If it's not apparent to you, you're not paying attention. The republican agenda, and philosophy of most modern American conservatives, is based entirely in response to new deal democrats. Oooh they hate us sooo much. How dare we force hard working executives to give back to those free-loaders down on the line. That's why they pick the Sarah Palins when a women loses, and Michael Steele when a black man wins. And this response has created a party that is disgustingly disillusioned, and dangerous to a progressive future.
Modern conservative thought flies in the face of all established belief amongst the greatest thinkers in history, including the lord of the religion they claim to follow. Jesus, Buddha, Mohamed, and Confucius; all agree that the way to an enlightened society is to strive for something bigger than ourselves.
To believe their mindless babble a conservative must go to great lengths to justify their greed and heartlessness. Lindsay Graham hates earmarks but uses them frequently. Rush Limbaugh has been divorced twice but rails in defense of marriage's sanctity. Gay bashers are gay. And worthless bank executives foreclose on thousands of homes but coming running when the hammer's coming down on them.
They don't stand for personal responsibility. They just don't want to be responsible for YOU. They don't stand up for smaller government. They don't want government helping the poor. They think poor is by choice and they are certainly not giving up their hard-earned money to help out those bums on main street. And for all their professed patriotism, they sure do seem close to secession... again.
I fear your revolution, patriot. You revolt against the brotherhood of man. Your is a reformation against knowledge. Your cause is self-interest, and your enemy is the universal right to the pursuit of happiness.
To the conservative it is a sin for companies to sacrifice a little short term profit to provide a quality product at a decent price. That's disloyal to the shareholders. Teachers are only in it to put forth a liberal agenda. Artists create works for the money. And unions should shut up and take pay cuts when the companies going bad, but executives need us to stand up for their contracts when they run it into the ground. Oh, wait, most house republicans ended up voting to tax the contracts anyway.
The neocon transformers want us liberals to be their bogeyman. They want to scare you with stories of socialism. But we will not apologize for a literate society, a 70 year life span, a car in every garage, and highways from New York, to San Francisco, and even to Freedom, Ohio. We take pride in Universal Suffrage, and we relish in the scientific revolution. Liberal spending put a man on the moon and it will one day mine asteroids and explore deep space. And we will not back down from that.
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Alternative EnergySource: David Apperson
url: http://veterans.barackobama.com/page/community/tag/alternative-energy
I was raised to think that fidgeting, shouting and mopping one’s brow when speaking in public was unrefined. My mom only meant to teach me how to act, but her instructions left me judgmental of other cultures and styles. I squirmed with her when Elvis Presley gyrated and grunted and sweated. Together we hated Hitler’s rants, and shrank in dismay from Khrushchev’s noisy shoe. Loud, angry, confrontive voices still do nothing for me. They feel rude and threatening. And I’m not alone in this.
Maybe it’s my Calvinist streak, but I like my leaders calm, cool, and collected, like my man Barack Obama. To be sure, I would wager that Barack could make any congregation anywhere jump out of the aisles and pour into the streets anytime he wanted, as Jeremiah Wright can. And certainly Reverend Wright, a caring if conflicted Christian, has demonstrated on Bill Moyers's show that he can do scholarly and cerebral analysis along with the best of them.
I was also raised to be snobbish about grammar and diction. But people learn to speak however their families speak. Changing one’s everyday speech is an unimaginably arduous, individualized, time-consuming transformation not "covered" in English classes. Nowadays, many pop and sports celebrities who've won fame with colorful urban dialects will hire highly-trained linguistic coaches to give them personalized instruction in accent, vocabulary, grammar, and cultural modifications.
Every human being alive would like to be able to switch occasionally into more felicitous professional, business and academic English dialects should occasion arise, especially if one's dialect reflects a limited, impoverished or unlettered childhood. People are just more comfortable being around people who sound like them; fewer doors slam shut, and more open. Unconscious linguistic prejudices may not always be deliberate, but they’re very real and very limiting.
I can assure you that if Barack started writhing and sweating and screaming street slang in my face, I wouldn’t be able to focus on his logical argument. No, I’d be too worried about whether he was in good-enough physical shape to let himself get so worked up, or if he might be about to have a heart attack, or fall off the stage, or embarrass himself linguistically, chase somebody around the room maybe, or shoot somebody.
And if people around me, black or white, start to sway and wave their arms and call out and fall out? Well, I’m just not used to that. There’s nothing wrong with such choices, but people in my stuffy childhood churches just didn’t do those things. Where I came from, such behavior was considered, dare I say it, uncivilized, primitive, even tribal. But what's so wonderfully “civilized” about a culture with a long sad secret record of exploiting and even obliterating other, weaker cultures? Civilization is as civilization does. I like the way people from so-called "primitive" southern-hemisphere cultures so generously share their time, money, warmth and help with one another. That kind of behavior sounds like pretty advanced-civ to me, more advanced in many ways than the often cold, hostile, lonely, so-called "modern" cultures of today. Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of western civilization, said he thought it would be a good idea.
All I'm saying is, there is no one single “way” to "be" that is universally “right.” All cultures, young and old, techy and traditional, have much to learn from one another, and much to teach. I’m finally getting used to all the shouting and signifying so many people delight in, and I certainly know there’s nothing wrong with it. My kids love the loud emotional unity of rock concerts, and even I have a bit of the wild thing in me at times. But my mom’s early strictures insured that I wouldn’t come around easily to accepting other people’s different stylistic expressions. It’s all about what you’re used to.
But it’s not, as my mom believed, about what is “nice” or “right" or "correct" or even "appropriate," because styles vary from culture to culture. It's about different ways of being civilized (and uncivilized.) And it's about holding to the highest standard of respect and support for human life everywhere, the Golden Rule of treating all others as we would want to be treated. It's certainly not about some picky stylistic stuff.
I was a military brat, so my far-flung army-post classrooms were racially-integrated long before the civil rights movement nudged America toward living up to more of its ideals. My classmates were pretty much all courteous, well-spoken, middle-class students of a remarkable variety of races, because in those days, the military establishment required cultural, stylistic and linguistic conformity. Non-white families could find reasonable welcome in the military if (and only if) they could demonstrate that, aside from skin color, they weren’t any different from most middle-class whites. All my classmates back then, regardless of race, seemed indistinguishably mainstream.
I didn’t grow up around many poor or uneducated people, or around any charismatic preachers and congregations, for that matter, although happily, I've had broader exposure to the world’s diversity since then, thanks in part to more representative television programming. I try to remind myself that my own carefully-taught class and race prejudices are limitations I want to remedy, both as a Christian and as a caring citizen of the world. Fortunately for me, I’ve been privileged in adulthood to spend time with good, patient people from all backgrounds, and have become comfortable with a broader range of personal styles.
Like everyone else, I acquired my own personal and linguistic styles from my parents, peers, and “neighborhood.” My family was a WASPy, bookish clan which gifted lucky-me (through no particular effort on my own) with a style and dialect acceptable in most circles. But there are many other delightfully valid ways of being an American swirling around me today in this great country—native and immigrant styles from all over, academic and business styles, hip-hop and Hispanic, inner-city and down-home country, Islamic, Asian, Caribbean, and a whole slew of other newly-blended personal styles I can’t begin to keep up with, but my kids can.
But the thing about personal style is, nowadays, it’s a positive, fluid thing, individual, unique, interesting, entertaining, and not so tied to race or ethnicity or social class as it once was. And voters are finally figuring all this out. It seems to me that despite all the fuss about the particular words that Jeremiah Wright used, demagogues replaying his sound bites over and over don’t really care what Wright thinks or means, but rather, they're bent on dividing us along prejudicial lines. The small-minded con-men guiding the anti-Obama smear campaigns are absolutely thrilled to jump on any available excuse to show us ad nauseum how Barack once befriended a black man whose personal style makes a lot of voters uncomfortable.
The hucksters replaying such tapes are hoping white voters will conclude that “those people” “like Barack” are different from “us,” that "we" will think we have little in common with "them, " that Barack won’t understand us and can’t represent our interests. Dirty politicians manipulate our unconscious racism so that we will see only difference, separation and error, instead of our many commonalities, our shared American dreams and challenges.
Such politics of division, hate and fear have a long successful history of convincing Americans time and again to vote against their own best interests. But as Barack keeps reminding us, American voters are smarter than that now. We’re becoming more enlightened, more open-minded and inclusive, more loving.
Smears-by-association can no longer distract us for long from the common pressing issues we all face, the real threats which ignore borders and cannot be solved competitively, but only through global cooperation, like a faltering economy, a culture of violence, costly wars, growing energy demands, poverty, political corruption, inadequate access to education, weapons proliferation, organized crime, infectious disease, poor health care, environmental degradation, mass migrations, crumbling infrastructure, pornography, homelessness, natural disasters, addictions, injustice, hopelessness, hunger, greed, prejudice, civic alienation, and apathy itself.
Americans are finally seeing the relevance and possibility inherent in the American ideals which Jesus, Jefferson, Lincoln, Gandhi, King, Mandela and so many other great leaders have urged upon us with one voice. We are finally turning away from the mean-spirited thinking which created all our problems in the first place, and toward the higher shared consciousness of universal brotherhood that alone will save us and our tiny blue planet.
As Mike said, today represents a tragic anniversary for our country. Through his faith, courage, and wisdom, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. moved an entire nation. He preached the gospel of brotherhood; of equality and justice. That's the cause for which he lived - and for which he died forty years ago today. And so before we begin, I ask you to join me in a moment of silence in memory of this extraordinary American.
There's been a lot of discussion this week about how Dr. King's life and legacy speak to us today. It's taking place in our schools and churches, on television and around the dinner table. And I suspect that much of what folks are talking about centers on issues of racial justice - on the Montgomery bus boycott and the March on Washington, on the freedom rides and the stand at Selma.
And that's as it should be - because those were times when ordinary men and women, straight-backed and clear-eyed, challenged what they knew was wrong and helped perfect our union. And they did so in large part because Dr. King pointed the way.
But I also think it's worth reflecting on what Dr. King was doing in Memphis, when he stepped onto that motel balcony on his way out for dinner.
And what he was doing was standing up for struggling sanitation workers. For years, these workers had served their city without complaint, picking up other people's trash for little pay and even less respect. Passers-by would call them "walking buzzards," and in the segregated South, most were forced to use separate drinking fountains and bathrooms.
But in 1968, these workers decided they'd had enough, and over 1,000 went on strike. Their demands were modest - better wages, better benefits, and recognition of their union. But the opposition was fierce. Their vigils were met with handcuffs. Their protests turned back with mace. And at the end of one march, a 16-year old boy lay dead.
This is the struggle that brought Dr. King to Memphis. It was a struggle for economic justice, for the opportunity that should be available to people of all races and all walks of life. Because Dr. King understood that the struggle for economic justice and the struggle for racial justice were really one - that each was part of a larger struggle "for freedom, for dignity, and for humanity." So long as Americans were trapped in poverty, so long as they were being denied the wages, benefits, and fair treatment they deserved - so long as opportunity was being opened to some but not all - the dream that he spoke of would remain out of reach.
And on the eve of his death, Dr. King gave a sermon in Memphis about what the movement there meant to him and to America. And in tones that would prove eerily prophetic, Dr. King said that despite the threats he'd received, he didn't fear any man, because he had been there when Birmingham aroused the conscience of this nation. And he'd been there to see the students stand up for freedom by sitting in at lunch counters. And he'd been there in Memphis when it was dark enough to see the stars, to see the community coming together around a common purpose. So Dr. King had been to the mountaintop. He had seen the Promised Land. And while he knew somewhere deep in his bones that he would not get there with us, he knew that we would get there.
He knew it because he had seen that Americans have "the capacity," as he said that night, "to project the 'I' into the 'thou.'" To recognize that no matter what the color of our skin, no matter what faith we practice, no matter how much money we have - no matter whether we are sanitation workers or United States Senators - we all have a stake in one another, we are our brother's keeper, we are our sister's keeper, and "either we go up together, or we go down together."
And when he was killed the following day, it left a wound on the soul of our nation that has yet to fully heal. And in few places was the pain more pronounced than in Indianapolis, where Robert Kennedy happened to be campaigning. And it fell to him to inform a crowded park that Dr. King had been killed. And as the shock turned toward anger, Kennedy reminded them of Dr. King's compassion, and his love. And on a night when cities across the nation were alight with violence, all was quiet in Indianapolis.
In the dark days after Dr. King's death, Coretta Scott King pointed out the stars. She took up her husband's cause and led a march in Memphis. But while those sanitation workers eventually got their union contract, the struggle for economic justice remains an unfinished part of the King legacy. Because the dream is still out of reach for too many Americans. Just this morning, it was announced that more Americans are unemployed now than at any time in years. And all across this country, families are facing rising costs, stagnant wages, and the terrible burden of losing a home.
Part of the problem is that for a long time, we've had a politics that's been too small for the scale of the challenges we face. This is something I spoke about a few weeks ago in a speech I gave in Philadelphia. And what I said was that instead of having a politics that lives up to Dr. King's call for unity, we've had a politics that's used race to drive us apart, when all this does is feed the forces of division and distraction, and stop us from solving our problems.
That is why the great need of this hour is much the same as it was when Dr. King delivered his sermon in Memphis. We have to recognize that while we each have a different past, we all share the same hopes for the future - that we'll be able to find a job that pays a decent wage, that there will be affordable health care when we get sick, that we'll be able to send our kids to college, and that after a lifetime of hard work, we'll be able to retire with security. They're common hopes, modest dreams. And they're at the heart of the struggle for freedom, dignity, and humanity that Dr. King began, and that it is our task to complete.
You know, Dr. King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but that it bends toward justice. But what he also knew was that it doesn't bend on its own. It bends because each of us puts our hands on that arc and bends it in the direction of justice.
So on this day - of all days - let's each do our part to bend that arc.
Let's bend that arc toward justice.
Let's bend that arc toward opportunity.
Let's bend that arc toward prosperity for all.
And if we can do that and march together - as one nation, and one people - then we won't just be keeping faith with what Dr. King lived and died for, we'll be making real the words of Amos that he invoked so often, and "let justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."
James Taylor -Shed A Little Light
Let us turn our thoughts today To martin luther king And recognize that there are ties between us All men and women Living on the earth Ties of hope and love Sister and brotherhood That we are bound together In our desire to see the world become A place in which our children Can grow free and strong We are bound together By the task that stands before us And the road that lies ahead We are bound and we are bound There is a feeling like the clenching of a fist There is a hunger in the center of the chest There is a passage through the darkness and the mist And though the body sleeps the heart will never rest (chorus) Shed a little light, oh lord So that we can see Just a little light, oh lord Wanna stand it on up Stand it on up, oh lord Wanna walk it on down Shed a little light, oh lord Can't get no light from the dollar bill Don't give me no light from a tv screen When I open my eyes I wanna drink my fill From the well on the hill There is a feeling like the clenching of a fist There is a hunger in the center of the chest There is a passage through the darkness and the mist And though the body sleeps the heart will never rest Oh, let us turn our thoughts today To martin luther king And recognize that there are ties between us All men and women Living on the earth Ties of hope and love Sister and brotherhood
This group is independently created by and for individual fraternity brothers and is NOT endorsed by Delta Sigma Pi. It is in no way an official arm of the Fraternity. Now that we've made the Central Office happy.....
This group is for any brother who sees the spark of sincerity and real world intelligence in Senator Obama. Our brotherhood is founded upon the precepts of business, but we also hold dear those values that Obama himself embodies.
Senator Obama is a unifying influence for the country - his life has been defined by helping the common man and building bridges among typically conflicting ideals. He doesn't waste time attacking those who don't agree with him - rather, he uses his energy to continually learn from those opposing viewpoints and find common ground.
In these ways and more, Obama mirrors our own fraternal values.
