Robert Klein Engler
Robert Klein Engler lives in Chicago, and is a graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School. His book, ''A Winter of Words,'' about turmoil at Daley College, is available from amazon.com.
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The Obamination of Change
Illinois Senator Obama's campaign to become President of the United States uses the slogan "Change We Can Believe In." Think on These Things, a research, commentary and news webpage claims, "Barack Obama is 'change we can believe in' because we don't have to wait to see if he will say and accomplish something different when he becomes president."
The candidate himself has said, "In the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it." Was Senator Obama referring here to those citizens who want to secure our borders, abolish abortion on demand, and roll back the campaign for gay marriage?
It is unfortunate that so many of his young supporters have come to believe in this man as a source of change. Instead, these young supporters should ask themselves two questions. If Senator Obama is so intelligent, why is he a liberal Democrat? Also, what will it take for these young supporters to change their minds and support a conservative candidate?
The change Senator Obama's campaign promotes is not the change that comes from a healthy life in motion. It is, instead, the change represented by a dead body as it putrefies. The young supporters of Senator Obama, with all their desire for something new, are actually working for a candidate inspired by the dead ideas of the 60s.
The Hegelians among us could argue that history repeats itself: the first time is tragedy and the second time is comedy. Even with all his talk of change, Obama's campaign could be the comedic return of Eugene McCarthy's tragic political campaign of the 60s.
Most liberals and many Democrats in the United States are still fighting the old battles of the 60s. The media uses the civil rights template, too, when they discuss politics, especially Democratic politics. What they cannot admit is that the civil rights movement of the 1960s is dead.
Rap and hip-hop, Affirmative Action, and militant Islam are just some examples of how we have moved to a new place. The old ideas of the 1960s will not work here. Those eight-track tapes do not play on your iPod, either.
Other old ideas include the segregation and plantation politics practiced by most Democratic regimes that run our largest cities. Has it ever occurred to Senator Obama, the senator from Illinois, how the political party that supports him also keeps Chicago one of the most segregated cities in the nation? Once the Democrats figured out that segregation is the key to minority votes in urban areas, the party talked the talk of integration, but never walked the walk.
The traditional politics of change is also dead because liberalism requires us now to ignore the mess at our doorstep in favor of the mess that happens 1,000 miles away. While mass transit in Chicago is a disaster waiting to happen, liberals here worry more about alleged torture at Guantanamo.
Right now, the senator from Illinois campaigns in Iowa. He has nothing to say in regard to the budget crisis his state faces or the corruption that pervades Illinois government.
The oldest idea the Obama campaign represents is the discredited idea that moribund liberalism can change the world for the better. This is old and tired Marxism limping into the room supported by his new friend Hugo Chavez. This is the drawing room liberalism of our elites. This is the knee-jerk liberalism of our intellectuals who condemn before they know, as shown at Duke University.
Dead liberalism, not the ghost of Billy Graham, is the real specter haunting our country. This is the liberalism that is anti-religious and anti-nationalistic. The young should know that if you vote for Obama, then he will change the country so that it resembles Communist China, not the land of milk and honey.
If you are young, why do you embrace the dead ideas of the 1960s and think these ideas are new, or that these ideas can actually bring about change? Why follow Jesse Jackson, Oprah Winfrey, Green Day, or Al Sharpton if they are leading a band of zombies?
On his webpage, ObamaforChange.com, the senator has a video asking us to come together for change. There also they sell Obama for Change merchandise. A bumper sticker with the slogan "We will...we will..Barack You!" is available for $3.99.
The senator concludes his webpage video with "Please join me in changing the country." Wouldn't it be better just to work and change the old politics of segregation in Chicago? That may make the world a better place one bumper sticker at a time.
