Sunday, November 9, 2008

The reign of the vulgar gives way to a wise gentleman.






“It is a demand of justice that there should be a reasonable correspondence between the social hierarchy and the natural hierarchy “Leo Strauss, 1968.

This has in part been, the premise of neo-conservatism as adapted by Irving Kristol the godfather of neo-conservatism and father of Bill Kristol of the weekly Standard, that those who have gained through inherited wealth the most opportunity to education and financial success, have a higher right to rule and govern the affairs of the nation.

Much further neo-conservatism at its core demands a preservation of social and economic inequality through taxation and limited government expenditure on social programs. The outrage of conservatives like Bill Kristol and Sean Hannity, at the prospect of an Obama presidency is explicitly rooted in the fear perceived or real of the demise of this inequality.

While, I embrace some conservative values such as preserving personal freedoms especially with to respect to religion and family; I find reprehensible the conservative agenda to maintain extreme economic disparity through the use of tax policies and government budgets.
The unifying of all Americans was first credited to Republican President Abraham Lincoln; however it is the current  Republican Party that uses its taxation policy to maintain economic and social disempowerment. It disproportionately impacts minorities, especially African Americans given their history.
The Republican Party has always formulated tax policies that favor the protection of wealth over the accumulation of wealth. While Republican tax policy has protected income from inherited wealth by enacting zero or minimal tax rates for estate, capital and dividends taxes they have subjected income from labor (i.e. income and personal) to higher taxes.

In the last two months I have volunteered my time and money to the Obama campaign, because I believe, the Obama Presidency is certain to turn part of the conservative paradigm on its head. First the belief that the privilege to rule is the preserve of the elite and second that the free market should disproportionately reward wealth more than work.

It is not that I want affirmative action or communism, but as President Elect Obama has articulated, pragmatism in the way government taxes and spends public money.
Republicans in the past have attempted to starve government, by cutting taxes and social programs, the beast (Govt.) they claimed was demanding more, more and swallowing every resource. This spanned well, when government did not have the burden of wars or infrastructure development, now the Iraq and Afghan wars plus the repair costs of crumbling infrastructure has outstripped government income. The Republicans would have the middle class bear the brunt of funding the federal budget and expand expenditure through war expenses while resisting increases on capital gains or estate taxes.

The two bizarre celebrities that emerged from the Presidential race, Sarah Palin and Joe the plumber exposed the underlining hypocrisy of this conservative agenda.
Conservatives took two people, who in truth should have been held out as victims or the resultants of the failed conservative policies but they held Sarah and Joe as the embodiment of conservatism. When both begun to show cracks and disintegrated before a national audience, it was the last nail, we needed before burying the caricature the ideology has become.
Sarah Palin it turned out was an example of past and future results of  children left behind / home schooling policy that fails to fill the enormous knowledge and funding  gaps because Republicans have withheld federal funds to provide schools and parents more resources.
Joe the plumber is neither the entrepreneur nor the limited government proponent they made him out to be: in fact he is not even licensed to work as plumber and has been a recipient of government social program benefits.

So what will the reign of the forty-fourth President look like?

President Elect Obama has broad, almost unprecedented support; he embodies the diversity of America and the world both figuratively and literally perhaps this why most people feel a personal connection. He has offered to put government on the side of working people, to give the middle class a tax relief and expand opportunity for social and economic empowerment to all.
His outlook and governing philosophy lends confidence to social and economic policies that will bring into the mainstream, those Americans that have existed on fringes of America's social  progression over the last hundred years.

Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House--a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity.
Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, "We are not enemies, but friends ... though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection." And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn--I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president too.” President Elect Barack Obama
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