NO HE CAN'T

No He Can't
by Anne Wortham

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 nosmile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumphin my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have todeny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival - all that I know about the history of the United States ofAmerica, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I knowabout 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 toplay the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared"progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn't look like them. Iwould 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 the equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit ofservice, 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 allmemory 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 theirassumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentalitythat 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 that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happymen. 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.

________________________________

I can't add anything more. I can, however, hope that the Messiah shine dims quickly, and Amercians can see what an empty suit of empty promises they've purchased.