My post yesterday that looked at Frank Rich's column in the New York Times and the increasing insanity of the far right and what's left of the Republican Party apparently hit some nerves in what, in my opinion, is la la land. While most of the e-mails exchanges that I received ended up on a moderate note - one writer agreed with me on Jefferson's views on freedom of religion - some of the "proof" sent to me illustrates exactly what Frank Rich was talking about. Some of these people cannot stand the fact that the nation is changing and moving on towards a day where there will be much more diversity and where whites will no longer be the all powerful majority. Obama's biggest offence - besides being black - is that he is different and that his values are not their values. In my Republican days when the Christianists were just beginning their drive to take over the party, I was exposed to enough of them to realize that for many of them NOTHING will ever convince them that their views and prejudices are wrong. Christ himself could appear and they still would not accept the message. Here are highlights from one article that feeds the "birther" madness:*
And yet the Obama "birther" debate is important. What's important about it is the feeling a growing number of Americans have in their bones that Obama is foreign -- to our traditions, loyalties and shared understandings about the nature of America. In a way the legal debate matters less than that bone-deep sense that Obama is fundamentally "Other than American."
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Obama is a socialist, which means that his deepest commitment is not to our nation but to the Internationalist Ruling Class. That is why the Left always has to argue that Americans' love of country will kill off the rest of the world -- by global warming, by overpopulation, any excuse will do. The fact that it's all lies proves the point: The Left must lie in order to convince millions of Americans that their normal feelings of patriotism are evil.
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Obama is foreign to America in a way that has little to do with his birth certificate. He could be American-born and still think in this very anti-American way. A lot of people are. But whatever he is legally, there is not a shred of doubt that he is steeped in an Anti-American way of thinking.
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This is what I suspect the birther movement is about. Yes, the legalities are suspect. No, it will never make any practical difference. But most important, the birthers are aware of a deep intuition about Barry Soetoro Barack Hussein Obama: That he is profoundly out of tune with the meaning of America since the Founding. He is out of harmony with this country and this culture, like the dissonant scream of a power-saw biting into steel or concrete. He just grates on the American sensibility.
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Conservatives helped win the Cold War, but did not win the battle for the schools and universities. That is why Barry Soetoro Barack Hussein Obama is now President.
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These people indeed live in a very paranoid world. What I find ironic is that many of these folks likely have had ancestors in this country for a much shorter period that I and many others they label as liberals, yet the accusation is made that liberals do not understand or value the traditions of the country. One of my grandfather's families has as best we can determine been in New England/New York since the 1700's. One of my grandmother's families was in New Orleans as far back as at least the 1850's. I'd say I understand all to well the traditions of the founding fathers who were influenced by the Enlightenment and would likely agree with little put forth today by the Christian Right and far right.
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