Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Michelle Obama: "For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country."

She said it twice.

Barack and Michelle Obama do not understand that something is very right about America.

Barack's margin of victory in Wisconsin is a big story. It means Barack is the frontrunner for the Dem nomination.

However, Michelle Obama's offering a peek inside her own philosophy is a bigger story. It means Barack will not win the Presidency in November. Her philosophical exposition will come up again, and again, and again; for weeks and weeks; for months and months. It is a defining moment. It will be talked about over coffee and over lunch. It might even propel Hillary to the Dem nomination.

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Michelle Obama got into Princeton, despite what she describes as not the best entrance exam score, because Princeton wanted to give her a helping hand. Yet she sees nothing to be proud of in America.

Middle class Michelle Obama got into Harvard Law School. Yet she sees nothing to be proud of in America.

Michelle Obama parlayed Princeton and Harvard into a job at the powerful Chicago firm Sidley and Austin, and also into becoming a high ranking official at the University of Chicago. Michelle Obama is now a 44 year old millionaire. Yet, until Americans began supporting Barack's Presidential candidacy, she saw nothing to be proud of in America.

On Barack's part: his call for "change", and the examples he chooses to illustrate his call, amount to an in-our-face assertion that something is very wrong with America. Barack and Michelle do not understand something most Americans do understand: something is very right about America.

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Human beings have a natural tendency to say:
something is very wrong here. I just have a feeling something is very wrong(about a situation, or about life, or about whatever).
The explanation, I think, is this: Our souls know a perfect existence which is not available to us in our current existence. We sense glimpses of what our souls know: love, joy, satisfaction, fulfillment, truth, beauty, excellence, perfection which is beyond description(the perfect curve of a child's ear). Yet, our existence is not perfect. We sense perfect; we exist in imperfect; we therefore say: something is very wrong here.

A person who is enlightened, or transformed, or religiously inspired or evolved, might say:
Something is very right here! Something is very right about the design of this dimension of existence. Something is very right about the difficulty of the task before me, for it creates opportunity to rise to the occasion, and to display greatness. Something is very right about pain and suffering, for it draws us closer to God, and it delineates joy and pleasure for our benefit. Something is very right about want, for it defines the blessing of fulfillment. Something is very right about fear, for it defines the blessing of it's opposite, which is love(according to Stephen Pressfield, author of Gates of Fire).
American conservatives, more often than American liberals, make this leap of perspective:

from
something is very wrong about existence;
to
something is very right about existence.

Liberals generally believe pain and suffering and injustice exist because classic principles and values and religions and governments have failed. Their solution is to institute new and superior principles and values and governments.

Conservatives generally believe pain and suffering and injustice exist because that is the natural and proper design of existence. Pain and suffering and injustice will always be with us. Conservatives believe imperfect man fails his principles and his values and his religion; his principles and values and religion do not fail him.

From these opposite liberal and conservative foundations, it's not even a full step to the conversation of

something is very wrong about America
vs.
something is very right about America.

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Barack and Michelle Obama embrace liberalism point by point by point, and proposition by proposition by proposition. The liberal prescription is to institute something newer and smarter than what America's Founding Fathers had in mind. Those ancient men were not as wise as Reid, Pelosi, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the American Bar Association.

Barack and Michelle do not understand that something is very right about America. Barack is not ready. He may never be. Like a girl who always gets by on her looks, and never has to develop as a person: Barack may never have to develop as a thinker.

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