subprime mortgages. As these “leaders” sat awash in campaign contributions from Freddie and Fannie, ignoring red flags unfurled by opposing Senators including John McCain, they placed our financial systems on the brink of collapse.

We are living on the crumbling edge of that brink today. And who is most threatened by this? The very Middle Class that Obama and his fellow liberals claim to be fighting for. Despite oft-repeated Obamaspeak during the current campaign, the prosperity of the American middle class is threatened not by the affluent, which pay most of the country’s taxes, but by the low (or no) income homeowner who can’t cover his mortgage payment, or related home equity loan payments, and now faces foreclosure and bankruptcy.

Obama likes to pound away about the past eight years under President Bush (during which there have been no terror attacks since Sept. 11, 2001), but the economic cancer seeded by misguided, radical left wing elected officials has been spreading more than 15 years, unabated.

In the end, a President traditionally promises to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States on Inauguration Day, but it is up to individual citizens to strap on our boots, hit the ground and wage the battles.

And that’s what we’re going to do.

I am not comfortable with feeble human attempts at scriptural interpretation. There is, for example, a Biblical passage that directs mankind to “be anxious for nothing.” Interpretation: It’s never as bad as you think.

With all due respect to the letter writers whose work became the all-time bestseller, these guys could not have imagined anxiety as we know it in 2008 A.D. With the world economy teetering just in time to elevate the fortunes of the most inexperienced, unqualified Presidential candidate in American history, I’d say we should be anxious for nearly everything.

Let me offer anecdotal evidence. There was a time when a guy would have been feeling pretty good about himself if, on the same afternoon, he was upgraded to First Class and seated next to a Baptist minister. That’s like one degree of separation from sharing warm mixed nuts with the Almighty himself.

This actually happened to me last Sunday. But if the angels were singing, I couldn’t hear them. In fact, I nearly had a stroke. I was anxious, very anxious. It was, after all, a United Airlines First cabin, thus only slightly less claustrophobia inducing than Economy. And the minister was a man slight of build, large of ego and top heavy with hair gel named Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. (A friend partially captured the moment at left).

“Oh my God!” I thought, not as a prayer. “I am sitting next to Al Fricking Sharpton.”

The so-called Reverend, a preacher of white hatred and stoker of the simmering embers of racial rage across America, presented quite a dilemma. He would not look at, or acknowledge, me, of course. So what to do? Do I engage him in conversation? Do I say, “I’m a white knuckle flier, you?”

Do I ask him to explain his public comments during the racially charged verbal flogging of the wrongly accused (of rape) members of the Duke University men’s lacrosse team? (The context was there, as we were flying out of Raleigh-Durham International airport, only miles from the Duke campus). Should I remind him what he said in 2006, on live television? That “when the prosecutors went forward (to seat a grand jury), they clearly have said this girl is the victim.” (Turns out she was a victim of her own stupidity).

Do I mention recent reports that Sharpton and organizations with whom he is identified owe city, state and federal governments more than $1.5 million in unpaid taxes and penalty fees? Strikes me as a lot of wealth the Rev. has tied up that should be designated instead to Presidential candidate Barack H. Obama’s wealth redistribution plan. What kind of civil rights activist denies that kind of money to needy, ordinary folk?

If I rile him, and he tells me I am a race carding white elitist, do I remind Sharpie about the size of the race card (more like a billboard) he whipped out against former Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a white Mormon? (”As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways, so … that’s a temporary situation,” he said in 2007).

Dare I remind Rev. Al that, when a self-declared Presidential candidate in 2003, he gladly appeared behind the pulpit as a guest in the Chicago Roman Catholic church of radical priest Michael Pfleger (a.k.a., a longtime Obama spiritual adviser)? Did this amount to an endorsement of Pfleger’s race baiting sermons and unbridled bigotry?

Instead, the Rev. and I sat in silence. I was listening to audio entertainment, while reading a magazine and a Republican National Committee newsletter called Rising Tide. He was reading a paperback entitled, “The Shack”. It is a runaway bestseller about a grief stricken father who eventually encounters God in the flesh of a chatty black woman during an encounter inside a rural shack.

Which reminds me, it could have been worse on Sunday. I could have been seated next to Michelle Obama.

Be anxious. Be very, very anxious.