Drunken Mystic

First of all, let me say that his speech a couple weeks ago admitting what he felt were his mistakes and being accountable to them, that was a class act and showed character.  I don’t remember the last president to do that.  Shows a lot of character for those that did.

Not good enough for the media or the Democrats, still and continually bashing the poor guy.  I mean, wow.  More on that later.

Not that Bush has been perfect in my view.  Not by a long shot.  He wasn’t clear enough on the commitment as we got into Iraq, and even Afghanistan, binding himself to a “WMD” platform that was politically damaging and just unwise.  And then, as the war and occupation continued, other mistakes were made, mostly because Bush allowed liberal criticism to impede and influence his decision making.

I also think No Child Left Behind to be the wrong step in education, placing public schools on a path of frustration, low standards, and ironically, failure.

There are some major positives from his 8 years, though.  The tax cuts averted a major recession after the Clinton years.  Bush also had to dismantle much of the federal beuracratic mess that Clinton fostered in his administration to properly deal with domestic and international terrorism.  Bush’s leadership right after 9/11 was superb and level-headed.

We weren’t attacked again, domestically, for the remainder of his presidency.

I personally thank him and respect him for his stand against abortion.  He vetoed partial birth abortion (I think I did a little dance on that day) and stood against scientific testing on aborted babies.

He also increased aid to Africa to help with the AIDS epidemic there, so much that they gave him a PEACE award.

We also have a more conservative and constitutionally minded Supreme Court because of the justices he nominated.

The standard of living for the poor, especially for the African American community, despite what you’ve heard and read, increased during his responsibility.

I appreciated his strong stand on some foreign policy matters, like North Korea.  Of course they cried and whined about it, and it must’ve been quite a shock after losing their best American friend in Bill Clinton, who gave North Korea more money than he did any other foreign country.  Kim Jong Il said “thank you” and made sure the common citizens saw very little of that aid.  (By the way, it was Clinton that gave NK the nuclear tech that became such an issue … smart move.)

Bush’s main fault, I think, was this: he truly believed that if he worked with Democrats, they would work with him.  He continually signed off on liberal and Democratic programs in hope of some reciprocity.

He got none.

Instead, the past 8 years have only proven that Democrats and liberals are the most hateful, vindictive, and divisive group of people in our country.  They took and twisted even the good things Bush was able to accomplish as failures.  They gave him no credit, called him names, cried a loud foul with every decision he made, and even ultimately blamed him for the weather.

And for those of you who consider yourselves Christians and were willing to treat any human being the way Bush has been treated over the last 5 or 6 years …

Shame on you.  Really.  You should be ashamed of yourself.

Over the next four years, Obama will do and say much I disagree with.  But I will disagree with him and do so without calling him names, blaming him for things that could never be his fault, or be unwilling to give him credit when credit is due.

Mr. President, you’ll probably never read this, but if you do, let me apologize on behalf of every Christian American who couldn’t be mature enough to disagree in substance but still honor you enough as a human being to give some respect to a man who served his country, for good or ill, for 8 years.

Peace.

One of the things the media continually does, giddily, is compare Obama to great presidents. One of these is Abraham Lincoln.

As is consistent with a media in love with extreme liberalism, that’s an insane comparison. If they were honest, they would compare Bush with Lincoln, for two main reasons.

First of all, Lincoln fought an unpopular war. The Civil War. You may have heard of it. Lincoln was constantly criticized for getting into the war and being the aggressor. And his main critic was (gasp!) the media. The North lost every battle in the Civil War until Gettysburg, and had Lee not made an insane stand, that unpopular war could have gone on indefinitely. Many in the North thought they should leave the South alone and let them secede.

Sound familiar?

Sherman’s slash and burn tactics through Georgia were quite nefarious and cruel by modern standards.  Some of the things the North did to get soldiers were pretty shady, too, like drafting immigrants in New York right when they got off the boat.

Also, winning the war committed the North to a sustained program of occupation that was pretty unsuccessful in some cases, as is evident in the necessity of the Civil Rights Movement through much of the South.

Of course, we don’t mention these things in popular history when talking about Lincoln.  We think of a unifying force during the Civil War (not necessarily true) and the Gettysburg Address (an afterthought of a speech soundly panned by the media).

We also have Lincoln’s stand on slavery.

Oh, you might say, that is where Obama and Lincoln are similar, racial equality and rights.

Okay, well, let’s look at what Lincoln stood for and against.

Slavery was a legal right in the South, the right to own another human being, and the rest of the country was pretty apathetic towards the whole thing, apathetic enough that it took a whole separate political party make it an issue.  Hence, the modern Republican party.

Lincoln was against a legal form of slavery that took away the human rights of a certain group of people based on a faulty idea that black people weren’t fully human, and therefore not privy to human rights.  Lincoln argued that black people were fully human and endowed with the same inalienable rights like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Lincoln, however, knew how unrealistic it was to make slavery illegal in every state, especially the South.  But he was dedicated to stopping it from spreading even further, therefore taking on the ire of many Southern Democrats.  Lincoln was able to produce the Emancipation Proclamation because the North began to win the war, and he finally had some political capital to do so.  But the Proclamation didn’t even free all the slaves, only those in the rebel South.  It took a Constitutional Amendment years later and in respect to Lincoln, to do that.

For Obama to be like Lincoln, Lincoln would have let the South secede and made slavery legal again in the North.

Bush has done the opposite, fighting an unpopular war, facing harsh criticism from the media, and fought against the spread of a legal form of taking away the inalienable right to life of a certain group of human beings, the unborn.

If anyone should be compared to Lincoln, it is Bush.

Peace.

Despite the insane giddiness expressed by many, last week was quite the historic week.

Beginning on Monday with MLK day, I’ve been trying to pull together some thoughts.  King has been one of my heroes, historically, for some time.  So what would he have thought of Obama?

Without a doubt, King would have been ecstatic about the first black president.  That achievement alone says a lot about our nation.

But what would King have thought about Obama’s policies?  Well, being a pacifist, King would have been against the War in Iraq, much as he was against Vietnam.  Being a socialist, King saw the government as the answer to many economic and social issues.  He’s with Obama there, too.

But what about abortion?  Would King have approved of the extreme policy of death that Obama is set on persuing?

Being a hero of mine, I would hope not.  But honestly … maybe.  Other civil rights leaders from the same era are completely in line with the right to kill babies today.  Would King have followed suit?  It is quite possible that he would not have.  We’ll never really know, but King stuck with non-violence even while many left him for more aggressive, divisive and violent policies.  Like Gandhi, King was a true believer in activist non-violence, even when the whole civil rights movement left him behind and attempted to marginalize him.  Would he have done the same with abortion?  We’ll never know, but I wonder.

I didn’t watch the inauguration.  I’ve never watched a live inauguration before, even when the guy I voted for won.  Why start now?  The media finally has a president they like, so they made it quite the event.

While the world seemed to party, I was a little sad.  I hope Obama does well, but we unfortunately just elected one of the most corrupt Senators in our country to preside over a major recession.  His economic and social policies will actually create poverty and selfishness (already done … check) and hurt this country.  So I wasn’t quite as happy as the celebration that encompassed the entertainment biz.

Obama hit the ground running, using his power of executive order to make some immediate noise, most notably to me, reversing Bush’s executive order that stopped using Federal funds for killing babies overseas.  Now we can.  Obama is also “reaching out” to Republicans by asking them nicely to vote for his bailout package that is full of pork and liberal kickbacks, helping few actual hurting people.  I hope the Republicans stand against it and point out the bailout/stimulus package for what it is.

Under the radar, the most extreme and extensive pro-killing babies legislation is coming forth, the Freedom of Choice Act, or FOCA, and Obama is championing it.  FOCA removes all barriers and limitations to killing an unborn baby and could even force faith-based hospitals to either kill unborn babies or lose Fed funding … and could even force doctors with moral problems with the procedure to perform an abortion.

Freedom of choice means something different to different people, I guess.

I’m praying for God’s mercy that FOCA wouldn’t pass.

Peace.