The Real Issue of Universal Health Care

The real issue in Universal Health Care is moral.

When I say MORAL, what do I mean? I mean the actions you take to live your life the best you can live it which in turns gives you more desire for life. These are moral actions and they do not come from just anywhere and they are not arbitrarily socially constructed. They come from the fact that you are a living being who must act to maintain your life.

My concern is not what Universal Health Care will do to your pocketbook. Of course it will be expensive - far more than Medicare. And that in itself can undermine a person. My concern here is what it will do to your motor, the engine of your energy that generates everything you do. What will it do to that?

It kills it. Drip, drip, drip. And it kills it at every level and in every person who is involved in government controlled health care. Even those who want it.

Why?

Because it places an arbitrary, irrational factor between you and your actions to achieve the health care you want to live and not physically/mentally suffer. That arbitrary factor is the government.

Why is it arbitrary?

Because its interests are not aligned with your interest in pursuing health care. To be alive, you must value. You must take actions that keep your life in existence. These are YOUR values.

Today you go to a doctor and he diagnoses your condition and prescribes one or more alternatives to help you. His interests are your interests.

But this isn't true with the government. It has a plan and a gun, force, to cause the result it wants. You will get whatever it decides you should get and it won't necessarily be what you want or what works. When the government controls anything, it is the law and politics which control how that will go.

The government drives you out of integrity with yourself. This will be Obama's scar on every soul in the country.

Speaking of politics, if you want corruption, universal health care will bring it in spades. Cronyism and bribes of all kinds and at every level of society will suddenly be abundant. What wouldn't you pay under the table for something that would save your life or relieve your suffering? And if you don't understand that there will be a kind of black market of those who will take bribes, I know you are crazy.

This gets no more clear than what the government plans to do with the elderly. (Section 1233 of H.R. 3200) When you get to a certain age, you will have to set up all the paperwork for your final days. And the government will determine what it will give you in the way of care when the time comes. This does not have to match what you want, what a real medical doctor would recommend or you are willing to work for. It is completely arbitrary. For anyone who wants the best for their parents, their grandparents, their children and above all, themselves, this is bone-chilling in its lack of concern. (Some people are discussing this here.)

The day will come that you will not trust anyone in the government health care system. Once it is cut off from your interests, it will become a threat to your life. You will go to a quack in a back alley who you think is aligned with your interests before you subject yourself to someone you know is not aligned with your interests.

In this video which I have featured a number of times, the resignation of the people under the Canadian system is present for you to see. They accept it. Some make excuses for it. All they can do is whine. They don't demand better because it is useless to make such demands. Their moral fire is gone.

And this is what is going to happen to America if universal health care is passed. It will be the end of America as the home of the independent spirit.

What will be left? A moral grayness that is inconceivable to most Americans. It is the end of what you so take for granted being American. The bureaucracy will be so big and so all-powerful that most people will never be able to fight it. They will just give up. That's what I see in the Canadian video.

This will happen to every strata of society as well as the health care industry, except those who can escape it. The politicians have themselves insulated from this, of course.

It will happen to your doctor. Many will leave the profession. The Hippocratic Oath will no longer be operative as his ideal. It will happen to nurses too as they watch people waste and suffer pain before them because they cannot be treated as they would otherwise have been. It will happen to hospitals, ambulance drivers and secretaries as the evidence will accumulate that strips away the pretense of the universal health care plan.

Pretense?

Oh yes, pretense will become more important. Health care workers will be coached on how to "serve" and present themselves in a way that you can tolerate. This will become the new industry. All to maintain and grow the pretense.

Is it really a pretense? Yes. It was never intended to provide better health care. It can't. It was only intended to concentrate power in the hands of the government and to ride the wave of an immoral moral which says that it is your duty to take care of your neighbors. There is nothing that distinguishes this from that hideous institution of slavery that it took centuries for America to get clear of. There were plenty of reasons for it too, but it is no advance to make everyone slaves.

Has Obama become America's Jim Jones luring us to our death? It's the same immoral moral that he used. Hmmm.

Wake up!

The Palin Episode

The news this past weekend featured Sarah Palin quitting her job as Governor of Alaska. What do you make of this?

She said that her being Governor has become a burden on the state. She, having run for national office, has incurred numerous lawsuits for which she has had to mount a defense. Apparently they all were ethics charges and I understand that all of them have been proven baseless. Nevertheless, this has cost Alaska millions of $s and her personally somewhere around a half million dollars.

I think she takes her oath of office seriously and I think she saw that it cost her and the state a lot for her to run for Vice President. With that past and this still mounting up, it makes sense that she would question whether she is fulfilling the purpose for which she took her oath of office.

At this point, I am taking her at her word.

All the facts behind her words could be checked out by any responsible news organization. I have not heard that they have been. All I hear are opinions and speculations as to her motives, her future, her character - whatever. None of it makes a damn bit of difference in my book.

If she lied about the facts, Sarah Palin is done.

If she told the truth about the facts, she struck a blow for honor.

Honor. Now there's something woefully lacking in our public life. I mean, where do you find anyone these days that honors the oath they took or the word they give?

In politics it's deuces wild. Reverend Wright encouraged us to buy into the cynicism that surrounds politicians. "Weeell, Barack is a politician. What do you expect?" The lowlife know that if you are cynical, they thrive.

I'm sure Palin has a purpose. Exactly what it is, I don't know.

I do know she electrified the Republicans and conservatives big time last year. That hasn't really gone away which is why I think the Left is still working overtime to destroy her any despicable way they can. Whether she can capitalize on the excitement she created, time will tell.

In the meantime I'm saying that Palin has some honor to her and I hope she can use that to bring honor to our political and cultural conversation.

I wish her the best.

(I'd like to give her a little coaching on her gravitas, but that's another story.)

Here We Go Again

[This written in 1943.]

“It is generally recognized that mankind has achieved, since its rise from savagery, a miraculous progress in the realm of its material culture – and none whatever in the realm of its ethics. Our homes are superior to the cave of the Neanderthal man, but our morals are no better than his – worse, if anything, for we do not have his excuse for ignorance. There is no act of inhumanity which he perpetrated and which we do not perpetrate, except that he did not possess our exquisite means of perpetrating it and he could never equal our present scale. In a recently published book (The Spirit of Enterprise by Edgard M. Queeny), the author – intent upon a hymn to human progress – spends five pages describing man’s material triumphs. Then he adds: “Our morals have come a long way too. The mere thought of a feast on a loose piece of human flesh, which to the Bushmen brings mouth-watering longing, is to us horrid and nauseating.” This is all he can offers, without equivocation, for ten thousand years of man’s spiritual growth. And even this claim is open to question, because cannibalism occurred in Soviet Russia in the famines of 1921 and 1933, and God only knows or can bear the sight of what is occurring in Europe now.

“Why has man displayed such magnificent capacity for progress in the material realm and yet remained stagnant on the level of savagery in his spiritual stature? This discrepancy has been recognized, decried, deplored denounced by everyone. It has never been explained. Countless explanations of evil and remedies for it have been offered through the centuries. None of them worked. None of them cured or explained anything.

“Yet that which mankind holds as its moral ideal has been known and accepted for centuries. The basic principle of men’s morality has not changed since the beginning of recorded history. Under their superficial differences of symbolism, ritual and metaphysical justification, all great ethical systems from the Orient up, all religions, all human schools of thought have held a single moral axiom; the idea of selflessness. That which proceeds from love of self is evil; that which proceeds from love of others is good. Self-sacrifice, self-denial and self-renunciation have ever been considered the essence of virtue. In no other matter has mankind held to such total unity, so completely and for so long. Altruism is the doctrine which holds that man must live for others and place others above self. Humanity has proclaimed its moral ideal unanimously. It has never been questioned. It has always been the ideal of altruism. [Later in this chapter, AR notes that the cultures of ancient Greece and capitalist America were at least partial exceptions to this rule. ed.]

“This ideal has never been reached. In spite of its statement and restatement, in every land, in every age, in every language, in spite of its professed acceptance by all, mankind’s history has not been a growing record of benevolence, justice and brother-love, but an accelerating progression of horror, cruelty, and shame. Baffled, men have accepted the explanation that man is essentially evil; man is weak and imperfect; he doesn’t want to do good. The noble ideal of altruism is never quite to be achieved, only approximated; man is immoral by nature.

“But look back at mankind’s record. Every major horror of history was perpetrated – not by reason of and in the name of that which men held as evil, that is , selfishness – but through, by, for and in the name of an altruistic purpose. The Inquisition. Religious wars. Civil wars. The French Revolution. The German Revolution. The Russian Revolution. No act of selfishness has ever equaled the carnages perpetrated by disciples of altruism. Nor has any egoist ever roused masses of fanatical followers by enjoining them to go out to fight for his personal gain. Every leader gathered men through the slogans of a selfless purpose, through the plea for this self-sacrifice to a high altruistic goal: the salvation of others’ souls, the spread of enlightenment, the common good of their state.

“It is said that self-seeking hypocrites used these virtuous sentiments to delude their followers and achieve personal ends. Doubtless, there have been such and a great many of them. But they never caused the bloody terrors caused by the purest 'idealists.' The worst butchers were the most sincere. Robespierre asked and wished nothing for himself. Lenin asked and wished nothing for himself. But the record of Attila is that of an amateur compared to theirs. At the apex of every great tragedy of mankind there stands the figure of an incorruptible altruist. Yet, after every disaster men have said: 'The ideal was right, but Robespierre was the wrong man to put it into practice,' (of Torquemada, or Cromwell, or Lenin, or Hitler, or Stalin) and have gone on to try it again. [Watch The Triumph of the Will and notice how sincere Hitler is when he expresses his ideal for all the German people. SCB]

“But what is one to think of creatures who are willing, century after century, to bear every form of agony, every kind of martyrdom, for the sake of that which they consider their moral ideal? Are they creatures devoid of moral instinct? Is not the determination to act according to one’s conception of right, no matter what the price, precisely the attribute of a high moral sense? Men have been robbed, enslaved, tortured, slaughtered in the name of altruism. They have accepted, forgiven, and borne it, because their ideal demanded it of them. The price they have paid in unspeakable suffering should have granted them, at least, a badge of virtue.

“But the nature of their ideal has robbed them even of this earned honor.

“A true premise, once accepted, leads to a greater truth and a clearer knowledge with each subsequent step deduced from it. A false premise leads to a greater falsehood and a blacker evil, until, followed to its ultimate conclusion, it brings total destruction, as it must. The spiritual tragedy of mankind has now reached this last step. The spectacle of horror which the world presents at this moment has never been equaled and cannot be surpassed. This is the end of the blind alley of men’s thinking. And there is no way out – save all the way back, to the beginning, to the first principle which permitted men to be led into this.

“The ideal of altruism has now taken its ultimate toll. We are the witnesses of its climax. We see mankind destroying itself before our eyes. We see the price it is paying. We glance back at its history and we see the prince it has paid. But we look on and say: 'This noble ideal is beyond human nature, because men are imperfect and evil.'

“Isn’t it time to stop and to question that noble ideal instead?”

[This was written by Ayn Rand, September 4, 1943, in the middle of WWII. The source for this excerpt is Journals of Ayn Rand. This writing was never published in this form during her lifetime. It became the basis of Atlas Shrugged and the final form of her philosophy. After the publishing of Atlas Shrugged, she worked to present her philosophy in non-fiction form and published many books and articles to that effect. Fifty two years after Atlas Shrugged published in 1957, people are looking for a new philosophical basis for human action and the organization of society. Many can see that the United States is now poised to be the last great country to topple into this same abyss.

Ayn Rand's ideas are no less true today. We are in the grip of a major call to this same destructive ideal carried out by his dictatorship in the form of Barack Obama. Socialism and dictatorship fail wherever tried. But it is not socialism per se that has his words live for people. It is this horrible, stinking moral ideal which has been spread through every institution and church. The attempt to achieve it will not achieve it.

But I don't think that Obama cares to achieve it. His actions belie his rhetoric. He does care to use what you erroneously consider the best within you to mold you to his power. This is how he keeps his motives invisible to the unquestioning masses.

It is the moral ideal that is false as an ideal. People are not inherently evil. They possess free will and choose whether to be right or wrong, good or evil.

A person who is called to make a difference for other people as his primary motivation for living in the world is called by this error. It is not the proper call to goodness. No.

You do that which you want your life to be comprised of, present the results of your work, and when someone wants what you have to offer, he will buy it and accept it – of his own free will. He doesn't have to accept YOU. You've done that already if your moral base is correct. But this motivation depends on what Rand later calls the Virtue of Selfishness.

America has a fairly strong grasp of rational self-interest, rational egoism. Dont' let that go.

To hell, I say, with the sonorous siren song of Barack Obama. SCB]

Showboat Obama Loves Mobs

This image says to me that Obama loves crowds - not mobs. But given the way he and his campaign is operating to quash The American Issues Project's video and Stanley Kurtz, contributing editor to the National Review who is now revealing the relationship of William Ayers and Barack Obama, I'm now persuaded he loves the mob.

Why?

Because he must! A man who does not deal in facts must get you to accept him by relating personal evaluations which you cannot argue with OR he must appeal to masses who eschew critical thinking - a mob.

(This last is Argument from Popularity, a logical fallacy. Yes, millions of people can be wrong. Both of the above techniques are a subset of Appeals to Emotion, a larger category of non-reason.)

The article below by the Chicago Tribune is about Obama's response to WGN's scheduling of an interview with Stanley Kurtz. WGN called the Obama Campaign for a spokesman and it declined the request. And this is not their first action against the charges now being constructed regarding Obama's lying regarding his relationship with the unrepentant domestic terrorist, William Ayers. Obama's Campaign has sent letters implying the loss of broadcast license to intimidate all the major TV stations who might show the American Issues Project video.

The one thing the Obama Campaign and Obama himself is unwilling to do is tell the truth. Notice the language of the emails sent to WGN. Below that notice how there are no facts provided in Obama's countervideo, directed erroneously to McCain rather than AIP.

This is a battle that promises to become huge because Obama is willing to quash our Individual Right of the Freedom of Speech - the First Ammendment to the Constitution of the United States. (And Bill Clinton said Obama is now ready to defend the Constitution? I don't think so!)


Obama campaign confronts WGN radio
by John McCormick and Steve Schmadeke

Chicago Tribune Washington Bureau
Posted August 27, 2008 11:02 PM

DENVER -- Sen. Barack Obama's campaign organized its supporters Wednesday night to confront Tribune-owned WGN-AM in Chicago for having a critic of the Illinois Democrat on its air.

"WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears," Obama's campaign wrote in an e-mail to supporters. "He's currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers."

Kurtz, a conservative writer, recently wrote an article for the National Review that looked at Obama's ties to Ayers, a former 1960s radical.

The magazine had been blocked in its initial attempts to obtain records from the University of Illinois at Chicago regarding the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Obama chaired and Ayers co-founded. The school later reserved its position and made the records available Tuesday.

Obama's campaign urged supporters to call the radio station to complain.

"Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse," the note said.

"It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves," the note continued. "At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz's lies."

Zack Christenson, executive producer of "Extension 720 with Milt Rosenburg," said the response was strong.

"I would say this is the biggest response we've ever got from a campaign or a candidate," he said. "This is really unprecedented with the show, the way that people are flooding the calls and our email boxes."

Christenson said the Obama campaign was asked to have someone appear on the show and declined the request.

"He got into the files just yesterday, so we wanted to have him on to find out what he found. And, if at all possible, we wanted to get the Obama campaign, to get their side of the story," Christenson said. "That's why the uproar is kind of amazing, because we wanted the Obama campaign's take as well."

The show's producer said the calls dropped off after the show's first hour. He did not have a count of calls, but said it was "non-stop."

Obama's campaign has launched similar offensives against stations that have run campaign ads that it did not like.


Here is Obama's video response to AIP aired August 25, 2008.

I can see the bumper stickers now.

We are now going to see the proof that Obama lied. The only defense to a charge is to either counter it with facts or smear it. See my ** (footnote) on "Swiftboating".

Obama not only lied, he is a vicious systematic liar. Lying, shading, obfuscating, and pooh-poohing is everywhere in his telling of his past. Everywhere.

And this is why Obama loves mobs. They, and the relating of his personal experiences which we cannot argue with, are his defense against reason, purposeful evasion, and the only thing you and I have in common with any other human being: the real world.

Defiant! Patriotism Defined!

In the election campaign in progress, the issue of patriotism is on high boil. What is it?

The Oxford Shorter Dictionary (2002) defines patriotism as "Devotion to country" and the "quality of being patriotic" which means "devoted to the well-being or interests of one's country."

What is devotion? Devoted is defined in the same dictionary as "vowed, dedicated, consecrated" and "Zealously or exclusively attached to, given up to." Devotion then is "the fact or quality of being devoted to a person, cause, pursuit, etc.; earnest application; zealous or exclusive application to a use or a purpose."

Is anyone questioning McCain's patriotism? I don't think so. I have heard no one questioning him in this regard.

While in the North Vietnamese prison, he chose to be his word and remain in prison rather than leave his fellow soldiers and violate an oath which he took. He was further tortured to the point that he doesn't have full use of his arm and leg. In his speeches, you can hear his call for us to devote ourselves to our country too. I am not a subscriber to self-sacrifice and don't agree with his premises that the government has the right to control citizens' economic activity, but I don't doubt the regard he has for our country and for this I appreciate him.

What about Obama?

"Let me be clear: I will let no one question my love of this country."

Got it. Devotion is not a word he uses now or will ever use.

I have to tell you, Obama's authoritarian "decree" has not a shred of validity in a free country where the Right to Freedom of Speech is My Right to My Life - as it is for every American. Here he being more radical Muslim than American. This is something they do and then proceed tear things up. Remember the cartoons? And thank you, Ezra Levant, for YOUR heroism. For this reason, it had to be said!

McCain touches the sacred in this realm. Obama does not.

And, he cannot. His history is filled with influences and actions dedicated to division and the installation of laws where individual rights are rendered meaningless and maybe even evil. In the Declaration of Independence it is declared for all the world to hear that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed . . . with certain unalienable Rights among these are the Rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness . . . "

Granted, the country was begun with the institution of slavery, but with the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement of the Sixties, finally all laws instituting racial discrimination were removed from the books. What was left? Freedom. Political freedom.

And that should be all there is to this story. To institute laws favoring one man over another in his circumstances institutes once again the human bondage this country has struggled against and ultimately eradicated.

Once the legal restrictions were erased, then what is left are all the internalized premises and manifestations that were the result of slavery and Jim Crow but which don't work in a condition of political freedom. These matters work out over time. Individuals and organizations give up the irrational premises because they don't work and alter their manifestations. These are being worked out now and will continue so long as the government maintains the rights of individuals.

Obama, given his choice of church and its advocacy of the Black Liberation Theology, has sided with the reinstitution of slavery. He has had an extended relationship via the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and its projects with the domestic terrorist, William Ayers, who is unrepentant in his hatred of the American system of capitalism and who seeks to institute reverse slavery. Then he got involved with Tony Rezko, a crooked "user", now-convicted developer who, in the name of repairing and improving public housing but ultimately causing its further deterioration to the detriment of the inhabitants, to gain money and valuable connections for pursuing his political ambitions. Beyond that, the dictums and methods of Saul Alinsky, the powerful community organizer guru, influenced by Karl Marx, who advocated gaining power by any means required to get it held intellectual and motivational sway in the law firms and groups with who Obama allied himself.

All of these activities are "me/us over them" activities, oblivious that there is a larger context, such as the one Martin Luther King appealed to, that can include the whole of the country and all people.

Would you conclude that Obama is patriotic?

Ambitious? Yes. Willing to go for it? Yes. Patriotic? You can be nice if you want to, but I say NO!

The Role of Spirituality in Politics

(This speech delivered to the Fellowship of Reason, July 6, 2008 http://www.fellowshipofreason.com/)

This year we are seeing a phenomenon in politics that I have not seen in my lifetime.

In the 60s, John and Jackie Kennedy added an esthetic level to politics with their youth, style and grace. They captured the imagination of the country and even though the election was close and the politics not especially noteworthy, they still are remembered by many as the high point for defining American presidential style.

This year we have the candidacy of Barack Obama. Although some people try to compare Barack and Michelle to the Kennedys, I don’t buy it and think it is a stretch. It is true, they are working on a classy presentation, but it doesn’t come off natural to them, at least for Michelle, in the way it was for the Kennedys.

But there is something natural to Obama: The spiritual.

He speaks in the measured cadence and repeated phrases of a practiced preacher. He is charismatic and eloquent. Girls swoon and faint when they get near him. The cheering and screaming in his presence goes beyond the meaning of what he is saying. Obama is the apotheosis of a rock star.

His candidacy is a spiritual quest. He promises hope and change. Don’t all spiritual quests imply hope for change? When one is filled with despair and life is meaningless, is not a spiritual quest needed? “Surely there must be something greater than, more exultant than my little life. I hope so. Obama says there is. Let me follow him.”

Obama has arrogated to himself the role of the person who is going to lead the way and heal the rancor of our divided, angry nation. Obama is going to have us rise above our pettiness and even suggests correcting our wrong-from-the-start actions. Follow him and we will transform this entire mess we find ourselves victim of.

When I go to Obama’s website, I find a beautiful website. Unlike the others, the graphics are extremely well done and consistent. For a political website, it is an extraordinary esthetic, i.e. spiritual, experience.

The colors are red, white and blue except they are not the navy blue and the robust red that we know as our country’s colors. Obama’s blue is a lighter, a medium blue with shading suggesting a sky. His red is a toned-down, slightly-grayed red such that it isn’t so definite nor bold. It is quieter, doesn’t excite too much, and let’s you be with it all without feeling threatened.

McCain’s site, on the other hand has a picture of him in front of furling flags of a deep blue background with white stars and gold fringe and is associated with the pomp and grandeur of the elected office. (This is not an endorsement of McCain - just a comparison of websites and what in us to which they appeal.)

Obama’s website’s header has Obama’s symbol of a rising sun over a red and white striped landscape placed over the right shoulder of a picture of Obama dressed in a white shirt and a silvery grey tie. A halo effect of a lighter sky surrounds his shoulders such that his white shirt and the whitened sky merge as one at some places of this image. To the right of this image are the words: “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington . . . I’m asking you to believe in yours.” At the bottom of the page is the statement: “This website is powered by Hope.”

Clearly Obama is appealing to spiritual aspirations of a different order than whatever McCain is appealing to. I don’t deny that the office of President of the United States has a spiritual component to it. My question is: What spiritually can our President provide? Asking that, maybe we can know whether Obama is on the right track in his spiritual appeal to America?

The United States has the clearest principled founding document in the world. In the Declaration of Independence, we declare that “all men are created equal with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness – that to secure these Rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - “

This agreement by which we live and true ourselves to in the course of our political life sets the standard for the spiritual nourishment that we need from the government. When our government is upholding this agreement and clearly acting in accordance with it, our spirit is buoyed and we feel confident to live our lives in the freedom that is ours by right. We are free to pursue our happiness. We are happy that our government is doing the job it was designed to do.

Witness the reaction to the Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding the Second Amendment Right to keep and bear Arms. Many people got goosebumps when they heard this decision. This is the most life affirming court decision that I remember other than Roe vs. Wade, the decision affirming a woman’s right to her body. The United States may be the only country where the citizens may keep and bear Arms for the reason of keeping their politicians and government in check. With government running amok untethered by its duty to provide for our liberty, its about time we put these guys on notice.

When it does not uphold these principles and the lines of proper action are unclear, we become spiritually diminished and threatened. Upset, irritation and anger result.

There can be plenty of disagreement as to how to carry out the simple principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence and in fact, we all know that it is the nature of government to encroach on the rights of the people, infringe their liberty and impede their pursuit of happiness.

I assert that America’s spiritual health coincides with the government hewing itself to the principles for which it was founded.

Obama, however, is not presenting himself as a person committed to carrying out our founding principles stated. He nowhere refers to them and when asked about his view of one or more of them, he equivocates, coming down on both sides of the issue – as he did with the Second Amendment. He is committed to Change and Hope, two amorphous meaningless words nowhere in our defining documents. Change to what? Hope for what?

Because Obama is not grounded in the principles of our founding documents and there is a good bit of evidence to say that he simply doesn’t agree with them, believing instead in class warfare and the divisions among men, he must find an alternate spirituality with some attraction in order to attract voters. I say he is fashioning himself as The Savior – the one who will provide the change and the hope that those attracted to this kind of spirituality can go for. They’ve bought it many times before. Why wouldn’t they buy it now.

He is fashioning himself, not as a proponent of ideas, but as the personality that is going to take us to the Promised Land, that heaven beyond our ordinary lives. This is why I think his website graphics and preacher-ly cadences evoke these otherworldly associations.

As an aside, many of the emblems that designate constituencies he hopes to attract are basically a circle in a blue background. Each one is elaborated to designate that particular constituency. The circle in a blue field is reminiscent of the UN flag, a world organization, not a national organization. Again, “heaven” is beyond our ordinary lives and ordinary boundaries.
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My conclusion is that his appeal to the kind of spirituality he seeks to evoke is fundamentally inappropriate to a political campaign in the United States of America.
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The constant polling of people gives us data that he is winning. I don’t really believe them at this point primarily because the main stream media has been so wrong in its predictions of past elections. But, then again, they could be right.

There are two things that worry me most about this election. First, have the practical, logical, reasonable people who are responsible for their own lives and that constitute the bulk of this country slipped into the minority; and have those who think they can profit by punishing the rich corporations and individuals or feel guilty for the success they have achieved or think it is time for a man with a different skin color regardless of his ideas to run the country become the majority?

Second, will Obama as he confidently embraces contradiction upon contradiction and eschews being governed by reality take on the status of a God? When he embraced Bush’s faith based program and said he will make that program the moral center of his administration, I fell silent. This was a daringly bold move. He blew off all his past condemnations of Bush and any likenesses of Bush as even remotely viable in this election. He risked his Hate Bush constituency. With this action he no longer gave heed to foe or contradictory stands or anything by which we measure a man. He is in the process of extricating himself from the realm of ordinary man. Either he will find himself licking his wounds at the curb because we judge him absurd or we will be drawn to him because of our fascination. Maybe he will become an uberman. Will we raise Obama on high to lead us wherever HIS heart desires in any moment of OUR future?

Why do I NOT think that ANYONE’s spiritual future lies there?