[re: Ann Wortham meme about Obama]
Well, I disagree with almost every claim in that article. First of all, the author is a strange "libertarian." Ann Wortham wrote a book claiming government should not make laws about racism.
In her book, Wortham defended the right of business owners to discriminate against African Americans, or women, or the handicapped. She thinks the Civil Rights Act was unfair interference with businesses. In 1981, Wortham specifically defended "Lester Maddox, the owner of the Pickrick Restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia, who armed himself with a pistol and pick handle and ordered blacks to get off his property." ( http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/a-reviewers-notebook-the-other-side-of-racism/ )
So basically, she wants "liberty" for owners, but she opposes liberty for customers. She thought Black citizens should never have protested at Woolworth's counters. She wanted them to only "boycott" (how do you boycott a business that won't let you buy anything?). Maybe that's what she would recommend we do about BP today. After all, they're a private business. Let's just boycott BP gasoline, and the spill will magically fix itself.
Wortham imagined a wall between government discrimination and private discrimination. This was a basic misunderstanding of Jim Crow racism in 1950s America: in the small towns of the South, local government and local business owners worked together. Often they were run by the same white racists. As of today, the civis rights movement was only partially successful. Restaurants serve people of every race, but schools do not give equal resources to kids of every race. (http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/06/equal_funding.html )
---------------------
It is true that 94% of Black voters chose Obama. But this is almost the same as in 2000, when 90% of Black voters chose Al Gore, or in 1984, when 90% of black voters chose Dukakis (note: Gore and Dukakis appear to be white). Wortham is lying, with deceptive statistics. In general, more poor people vote democratic, a higher percentage of Black people are poor, and more Blacks vote democratic. For comparison, most middle-class voters are white; the middle-class often votes republican, so most middle-class whites always vote for a white man, but this does not prove they are "racist." It proves you can manipulate statistics.
The 2008 election was not much different from usual. Yes, compared to previous elections, some people voted for Obama just because he's black: there was a 4% increase in the percentage of Black support, which equals 0.5% of total voters.
0.5%? Are you serious? Obama's margin of victory was much higher than that. A more likely culprit may be people under 30 - 66% of them voted for Obama, the highest percentage of any candidate since 1976. Young people have more invested in the future than old people, so Obama's message of "hope" was probably appealing (especially after 8 years of messages about fearing terrorists, immigrants, and gay people).
Also, notice Wortham claims "94 percent of the 12 million Blacks in this country voted... to play the race card," but in fact, Black turnout was at 65% - which is better than usual, but is obviously not the same as 100% which Wortham erroneously believes. Again, voter turnout is generally lower for poor people, so since a higher percentage of Black people are poor, their turnout is also lower. This does not mean poor people are unpatriotic, of course. Poor people often deal with irregular work schedules and unstable living situations, which makes voting more difficult (this is not my excuse for them, I want everyone to vote - but you must admit that when voting information arrived at your correct address, and you have time to register or wait in line, voting is more convenient). (http://www.amazon.com/Nickel-Dimed-Not-Getting-America/dp/0805063897 )
Wortham is grossly generalizing and stereotyping Black people. Somehow, she alone magically knows why they voted - how can someone ever know how someone else voted a certain way? Even polls which ask this question are notoriously unreliable. Voting is private, people say one reason when they really have another. But no, Wortham did not even ask voters. She is making a racist assumption: that if a Black person votes for Obama, it must be because of race? This is ridiculous. Just like it would be ridiculous to claim that White people who voted for McCain did it because of race. In both cases, a few people based their decision on race, but not enough to decide an election.
And this brings me to McCain. In her entire essay about the election, Wortham never once mentions the Republican candidate. She mentions many other political figures ("Jimmie" Carter, Ron Paul, McGovern, Greenspan, Lyndon Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy) but cannot bring herself to say McCain's name. Why would this be? After all, if a Black person (or a white "progressive") were to vote against Obama, it would have been for the Republican candidate. She, of course, made an irrelevant protest vote for Paul. Paul, a candidate not even the republican party liked, a candidate not on the ballot, a candidate who was not nominated by any political party.
This reveals much of the explanation she is deliberately hiding. Many republicans did not like McCain. Many women did not like McCain (55% of women voted for Obama). Many white people did not like McCain (43% of whites voted for Obama).
Most surprisingly, 41% of white males voted for Obama - this is the highest percentage of white males a democrat has won since 1976. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1083335/Breakdown-demographics-reveals-black-voters-swept-Obama-White-House.html )
Most libertarians did not like McCain. Not even Wortham liked McCain! So in Wortham logic, in order to prove they were not playing the race card, Black voters would have to choose a candidate she herself could not vote for. She is distorting the circumstance to create a racist impression of how Obama won. Obama won among women, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, whites under 30, Jewish Americans, Catholics, rich people, and poor people, while among men, Obama and McCain tied. Americans chose Obama, period. This was not drawn along imaginary racial battle lines. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.
I have sympathy for third-party voters, I voted for Ralph Nader instead of Gore. No, I did not choose Nader because of race. I chose Nader for the same reason I chose Obama: Obama was clearly the best candidate on the ballot.
(I am white. So Wortham claims that proves I voted for Obama because he doesn't look like me. What does that even mean? Is she so simplistic that she thinks all my decisions are based on looks? Wait a second, Obama is half white, so maybe I voted for Obama because I only vote for white people? My point is, this is a ridiculous game.)
-------------
The last point I want to make is about capitalism. A lot of conservatives like to accuse Obama of being communist or socialist. Conservatives want to call the new healthcare law socialism, even though it will be fully serviced by private companies; they do so at the same time that they yell "keep your hands off my medicare." The truth is, medicare is socialized medicine, while the new healthcare law is not. So according to conservatives' logic, anyone who loves medicare is also a socialist. The truth is, all the new law really does is add some regulation to an industry where one or two companies control most of the market in many states. I see Obama as erring (unfortunately) on the side of corporations, because I have more personal knowledge of over-reaching corporations than of over-reaching government. This is debatable, but back to my point:
We have seen insurance corporations ration care, interfering between doctors and patients.
We have seen banks manipulate homeowners and investors with immoral and manipulative investments.
We have seen petroleum corporations falsify safety documents and destroy seafood and tourism industries.
Only corporate lackeys like Joe Barton (R-Texas) can look at the current state of corporations are say BP needs less regulation. Barton apologizes to BP for requiring them to pay for damages. After all, they are a privately owner corporation. But lack of regulation hurts people every day. If you are poor, you are vulnerable to corporate lawyers and accountants, who give you financial documents which are intentionally misleading. If you are an independent businessperson, perhaps with a shrimping boat, you are vulnerable to corporate polluters and their disdain for the earth we all share.
I support freedom for individuals, regardless of race, creed, gender, or handicap. Wortham's definition of freedom only applies to businesses, and I disagree completely. I never declared "capitalism is dead." I never heard Obama say this, and I think it sounds crazy - our economic system is capitalist, the thousands of corporations in the US are capitalists. There are thousands of small business who have already benefitted from Obama's development and green technology initiatives and tax breaks. Is there even such a thing as a "socialist business"? People who talk about that all the time are fighting a straw man. Nobody is turning the United States into a socialist or communist organization, anyone who claims that is trying to sell something. For example, Glenn Beck is trying to sell you something:
"I could give a flying crap about the political process... We're an entertainment company." (http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/04/building-an-empire-glenn-beck-makes-32m-a-year.php )
I support Beck's right to sell entertainment. We are a free society. but I oppose his slander against the President. Without evidence, he regularly says Obama is a new Hitler, and is a communist. Never mind that Hitler murdered all the communists, and murdered everyone who was mixed race like Obama. Obama has not nationalized our industries (even in the case of Wall Street crime, when there were strong reasons to do so, Obama preserved the free market structure), and corporations are all privately controlled. Obama is not fighting capitalism. He is not "destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth," as Wortham wrote on November 6, 2008, months before Obama even took office. See, Wortham could do this because she did not need evidence. Evidence is for suckers. She just had a feeling (i.e., "truthiness").
Capitalism without regulation is anarchy. I am not a socialist and I am not an anarchist. I am an American who wants greater freedom for people. I place people ahead of institutions. Katrina's broken levees were evidence of bad government; BP's oil spill is evidence of bad corporations. Big corporations and government can both be harmful. We must watch them both, as we the people protect our interests. We must investigate BP and the Minerals Management Service. (http://www.mms.gov/DeepwaterHorizon.htm )
I am not happy or oblivious, and I hold Obama to a high standard. I press him to make the right decisions. About ending the wars, repairing education and our economy, and protecting the environment for future generations.
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:04:24 -0400
From:
To:
Subject: God help us all
She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association.
She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education.
In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were featured in Bill Moyer's television series, "A World of Ideas." The transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his book, A World of Ideas.
Dr. Wortham is author of "The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness" which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues.
She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality.
Recently, she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness. Shortly after an interview in 2004, she was awarded tenure.
This article by her is really something!
Fellow Americans,
Please know: I am Black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a Black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a Black president to love the ideal of America .
I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival - all that I know about the history of the United States of America , all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America .
Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million Blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that Blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn't look like them.
I would have to wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration - political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University 's Kennedy School of Government.
I would have to believe that "fairness" is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that a man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest.. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.
Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead - and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.
So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a Black man to the office of the president of the United States , the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over - and Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a Black person.
So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton , Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a Black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to - Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine - what little there is left - for the chance to feel good.
There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness. God Help Us all.
(online source for this essay: http://moneyrunner.blogspot.com/2009/05/anne-wortham-on-election-of-barack.html )
Well, I disagree with almost every claim in that article. First of all, the author is a strange "libertarian." Ann Wortham wrote a book claiming government should not make laws about racism.
In her book, Wortham defended the right of business owners to discriminate against African Americans, or women, or the handicapped. She thinks the Civil Rights Act was unfair interference with businesses. In 1981, Wortham specifically defended "Lester Maddox, the owner of the Pickrick Restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia, who armed himself with a pistol and pick handle and ordered blacks to get off his property." ( http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/a-reviewers-notebook-the-other-side-of-racism/ )
So basically, she wants "liberty" for owners, but she opposes liberty for customers. She thought Black citizens should never have protested at Woolworth's counters. She wanted them to only "boycott" (how do you boycott a business that won't let you buy anything?). Maybe that's what she would recommend we do about BP today. After all, they're a private business. Let's just boycott BP gasoline, and the spill will magically fix itself.
Wortham imagined a wall between government discrimination and private discrimination. This was a basic misunderstanding of Jim Crow racism in 1950s America: in the small towns of the South, local government and local business owners worked together. Often they were run by the same white racists. As of today, the civis rights movement was only partially successful. Restaurants serve people of every race, but schools do not give equal resources to kids of every race. (http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/06/equal_funding.html )
---------------------
It is true that 94% of Black voters chose Obama. But this is almost the same as in 2000, when 90% of Black voters chose Al Gore, or in 1984, when 90% of black voters chose Dukakis (note: Gore and Dukakis appear to be white). Wortham is lying, with deceptive statistics. In general, more poor people vote democratic, a higher percentage of Black people are poor, and more Blacks vote democratic. For comparison, most middle-class voters are white; the middle-class often votes republican, so most middle-class whites always vote for a white man, but this does not prove they are "racist." It proves you can manipulate statistics.
The 2008 election was not much different from usual. Yes, compared to previous elections, some people voted for Obama just because he's black: there was a 4% increase in the percentage of Black support, which equals 0.5% of total voters.
0.5%? Are you serious? Obama's margin of victory was much higher than that. A more likely culprit may be people under 30 - 66% of them voted for Obama, the highest percentage of any candidate since 1976. Young people have more invested in the future than old people, so Obama's message of "hope" was probably appealing (especially after 8 years of messages about fearing terrorists, immigrants, and gay people).
Also, notice Wortham claims "94 percent of the 12 million Blacks in this country voted... to play the race card," but in fact, Black turnout was at 65% - which is better than usual, but is obviously not the same as 100% which Wortham erroneously believes. Again, voter turnout is generally lower for poor people, so since a higher percentage of Black people are poor, their turnout is also lower. This does not mean poor people are unpatriotic, of course. Poor people often deal with irregular work schedules and unstable living situations, which makes voting more difficult (this is not my excuse for them, I want everyone to vote - but you must admit that when voting information arrived at your correct address, and you have time to register or wait in line, voting is more convenient). (http://www.amazon.com/Nickel-Dimed-Not-Getting-America/dp/0805063897 )
Wortham is grossly generalizing and stereotyping Black people. Somehow, she alone magically knows why they voted - how can someone ever know how someone else voted a certain way? Even polls which ask this question are notoriously unreliable. Voting is private, people say one reason when they really have another. But no, Wortham did not even ask voters. She is making a racist assumption: that if a Black person votes for Obama, it must be because of race? This is ridiculous. Just like it would be ridiculous to claim that White people who voted for McCain did it because of race. In both cases, a few people based their decision on race, but not enough to decide an election.
And this brings me to McCain. In her entire essay about the election, Wortham never once mentions the Republican candidate. She mentions many other political figures ("Jimmie" Carter, Ron Paul, McGovern, Greenspan, Lyndon Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy) but cannot bring herself to say McCain's name. Why would this be? After all, if a Black person (or a white "progressive") were to vote against Obama, it would have been for the Republican candidate. She, of course, made an irrelevant protest vote for Paul. Paul, a candidate not even the republican party liked, a candidate not on the ballot, a candidate who was not nominated by any political party.
This reveals much of the explanation she is deliberately hiding. Many republicans did not like McCain. Many women did not like McCain (55% of women voted for Obama). Many white people did not like McCain (43% of whites voted for Obama).
Most surprisingly, 41% of white males voted for Obama - this is the highest percentage of white males a democrat has won since 1976. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1083335/Breakdown-demographics-reveals-black-voters-swept-Obama-White-House.html )
Most libertarians did not like McCain. Not even Wortham liked McCain! So in Wortham logic, in order to prove they were not playing the race card, Black voters would have to choose a candidate she herself could not vote for. She is distorting the circumstance to create a racist impression of how Obama won. Obama won among women, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, whites under 30, Jewish Americans, Catholics, rich people, and poor people, while among men, Obama and McCain tied. Americans chose Obama, period. This was not drawn along imaginary racial battle lines. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.
I have sympathy for third-party voters, I voted for Ralph Nader instead of Gore. No, I did not choose Nader because of race. I chose Nader for the same reason I chose Obama: Obama was clearly the best candidate on the ballot.
(I am white. So Wortham claims that proves I voted for Obama because he doesn't look like me. What does that even mean? Is she so simplistic that she thinks all my decisions are based on looks? Wait a second, Obama is half white, so maybe I voted for Obama because I only vote for white people? My point is, this is a ridiculous game.)
-------------
The last point I want to make is about capitalism. A lot of conservatives like to accuse Obama of being communist or socialist. Conservatives want to call the new healthcare law socialism, even though it will be fully serviced by private companies; they do so at the same time that they yell "keep your hands off my medicare." The truth is, medicare is socialized medicine, while the new healthcare law is not. So according to conservatives' logic, anyone who loves medicare is also a socialist. The truth is, all the new law really does is add some regulation to an industry where one or two companies control most of the market in many states. I see Obama as erring (unfortunately) on the side of corporations, because I have more personal knowledge of over-reaching corporations than of over-reaching government. This is debatable, but back to my point:
We have seen insurance corporations ration care, interfering between doctors and patients.
We have seen banks manipulate homeowners and investors with immoral and manipulative investments.
We have seen petroleum corporations falsify safety documents and destroy seafood and tourism industries.
Only corporate lackeys like Joe Barton (R-Texas) can look at the current state of corporations are say BP needs less regulation. Barton apologizes to BP for requiring them to pay for damages. After all, they are a privately owner corporation. But lack of regulation hurts people every day. If you are poor, you are vulnerable to corporate lawyers and accountants, who give you financial documents which are intentionally misleading. If you are an independent businessperson, perhaps with a shrimping boat, you are vulnerable to corporate polluters and their disdain for the earth we all share.
I support freedom for individuals, regardless of race, creed, gender, or handicap. Wortham's definition of freedom only applies to businesses, and I disagree completely. I never declared "capitalism is dead." I never heard Obama say this, and I think it sounds crazy - our economic system is capitalist, the thousands of corporations in the US are capitalists. There are thousands of small business who have already benefitted from Obama's development and green technology initiatives and tax breaks. Is there even such a thing as a "socialist business"? People who talk about that all the time are fighting a straw man. Nobody is turning the United States into a socialist or communist organization, anyone who claims that is trying to sell something. For example, Glenn Beck is trying to sell you something:
"I could give a flying crap about the political process... We're an entertainment company." (http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/04/building-an-empire-glenn-beck-makes-32m-a-year.php )
I support Beck's right to sell entertainment. We are a free society. but I oppose his slander against the President. Without evidence, he regularly says Obama is a new Hitler, and is a communist. Never mind that Hitler murdered all the communists, and murdered everyone who was mixed race like Obama. Obama has not nationalized our industries (even in the case of Wall Street crime, when there were strong reasons to do so, Obama preserved the free market structure), and corporations are all privately controlled. Obama is not fighting capitalism. He is not "destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth," as Wortham wrote on November 6, 2008, months before Obama even took office. See, Wortham could do this because she did not need evidence. Evidence is for suckers. She just had a feeling (i.e., "truthiness").
Capitalism without regulation is anarchy. I am not a socialist and I am not an anarchist. I am an American who wants greater freedom for people. I place people ahead of institutions. Katrina's broken levees were evidence of bad government; BP's oil spill is evidence of bad corporations. Big corporations and government can both be harmful. We must watch them both, as we the people protect our interests. We must investigate BP and the Minerals Management Service. (http://www.mms.gov/DeepwaterHorizon.htm )
I am not happy or oblivious, and I hold Obama to a high standard. I press him to make the right decisions. About ending the wars, repairing education and our economy, and protecting the environment for future generations.
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:04:24 -0400
From:
To:
Subject: God help us all
She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association.
She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education.
In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were featured in Bill Moyer's television series, "A World of Ideas." The transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his book, A World of Ideas.
Dr. Wortham is author of "The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness" which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues.
She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality.
Recently, she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness. Shortly after an interview in 2004, she was awarded tenure.
This article by her is really something!
Fellow Americans,
Please know: I am Black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a Black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a Black president to love the ideal of America .
I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival - all that I know about the history of the United States of America , all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America .
Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million Blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that Blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn't look like them.
I would have to wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration - political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University 's Kennedy School of Government.
I would have to believe that "fairness" is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that a man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest.. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.
Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead - and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.
So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a Black man to the office of the president of the United States , the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over - and Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a Black person.
So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton , Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a Black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to - Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine - what little there is left - for the chance to feel good.
There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness. God Help Us all.
(online source for this essay: http://moneyrunner.blogspot.com/2009/05/anne-wortham-on-election-of-barack.html )
Comments