Wednesday, September 9th, 2009...11:54 am
The president is black; it’s time we learned to live with that
Barack Hussein Obama is president of the United States of America.
As such, he is due the respect that the highest office of the land commands.
Spew rumors, falsehoods and outright lies about his policies, about his birth place, about his intentions. That’s freedom of speech.
Attack his wife’s clothing choices, his children’s pet, his mother-in-law’s room in the White House. He is a public figure, and this is America.
And by all means question his health care agenda, the stimulus spending and his increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan. That’s government of the people, by the people.
But to have public figures in Kentucky, representing conservative views, use the word “creepy” to describe Obama’s plan to speak to all the nation’s schoolchildren today is nothing but embarrassing.
Their attitude dishonors the office of the president, not just Obama himself.
Several years ago, I interviewed a Liberian couple who were living in Lexington with their son and who were hoping to live out their golden years in a country that provided a sanctuary from the wars they had fled back home.
They told me that the difference between Liberia and the United States is that here, there is a peaceful transfer of power after an election. In Liberia, they said, the loser wouldn’t relinquish power, choosing instead to start a war or kill his opponent in defiance of what the voters had wanted.
We are doing the very same thing with words in this country since Obama became president.
I was not a fan of George W. Bush’s presidency. I didn’t think he had a good grasp of what the ordinary citizen needed. He seemed to prefer to go along with the big oil companies, with big business and with policies that kept them happy.
I never approved of his push for war with Iraq and thought we should have stayed focused on finding Osama bin Laden.
Still, never once would I have characterized him as “creepy” because he wanted to talk with schoolchildren. He was the president. My kids needed to listen to what the commander in chief had to say.
It’s respect for authority. It’s respect for the president. It is respect for our upbringing.
For reasons that every black person knows and many white people are learning, this president is receiving 400 percent more death threats than then-President George W. Bush, according to the Secret Service.
It’s not all about Obama’s desire to bring equity and compassion into the health care reform debate, although some people couch it that way. President Harry Truman tried to get health care reform several times, but he failed. President Lyndon Johnson signed a socialist program called Medicare into law. Neither drew as much ire as Obama.
It’s not his pro-choice stance on abortion. The U.S. Supreme Court has had numerous opportunities to overturn Roe vs. Wade. In 1992, the 20th anniversary of that law, the Supreme Court had eight members who were appointed by Republican presidents who were opposed to abortion. Those justices decided to let Roe vs. Wade stand. They are the ones who can change the abortion laws of this land, not a president. But they didn’t. Did the number of death threats they received go up 400 percent?
If it is about the deficit that the Obama administration has dug out in this economy, then there should have been a similar outcry and similar death threats for Bush, who quietly used a bulldozer to get the hole started.
But it is not about that.
Obama has been a magnet for these unfounded fears, these innuendos, these lies because he is black.
He has not done anything that would justify the outrage we are seeing in factions across this nation. Nothing. He hasn’t had time. He has been in office less than eight months.
What this is about is that there are too many people who are afraid of what a black man might do because they have no idea what a black man is all about. The fear is unfounded and insane, fueled by our inability or lack of desire to interact with folks who are different.
I hear he’ll lead this country into socialism or Marxism, as if he has the power to do that all by himself. When did the Constitution change?
Brainwash our children into voting for health care? When did we give children the right to vote?
Get them to persuade their parents to vote for Obama’s policies? When did our children become the decision-makers in our homes?
What has happened to critical thinking in this country? Why are we following along with the first Pied Piper who blows an unreasonable note?
Presient George H.W. Bush spoke with schoolchildren in 1991 and advocated his educational policies. I didn’t see a single parent, black or white, conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican, pass out from fright.
So you tell me why this president is so different, why people carry guns to his rallies, why ministers call for him to die and go to hell. What God do they serve?
Obama’s talk is about staying in school and getting a good education, and I hope the kids watch and listen.
The more they see a black man in the Oval Office, the less likely they will be to imitate the head of the Republican Party in Kentucky or a conservative talk-show host.
I am a native Kentuckian, and I have worked at the Lexington Herald-Leader for nearly a quarter of a century. I've been a columnist for almost 20 of those years, dispensing my opinions about anything and everything. Born in Owensboro, Ky., I'm old enough to have lived through racial segregation, the Civil Rights Movement, protests against the Vietnam War, and the break-up of the Beatles. That means I am "old school," and my thoughts emanate from that perspective.
1 Comment
September 10th, 2009 at 11:34 am
Ms. Davis,
I appreciate many of your past articles and I especially liked your recent one that covered the Refuge clinics and how they are helping the uninsured of our community. However, your column on Tuesday, September 8th went too far.
Not all conservatives and Republicans oppose and/or “attack” Obama because he is black and we are a bunch of racists. That broad brush is untrue and grossly unfair to those of us who only want what we believe is best for our nation. Of course, there are those whose opposition is based upon race. I believe they are a small minority and are just like the wacko leftist nut jobs that relentlessly attacked George W. Bush and called him “crazy”, “stupid”, a “fascist”, “a liar”, a “war criminal”, etc. I can’t remember anyone in the media defending Bush and telling the leftwing nuts to “get over it”.
You made a statement that I disagree with, that “he has done nothing to justify the outrage we are seeing”. Where have you been living for the last seven months? Here is a list of just a few things that he has done:
• He has irresponsibly initiated the largest expansion of government in history while during the campaign called for fiscal responsibility, but once in office has given us a $1.8 trillion dollar deficit and has placed our nation on an unsustainable course towards bankruptcy.
• He has broken many of his campaign promises. He says “no earmarks in my administration”, yet signs a stimulus and budget bill that is loaded with thousands of “pork” projects. He says “no lobbyists in my administration”, yet has appointed at least 12 of them to key positions.
• He has nationalized GM and Chrysler, while saying in public that he doesn’t want to run a car company, and has nationalized AIG and several of our largest banks. Oh, by the way, where in the constitution does it allow him to do this? Now, he wants to nationalize our health care system. If you don’t think so, go back and listen to some of his speeches over the last several years. They’re on the internet for all to see. In one of those he even stated that a public option is just the first step towards a national health care system.
• He has demonstrated his lack of respect for our constitution. In an interview in 2004 while running for the Senate said that our constitution is “a fundamentally flawed document” (his words, not mine). He wants a Supreme Court with “empathy”. Whatever happened to the notion that justice should be “blind” and treat all people fairly and in accordance with the law?
• He travels around the world apologizing to our enemies and adversaries, while dangerously criticizing our allies, such as, Israel.
• He has endangered the safety and security of our nation by systematically destroying the capability of our intelligence services to do their job and by releasing classified information on how we go about gathering our intelligence. He tells the public that he doesn’t want to investigate and prosecute our CIA agents for what they might have done wrong while interrogating terrorists, but allows his Justice Secretary to do the dirty work for him in order to appease his leftist base.
• He has cut or made significant reductions in a number of vital defense programs, such as, missile defense, while our enemies in Iran and North Korea continue their relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons and to build long-range missiles that are capable of striking the United States. Obama and his foreign policy advisors live in a fantasy world that, mark my words, will have negative consequences in the future. Appeasement and weakness throughout history have always led to trouble.
Is Obama a radical, a socialist, or a Marxist? It has often been said that you are known by the company that you keep and Obama has throughout his life surrounded himself with anti-American radicals and extremists. He has appointed Van Jones, an avowed communist, and Carol Browner, a member of Socialist International to key advisor positions, along with extremist John Holdren, who once proposed that forced sterilization and abortions be used to control population growth. There is Ezekiel Emmanuel, his health advisor, who has proposed a “complete Lives system” that would place an economic value on a person based on age and would withhold (ration) health care services to people based on their future ability to contribute to “society”. Yes, Mr. Obama is a radical, a socialist, and most likely a Marxist, who has always surrounded himself with other radicals and extremists, such as, Marxists Saul Alinsky, the self-proclaimed terrorist William Ayers, and Rev. Jeremiah Wright who preached Marxist African liberation theology. If Obama did not agree with the radical agenda of these people, then why did he associate with them all those many years and why has he appointed many of them to key positions in the White House? Would you not be attacking George Bush if he appointed a former or current member of the KKK to a position in his administration? Then, why are you silent now when Obama appoints men and women who seeks to destroy our nation and our constitutional form of government?
I do not know what ministers you are talking about that supposedly “call for him to die and go to hell”. This of course is totally wrong and not the Christian thing to do. I have not read anything or found anything on the internet from a church or minister that has said something that is this terrible. I know that there are some crazy people out there that distort God’s teaching for their own purposes, both on the right and the left of the political spectrum. Neither of them are right in doing so.
I, for one, pray for Obama and his family every single day. I pray for his safety, for God to grant him wisdom, and for him to govern with honesty and integrity, and to always do what is in accordance with God’s will. I also pray that if he refuses to listen to God’s wisdom and to do the right thing, that God thwart and block his plans and prevent him from doing wrong. By the way, this is the same prayer that I said every day while George W. Bush was our president.
No, Ms. Davis, the vast majority of conservatives and Republicans don’t oppose Obama because he is black, but rather we oppose him because of what he is trying to do to our nation. We now know what he means when he says that he wants to “fundamentally transform America” and we genuinely believe that he is on the wrong road, one that will bring us to destruction and not to peace, prosperity, and hope for the future.
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