I Am Voting for This Man
18 03 2008on the strength of the first few minutes of his live address on humans and history as complex, connected, both good and bad. This may be the most intelligent political speech I’ve ever heard, a speech that leaves ME speechless . . .now that’s what I call “shock and awe.”
UPDATE: Full transcript here.
Image credit: Flickr’s barackobama.com
UPDATE 1:44pm Liza at Culture Kitchen.
“We can come together and say, ‘Not this time.’ ”
. . .This time we want to talk about whites and blacks and hispanics who don’t have the power on their own, to overcome the special interests in Washington. . .every religion, every walk of life.
“The men and women of every color and creed, who fight together and bleed together under the same proud flag. . .”
This union may never be perfect but [this is what the vast majority wants] — my hope is in the next generation. . .“
The homeschooling community btw, has always had the same problem coming together — due to the same underlying differences in world view, experience and belief — that the larger citizenship has long suffered. And I’ve long felt the same mixed way about “homeschooling” as my identity, that Obama feels about his mixed racial identity.
Here’s the part of “homeschooling” that I renounce and repudiate: both of the national “legal defense” organizations for homeschool freedom and education choice are ideologically pure, not mixed at ALL. Both are generally Christian conservative in world view, although one positions itself as more libertarian politically than the other.
If you personally believe in choice and change and progress, diversity and social justice and the U.S. Constitution, imperfect though it is, in reason and science and the power of the individual human mind to think, to help ourselves do better together right here on earth — then you can let that define your homeschooling, rather than allowing the patriarchal Christofascist conservatism so politically dominant in defining every homeschool conversation, to define YOU.
I plan to vote for him too. I hope he’s on the ballot.
I can’t help him with that!
I’m plenty old enough and now women have the vote, but I’m not registered for party primary participation, and even if I were a thoroughbred Democrat, my mixed identity (as a Floridian) disenfranchises me.
From the transcript — my quotes above were typed out fast as I heard them, live blogging:
“We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words.
We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies. We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction, and then another one, and then another one.
And nothing will change. . .”
Complex? A pol who can pull off complex? Damn, that’s almost enough right there. I missed the speech as I was in babyland today but thanks for the transcript link.
Nance
Jeffrey Toobin on CNN with Wolf just said it for me: this was superb, one of the smartest speeches a politician has given, etc - and like me — Rolfe too! — Toobin is no slouch, thoughtful, complex and certainly no party hack.
So maybe this will actually wind up dividing America by intellect? [tongue-sticking-out emoticon]
[...] JJ Ross at Cocking a Snook!: I Am Voting for This Man [...]
Hey! My guy Toobin will be in town tomorrow!
http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/leadershipboard.html?category=25
Kind of cool and fun.
Nance
What’s this now, about his passport file being breached??
I love that it was this speech Richardson credited with moving him to that amazing endorsement. Me too, Bill, me too.
On embracing mixed heritage without throwing any part of it under the bus, listen to NPR’s “This I Believe: A Musician of Many Cultures”
[...] labels for myself. Why I won’t play party politics and haven’t for decades. And why my support for Barack Obama is basically in spite of his party’s support, not because of [...]