August 31, 2008
Words matter, speeches can change America; both are tools of great leadership. Leadership that has been absent these last eight years with a seemingly illiterate Administration.
Slogans sell. Remember “Remember the Alamo?”; “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too”; “The New Deal”; “The New Frontier”; and “The Great Society.”
Then there are the great quotations: “Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security”; “A day that will live in infamy”; “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. (Eisenhower).”
“A day that will live in infamy” ---allowed FDR to move a very unwilling and completely unready nation to war in World War Two.
Remember a “uniter not a divider”; compassionate conservative”, “I don’t believe in nation-building and won’t get involved in foreign entanglements”---famous words of George W. Bush that many people believed in and became the real basis of their vote in 2000. Things that can be proven today to be totally untrue about a leader some thought was ready to lead. Yet, you fell for them, hook, line and sinker.
"The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie - deliberate and dishonest --- but the myth - persistent and persuasive....." - John F. Kennedy.
Words did matter for Barack Obama in every one of his 45 minute speeches, when the Neoconservatives picked out a sound byte and held it against him. In dozens of speeches so inspiring that they will guide history---they stand almost forgotten on his website. Worse yet, a small group of greedy right-wing self-interested anti-patriots can destroy our hopes, our dreams, and the change we can believe in by running ads with their carefully crafted sound bytes. Our hopes, our dreams, and the change we can believe in are the central core of the Obama campaign.
A theme echoed some 40 years earlier: "Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not." - Senator Robert F. Kennedy; 1968 Presidential Campaign.
Obama’s opponents dismiss him as a novice and unready; and even level the ridiculous charge of him being an elitist. Yet, the same was said of another President: “The free society who do not take care of its many who are poor will not be able to save it’s few who are rich.” - John F. Kennedy.
John McCain is a rebel not a maverick. A rebel is one that seeks to destroy the system and not work from within.
Sincerely,
William Henry Mee
Santa Fe, New Mexico
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