Dear All;
Yes you read the subject line correctly. As has been said by numerous sages over the eons: May you live in interesting times.
With the 8:00 news headlines showing Obama with 297 electoral votes and McCain with 145 the winner appears to be Obama in the Electoral College voting. Obviously the West Coast polls just closed but their electoral votes would seem to favor Obama and thus cinching the victory.
These times are definitely interesting with a major historical event taking place with the election of an African-American to the office of the President of the United States.
For some historical perspective Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation 145 years ago - which actually did not free one slave in the Southern states or any in the Northern states. Including Illinois whose black laws - many created and managed through the state legislature by one Abe Lincoln - made the segregated laws of the 1950's South look like a Disney movie. Yes they were really that bad.
Then 48 years ago you had a young black woman by the name of Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama who stood up in the front of a bus and say: I am not going to the back of the bus no more. Thereby bringing onto the stage a young 25 year old Baptist minister by the name of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who with others lead the Montgomery bus boycott.
Twelve short years later he would be assassinated. While being remembered for his I have a dream speech he is being turned into a mythologized legend by his supporters instead of a real human being warts and all. He rose up to face his Golgotha despite many tormented moments about who he was and his non-violence movement to get civil rights for blacks.
Seeing a black elected to the presidency is a historical moment for which I am living in this interesting time. This despite what his actual policies will be which rest on a liberal socialists dream of re-distribution of the wealth by taxing the wealthy and capitalistic greedy businesses to help the downtrodden. Plus other ill-thought socialistic policies involving trade and the military and foreign relations and welfare and other feeble minded government spending at the taxpayers expense.
Ron Getty - SF Libertarian
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