Hallelujah! The Nightmare Is Over!, or
Thank You, Mr. Obama, for Putting So Many Bad Things Behind Us
By John Ross

Copyright 2008 by John Ross. Electronic reproduction of this article freely permitted provided it is reproduced in its entirety with attribution given.

Tuesday night I listened to President-elect Barack Obama's powerful acceptance speech, and as I felt myself moved by his words, I realized that now America has many of her worst problems behind her. We are now truly in a new era.

With President Obama, the nightmare of the Vietnam War will be over. Just as Teddy Roosevelt was the first President or Presidential candidate since 1860 to have no tie to the Civil War, so too is Barack Obama our first president in over 45 years with no ties to our losing campaign in Southeast Asia during the 1960s and '70s. That misguided war, and the resultant long-standing memories of unwilling draftees, "fragging" of officers, and listless, disillusioned troops is behind us now. Our new Commander-In-Chief was born too late to be tainted by that disastrous conflict, and he takes control of a modern fighting force comprised entirely of fighting men and women that are there by choice. These motivated soldiers want to be in the military, and they believe in our cause. By his own admission, former President Bill Clinton "loathed" the military, and this loathing took a tremendous toll on the morale of our brave troops.

Under President Obama, the nightmare of the Clintons will be over. The Dogpatch crowd will never again get anywhere near the White House. Having wisely avoided selecting Hillary as his running mate, President Obama won’t have to deal with what would have undoubtedly been Bill's constant presence in and around the Oval Office. Hillary won't get the nomination in 2012, and she'll be too old in 2016. Obama’s lovely and loving wife Michelle and their two adorable children are breaths of fresh air compared to the Clintons' sham marriage of political convenience and Bill's penchant for an endless series of trysts with women you'd expect to see on Jerry Springer.

With President Obama, the nightmares of Civil Rights Era racism, segregation, separatism, and Jim Crow are over. Black America has almost unanimously embraced mulatto Barack Obama as one of their own, and tens of millions of whites are gaga over him. The notions that blacks cannot hold their own in competition with whites or that white Americans hold blacks down and keep them from succeeding have been utterly obliterated with Tuesday’s election results. As black comedienne Wanda Sykes said, "We can't complain about ‘The Man’ when we is 'The Man.'" Well put. Barack Obama's winning the Presidency of the United States in a free election shows that we can now rid ourselves of the nightmare of Affirmative Action and racial quotas. No longer will less-qualified job applicants be hired because of race or ethnicity. Employers will once again be allowed to hire the best workers. Patients will never again have to worry that the person examining them and prescribing life-affecting treatment got into med school and became a doctor for any reason other than talent and ability.

With President Obama, the nightmare of a Republican Party littered with "Moderates" and "Mavericks" and country clubbers like John McCain and George W. Bush has been rejected. Sarah Palin energized the free-market, low tax, and less-nanny-state base of the Party like no one since Ronald Reagan, but it wasn’t quite enough to make these freedom-oriented Americans swallow John McCain. Yes, President-elect Obama holds (or appears to hold) Socialist beliefs that are diametrically opposed to the beliefs of people like me, and that's fine. We all know what he stands for. It's not a surprise. He's the general of the Communist Army we're trying to defeat, or the quarterback of the opposing football team we're trying to beat. Such a person represents a known threat, unlike someone we think is an ally but who is really a deep-cover sleeper agent who's just been activated after a decade, or one of our own running backs who's been bribed to fumble the ball or run for the wrong goal line. Give me a straight-ahead opponent over a spy or saboteur any day.

Barack Obama campaigned largely on vague promises of "change," unification, affirmations like "Yes, we can," and skilled (when scripted) oratory. During his campaign, the media and much of the public gave him a pass on policy and issue specifics because they so desperately wanted him to be the answer they were seeking.

Joe Biden put it this way in late January of 2007 while commenting on the Obama Presidential candidacy to Jason Horowitz of the New York Observer: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," Biden said. "I mean, that's a storybook, man."

In September of 2007, Bill O'Reilly expressed similar sentiments about his observations of modern Black America. Discussing his recent dinner with Rev. Al Sharpton at the Harlem restaurant Sylvia's, O'Reilly reported that he "couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship." Later, talking with NPR senior correspondent and Fox News contributor Juan Williams about the effect of rap music on culture, O'Reilly asserted: "There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M-F'er, I want more iced tea!'"

Now that the election is over, it won't be enough for President-elect Obama to be "articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." The media and his other fawning supporters are going to have to address the specifics of his vision for America. They're going to have to address the fact that it was the Socialist Democrat policy under Clinton in 1995 that expanded the Community Reinvestment Act of the Carter years to force banks to write mortgages for nothing down to people who couldn’t afford them, and gave us the present financial crisis.

They're going to have to reconcile Obama's desire for a middle-class tax cut and more taxes on "the rich" (including a massive increase in the Death Tax) with the fact that it is the rich who now pay most of the taxes, and when you give them a tax cut, tax revenues go up, as Reagan proved in 1982.

They're going to have to reconcile Obama's hatred of the Second Amendment (ban handguns, no concealed carry, etc.) with the Supreme Court Heller ruling upholding the Second Amendment.
They're going to have to address the fact that feel-good promises of "alternative energy" aren't going to get your car to run on solar or wind power. We have huge untapped oil reserves in our own country. Free-market champions from Ronald Reagan to Sarah Palin have urged the development of those assets, while Socialist Democrats like Barack Obama and RINOs like John McCain have consistently blocked accessing those reserves.

They're going to have to address the fact that if we withdraw all troops from Iraq, eloquent oratory may not be enough to prevent a nuclear Iran from controlling Iraq, and later Saudi Arabia. Iranian power directed into the Saudi oilfields would be a disaster for America.

Finally, they're going to have to face the fact that there is no engine for growth and prosperity nearly as powerful as that of the free market. Individuals striving to better their own lives by the free use of their talents and imaginations, succeeding or failing with their own resources at stake, will always bring more prosperity than government programs where results are disconnected from actions and the decision-makers are disconnected from accountability. Socialism has failed and been rejected throughout Europe and Russia, and it’s going to fail and be rejected here.

President-elect Obama, you have tremendous challenges ahead. You're not much younger than I am, and I've learned a lot over the course of my life. One lesson I've learned is that the incentives of the free market raise everyone's standard of living, while government programs that distort the free market benefit a few people who have figured out how to rig things for their own benefit, to the detriment of everyone else. I've also learned that evil is rarely placated by discussion and reason alone, if the means to back up your reasoned points with force is not there.

President-elect Obama, I wish you all good fortune as you embark on your Presidential career. I suspect that you will come to realize (if you haven't already) that Socialism and Communism don't work, that we can't tax our way into prosperity, and that punishing motivated people who succeed on their own by forcing them to support those with little or no ambition is a recipe for disaster. If you don't figure those things out, that's okay too. We might have to wait for the midterm elections of 2010, but one way or another, because of you, the nightmare of Socialism will finally be over for America.


John Ross 11/08/2008

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