PrintJuly 17, 2008
Call Me a Proud, Scared Conservative
Since the day I visited Barack Obama's church home in Chicago last January, listened to Jeremiah Wright, read a slew of the books in the "church" bookstore and then most of what I could find on the abbreviated history of this candidate for the Presidency, I have believed that America as we now know it could completely cease to exist within a very short time under his leadership, especially with the bonus of a packed, liberal House and Senate. This is not an out-on-a-limb, slim possibility. It is, I believe, a strong probability.
Now Barack Obama is quite fond of disparaging what he has derisively labeled, "the politics of fear." Well, I'm a Mom, who has stood face to face with hordes of defiant teens and lived to tell about it, and I must say that I believe good ole fashioned "fear of God" to be one of the most beneficial and primary motivators of the human spirit.
Fear of God, fear of unpleasant consequence, fear of losing one's iPod, fear of failure, fear of taxpayer revolt, fear of public humiliation, fear of dire illness, fear of breaking one's neck, fear of prison, fear of dying. Fear of losing one's liberties. Fear of a sworn enemy. Fear of going to hell.
In its more positive form, this is called simply:
Safety First
This very positive force that innately urges all human beings to guard themselves from disasters, big and small, is one of the strongest protections we all have, and I'll not give mine up just because some fancy-dancy, highfalutin "talker" comes along and tells me it's a bad thing. And as far as I'm concerned, anyone who does bow to this Obama idiocy is fit for the loony bin and a tight-fitting straight jacket.
Or, put in another context, the former Barry Obama can have my safety-first fear when he pries it from my cold, dead hands.
What's so scary about Barry?
Well, to be honest, some of what scares me about Barry and Michelle Obama in the White House does, in fact, have a little to do with the grains of truth in that now infamous New Yorker cover, showing Obama in Muslim garb and Michelle as a black militant with a machine gun, and the American flag burning in a fireplace.
Ah, where to begin?
Let's start with the flag. Who would have ever suspected that Barack Obama holds America in less than perfectly high esteem, if he had not, in very fact, been so chummy all his years in Chicago with one of the most infamous, flag-burning, bomb-throwing, unrepentant domestic terrorists in United States history?
One Billy Ayers, who lives in Obama's neighborhood enclave of the rich and infamous, who served with him several years on the Woods Fund board, who channeled monies to far left, anti-American causes. Lest we forget, Billy Ayers is also married to one Bernadine Dohrn, who won a high leadership role in the SDS, claiming to be not a bland, mere socialist, but a revolutionary communist. The luminaries of America-hating, revolutionary communist groups that are backing Obama are myriad.
If Barack Obama has never been seen burning an American flag, he clearly doesn't hold it against any of his companions, who most certainly have burned our flag and done just about everything else they could to destroy this Country. In Ayers' book, Fugitive Days, which came out, by disgusting coincidence, on 9/11/01, he writes of the day he bombed our Pentagon in 1972:
"Everything was absolutely ideal. ... The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them."
Who is Ayers speaking of so derisively here? Why, that would be us. The people of the United States of America.
So, if Barack Obama has so much difficulty understanding why an increasing number of Americans question his love for America, his patriotism, perhaps he should begin to question his own judgment when it comes to the company he keeps, instead of continuously questioning our judgment when we ask the questions.
Then, there is the New Yorker's portrayal of Michelle as a black militant, sporting an Afro and giving Barack the fist bump.
Wasn't it Michelle Obama, who proclaimed not very long ago that "for the very first time in my adult life, I'm really proud of my Country"? And wasn't it Michelle Obama who says that Americans have become "cynical" and "mean," and that we have "broken souls"? Yes, actually Michelle Obama has said all these things while campaigning for her husband. And Mrs. Obama has said that her husband is our "only rational choice" for President. If all of these things do not imply a superiority to and condemnation of America, which have been the hallmarks of black militancy since the late 1960s, I simply do not know what would.
The fist bump itself seems to be an adaptation of the Black Panther power salute, so prominent in the 60s and 70s. It might appear completely innocuous to some, but to others, it is a memorable remnant of a very explosive and, for many, frightening period of American history. There are probably not too many Americans over the age of 50, who do not remember the black power moment at the Olympics of 1968 and the fear those raised fists could evoke in the shadow of American cities inflamed by riots and uncontrolled violence.
Michelle Obama did sit with her husband in Jeremiah Wright's church for many years, listening unperturbed to racist diatribes aimed at every white-skin person in America. If I had sat listening to the rants of a David Duke for years on end and then gave my husband some form of the Nazi salute in public, I doubt seriously if it would be at all comforting to any decent American who witnessed it.
There may be only a tiny grain of truth to the black militant image of Michelle Obama on the New Yorker cover, but even a tiny grain may be too much for some.
Now to the Muslim garb, worn by Barack Obama on the New Yorker cover.
As even the New York Times has pointed out, whether Barack Obama has ever actually been a practicing Muslim, is of no real concern to us, as Americans. If he was, then it was under the authority of his parents, while living in a Muslim country, Indonesia, as a child.
On the other hand, Obama was born to a Muslim father, and this does, in fact, have some implications for Americans if he becomes our President. As the Times op-ed explains:
"As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother's Christian background is irrelevant."
And, as the same editorial goes on to confirm, this undeniable fact of Obama's birth religion, as seen by Islamists, does have a bearing, however slight, on this election, simply because we are still at war with Islamic terrorists around the globe.
Satire, like the New Yorker cover, can indeed be a powerful purveyor of ideas, and while the editors say they were intending to ridicule the unfounded fears of conservatives, it would seem to me, that all they have really done is add significant weight to the very grains of truth they have now highlighted for nearly every voter in the entire Country.
Better late than never, I say.
Contrary to Senator Obama's admonitions against the "politics of fear," healthy fear is simply a terrific old, wise motto:
Better safe than sorry.
Kyle-Anne Shiver is an independent journalist and frequent contributor to American Thinker. She welcomes your comments at http://www.kyleanneshiver.com
