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J.C. (Baltimore, MD)

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A blog for an open-minded and open-ended discussion about Barack Obama's campaign for President and what it means for America.

A Different Political Tradition

By J.C. - Mar 15th, 2007 at 2:04 pm EDT

From The Federalist, No. 78 (Hamilton) on why it is important to stand up for minorities (whether in terms of race, class, language, gender, sexual orientation, et al.): "no [person] can be sure that he may not be to-morrow the victim of a spirit of injustice, by which he may be a gainer to-day. And every [person] must now feel, that the inevitable tendency of such a spirit is to sap the foundations of public and private confidence, and to introduce in its stead universal distrust and distress."

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On Education

By J.C. - Mar 13th, 2007 at 1:02 pm EDT

While more resources are needed, "there is a strong values-and-character component to educational achievement," Obama said. "To deny that is to deny reality, and I don't want to cede that reality to conservatives who use it as an excuse to underfund the schools. ... Sometimes people think that when we talk about values, that somehow that's making a 'lift yourself up by your own bootstraps' argument and letting the larger society off the hook. That's why I always emphasize that we need both individual responsibility and mutual responsibility."

The cultural values of "educational achievement and delayed gratification and intergenerational responsibility and hard work and entrepreneurship" produce success, he said, but "if a child is raised in a disorderly environment with inadequate health care and guns going off late at night, then it's a lot harder to incorporate those values. We as a society can take responsibility for creating conditions in which those cultural attributes are enhanced."

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