Today is certainly an historic day. A milestone in our cultural history has been reached as we inaugurate the first African-American president, indeed the first president of African descent ever to be elected in any non-African country. I'm delighted that the United States, alone, I think, among the nations of the world, has democratically chosen a member of a racial minority to be their chief executive and their commander-in-chief. It's another sign of America's greatness relative to the rest of the world. I just wish it had been a different African-American.
Don't misunderstand. I wish President Obama well, and insofar as he turns out to betray the people most responsible for getting him elected - the political far left - I will be cheering him on, but if he's a man of character he will strive to do the things he has promised to do over the last two years, all 510 of them, and the things he has promised are not things that I find particularly comforting.
Before the election we listed fifteen measures that Democrats could be expected to pursue should they acquire the political power to work their will in the legislature. Obama may not support all of these efforts, but if we're to take him at his word, he certainly supports most of them.
Here they are:
- Remove all restrictions on abortion, including partial birth abortion.
- Alter the meaning of marriage so that it's no longer the union of one man and one woman.
- Appoint judges and Supreme Court Justices whose decisions will be based on political fashion rather than on the text of the constitution.
- Effect a redistribution of wealth from the middle and upper classes to the underclass.
- Treat terrorism as a police matter rather than as a global war on Western civilization.
- Pile onto American business onerous regulations and taxes - e.g. higher minimum wage, capital gains taxes, greater health insurance costs - that will make it impossible to compete in the global market and which will result in higher cost to business and consequently higher unemployment.
- Continue the accelerating secularization of our society.
- Open our borders to anyone who wants to take up residence in our country and give illegal aliens the right to a driver's license, health care, education, and welfare.
- Nationalize health care.
- Deny to parents the right to choose the schools their children will attend.
- Push fuel costs back up so as to force us to conserve and develop alternative energy sources.
- Quell freedom of speech, particularly conservative or religious speech, through vehicles like the "Fairness Doctrine."
- Downgrade our military preparedness and end the program that would enable us to shoot down incoming nuclear missiles.
- Take away the right to own or buy most types of guns or to acquire a license to carry them on one's person.
- Strip workers of the right to a secret ballot in elections related to union matters.
To the extent that President Obama tries to achieve the agenda laid out above we will voice our displeasure. Until then he will have our support. Moreover, if and when we do find it necessary to oppose our new president that opposition will be carried out with as much civility as firmness. We will extend to him the benefit of whatever legitimate doubts there may be and will strive always to treat the man and his office with courtesy and respect.
In short, we will not act like so many of President Bush's detractors in the congress and the media. We urge our readers to do likewise. One service the left has inadvertently done for the political discourse of this country over the last eight years is to display the ugliness of their brand of rhetoric and the unfairness of consistently putting the worst possible interpretation on the President's actions, aims, and motives. It's our hope that those who now find themselves in the political opposition will recoil from the left's jejunne foot-stamping and follow instead the example that President Bush himself has set.
RLC