I should know better than to read the letters to the editor in the Star-Telegram. It’s like the editors pick the MOST loony letters sent in each week in order to illustrate just how crazy both sides can be.
Take this one for example:
Scares liberals
Gov. Sarah Palin is a Christian. She is a strong supporter of her family. She is a moral person. She thinks killing babies is a poor form of birth control.
She thinks government should be of the people. She thinks Washington politics should be free from graft. She thinks we should be free from being held hostage by foreign oil-producing countries. She thinks terrorists should be dealt with harshly. She thinks the people of this country should elect the president, not Hollywood or the media.
Palin is everything liberals hate.
— Joe Cole, Weatherford
What an insanely ridiculous and simplistic string of assertions and implications that because Palin is supposedly “for” these things that so-called “liberals” are against them.
Barack Obama is a Christian, so is Joe Biden. Both men are strong supporters of their families (Biden was a single dad for a while, does that make him better than Palin?). Barack Obama and Joe Biden are presumably moral persons. I have no evidence (and I’m certain Mr. Cole doesn’t either) that they’re not. Both have made mistakes in the past, but that doesn’t make you immoral, just flawed. Barack Obama and Joe Biden think killing babies is a horrible form of birth control. In fact, it can’t even be classified as a form of birth control, because killing babies after they’re born isn’t exactly “birth control.”
Obama/Biden think government should be of the people, but I’m guessing those people are different people than Mr. Cole wants. Obama/Biden think Washington politics should be free from graft — who’s ever come out in favor of graft? Obama/Biden think we should be free from not only being held hostage by foreign oil producing countries, but also by domestic oil producers. Why can’t otherwise smart people grasp the concept of MOVING THE FUCK OFF OF OIL?!? (sorry mom) Obama/Biden think that terrorists should be dealt with harshly — Obama supports pursuing them across the border into Pakistan when there’s actionable intelligence, a position that McCain rejects and calls “naive.” (Side topic: When you’re a warmonger, every problem looks like the only solution is war. Terrorism is a CRIMINAL ACT, carried out by non-state actors. Our military is not equipped or trained to fight terrorism, nor are they the appropriate people to be doing it legally or from a policy standpoint. The FBI/CIA should be doing their JOBS and working with our allies in the region to flush out the terrorists, and THEN maybe we could look at military strikes.) Obama/Biden think that the people of this country should elect the president, not Hollywood or the media — the last time I checked, “Hollywood and the media” have WAY fewer votes than “the people of this country.”
I do agree on one point though — Palin is everything liberals hate. She’s a poseur, a small-town mayor (or a small-state governor) who stumbled into the governorship and now presumes that she can hold the second highest office in the land because she “didn’t blink” when she was asked. I’m sorry, but I expect more of the people who run for the highest offices in our democracy. Obama may be lacking experience, but he certainly isn’t lacking intellect or education, two areas that so far Gov. Palin has demonstrated are not her strong suit. She also apparently can’t see past religious dogma when framing her policies, and that’s simply unacceptable.
Everyone who tells you that this is the most important election in history is exactly right. Never before has our country faced such a defining and definite choice: Do we want to continue on our path of glorifying willful ignorance and irrational stubbornness, or do we want to expect more from our leaders and demand that they apply intellect and reason to problems instead of dogmatic homilies and simplistic answers?
The choice is ours — I hope we get it right.
Join the Conversation!