[Rhodes22-list] An African American comments on Obama [Political]

[Tootle]

Not all black men are sheep.  Here is the opinion of one who is not:

Oct. 29, 2008 
A perfect storm 
By Thomas Sowell 

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Some elections are routine, some are
important and some are historic. If Senator John McCain wins this election,
it will probably go down in history as routine. But if Senator Barack Obama
wins, it is more likely to be historic— and catastrophic. 

Once the election is over, the glittering generalities of rhetoric and style
will mean nothing. Everything will depend on performance in facing huge
challenges, domestic and foreign. 

Performance is where Barack Obama has nothing to show for his political
career, either in Illinois or in Washington. 

Policies that he proposes under the banner of "change" are almost all
policies that have been tried repeatedly in other countries— and failed
repeatedly in other countries. 

Politicians telling businesses how to operate? That's been tried in
countries around the world, especially during the second half of the 20th
century. It has failed so often and so badly that even socialist and
communist governments were freeing up their markets by the end of the
century. 

Every weekday NewsAndOpinion.com publishes what many in the media and
Washington consider "must-reading". HUNDREDS of columnists and cartoonists
regularly appear. Sign up for the daily update. It's free. Just click here. 
 
The economies of China and India began their take-off into high rates of
growth when they got rid of precisely the kinds of policies that Obama is
advocating for the United States under the magic mantra of "change." 

Putting restrictions on international trade in order to save jobs at home?
That was tried here with the Hawley-Smoot tariff during the Great
Depression. 

Unemployment was 9 percent when that tariff was passed to save jobs, but
unemployment went up instead of down, and reached 25 percent before the
decade was over. 

Higher taxes to "spread the well around," as Obama puts it? The idea of
redistributing wealth has turned into the reality of redistributing poverty,
in countries where wealth has fled and the production of new wealth has been
stifled by a lack of incentives. 

Economic disasters, however, may pale by comparison with the catastrophe of
Iran with nuclear weapons. Glib rhetoric about Iran being "a small country,"
as Obama called it, will be a bitter irony for Americans who will have to
live in the shadow of a nuclear threat that cannot be deterred, as that of
the Soviet Union could be, by the threat of a nuclear counter-attack. 

Suicidal fanatics cannot be deterred. If they are willing to die and we are
not, then we are at their mercy— and they have no mercy. Moreover, once they
get nuclear weapons, that is a situation which cannot be reversed, either in
this generation or in generations to come. 

Is this the legacy we wish to leave our children and grandchildren, by
voting on the basis of style and symbolism, rather than substance? 

If Barack Obama thinks that such a catastrophe can be avoided by sitting
down and talking with the leaders of Iran, then he is repeating a fallacy
that helped bring on World War II. 

In a nuclear age, one country does not have to send troops to occupy another
country in order to conquer it. A country is conquered if another country
can dictate who rules it, as the Mongols once did with Russia, and as Osama
bin Laden tried to do when he threatened retaliation against places in the
United States that voted for George W. Bush. But he didn't have nuclear
weapons to back up that threat— yet. 

America has never been a conquered country, so it may be very hard for most
Americans even to conceive what that can mean. After France was conquered in
1940, it was reduced to turning over some of its own innocent citizens to
the Nazis to kill, just because those citizens were Jewish. 

Do you think our leaders wouldn't do that? Not even if the alternative was
to see New York and Los Angeles go up in mushroom clouds? If I were Jewish,
I wouldn't bet my life on that. 

What the Middle East fanatics want is not just our resources or even our
lives, but our humiliation first, in whatever sadistic ways they can think
of. Their lust for humiliation has already been repeatedly demonstrated in
their videotaped beheadings that find such an eager market in the Middle
East. 

None of this can be prevented by glib talk, but only by character, courage
and decisive actions— none of which Barack Obama has ever demonstrated. 

Posted by 
Ed K
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