BLOGGER TRUCE OFFERED --it will be rejected

Listen, Micrabused, Muckdweller and Uptheflag:

I'm willing to CALL A TRUCE --and agree to blog without any ad hominem attacks --just staying on the issues and articulating views and perceptions --seeking to understand each other and explain myself and some like me --explaining our respective beliefs and fears.

Contrary to what you said, you are NOT called "unAmerican" by me for "expressing your views" --unless you really ARE expressing unamerican views --like when you and Mudrake suggest the religious right should not be heard. MR really seems to not want them to have free speech when it comes to public policy. He can speak from his agnostic and secularist view for public policies; but I can't speak from my religious views.

Actually, all views can be said to be American except one that DENIES freedom of speech --and that is happening to Christians already and has been a battle waged by the ACLU for at least 3 decades. Most recently, a black man signed up to open the town council meetings with prayer --as the members took turns --but he was challenged by the ACLU that he could not pray "in Jesus name." A three-judge panel agreed with the ACLU --prohibiting this fellow's Constitutional right of free speech and freedom of religious expression. Now THAT is UNAMERICAN! This case is headed to the Supreme Court. NOte that prayer was not disallowed in this case, just prayer "in Jesus' name." That's discrimination!

Also, one of the military academies has a tradition of chaplain-led prayer before lunch--by chaplains of different faiths --and the ACLU is challenging that --wanting to end a tradition that lends dignity to the lunch hour. They just want our military officers to chow down without any gratitude --never mind that all the people could pray their own way or ignore the prayer by thinking pleasant thoughts instead.

I've been seeing here that people who don't support Obama are called racists. I am not a racist. I love my 10 black CLC'ers and I think they are somewhat fond of me. I don't find them a bit inferior to my 8 white students in any way. The more I get to know my black students, the more optimism I have about their futures --same as for the non-black students. They are bright and beautiful kids and seem to grow more reverent about Christ, prayer and the Bible. I'm sure you would call it racist stereotyping, but I also think my black students are pretty good singers as a group.
If I were racist I would not have the non-condescending love for them that I do have. Typically, you'll come back and say I AM condescending --but I am not. You commit libel when you say that about me.

You've not heard ME carry on about Barack's middle name. I just hope he doesn't share all the views of the anti-Capitalist, anti-free enterprise, revolution-oriented liberal friends who seem to say in their speeches and writings, "America's system and western values are bad," which men received Obama's friendship and praises through the year --as in a dinner for Khalidi attended by both Ayres and Obama --and Obama's book review for Ayers. And I understand that Farrakhan did refer to Obama as a "messiah" at some recent high holy day for black (or all) Muslims.

You will either agree with these praises of and by Obama, or say these things aren't true, but the evidences are out there.

Nothing will please me more than to find out Obama is more middle of the road, and more appreciative of america, and the traditional aspects of its civil rights and foreign policy views and more tolerant of Israel, more peace loving and less radical than HIS Chicago neighbors have shown themselves to be.

but I know he's far left on abortion and i cannot support that--his votes against BAIPA 4 times. and his promise to sign FOCA, nullifying all the pro-life gains of the past 3 decades.

About persecuting the Christians, Microdot, I DO get persecuted verbally by you and Mudly. Instead of staying on topic, you delete, call me ignorant, mentally ill,etc. Mudrake definitely gets so mad his cyber-eyeballs bulge --I fear for his health!

Yes, as the blogger Microdot alleged, we of the GOP have already begun to question Obama's legitimacy because the stories are out there --about his birth certificate being suspicious, about his illegal overseas campaign donations, about the massive ACORN fraud in voter registrations--that will take so long to unsnarl that we can't possibly figure it out before January to see if any of the voters are fraudulent. We hear of an African half- brother in poverty with whom he doesn't share his wealth (but maybe he tries to help him and we just haven't heard about it --I really don't expect him to bring a half-brother to the U.S. to live with him --or be supported by him --until Barack's a millionaire himself --or to rescue his illegal alien aunt from poverty --or to take the whole family to see Grandma ("a typical white woman" he called her) before she dies --or to stay with her more than an hour during campaign season --or to spread the campaign wealth with McCain. But he is in a glass house throwing stones when it comes to his criticisms of the rich and their alleged tax cuts --saying they should "spread the wealth," implying he is so compassion-minded and generous in his ideals.

You said that no matter what he does, we will question his legitimacy. Actually, what he does and whom he appoints to courts will be more important than anything else to my opinion of him as president.

I fear that Barack wants a NEW American economic system --a more socialistic one --because those are the views he has expressed --as in his speech to Berlin -about tearing walls down between rich nations and poor. What does he mean?? it sounds nice on the surface, but what did Marxist leaders say and promise? Marx's idea was "the dictatorship of the proletariat" --and violent overthrow has too often been the method of the atheistic left for accomplishing all this "social and economic change" to help the poor.

I'm all for helping the poor --no one did more of it than Bush, continuing the entitlement programs --and EITC and sending out the stimulus checks. Yet, he did try to get Medicare in line and made a lot of seniors pay more for meds, I believe. Something has to be done.

Any belt-tightening in the area of entitlements will be resisted by all. Our best bet to maintain entitlements is to REALLY encourage economic expansion, energy independence, incentives for companies to stay (not punishments for leaving and dissolving.) If we don't want more companies to bankrupt, we need to help industry and business thrive --and THEN give incentives to them to provide benefits for their workers. Let's get up and running first before we try to create utopia by taxation and new entitlements. It's impossible now, for the American union wage earner to compete with the world's products. I offer no solution for that problem. However, we do need ethics at every level of production --curbing excessive corporate benefits at the expense of labor --and curbing any bad attitudes (and thuggery) of union workers --like the auto workers when their products were found to be more shoddy than Japan's --at greater cost.

It IS class warfare akin to Bolshevik rhetoric to talk about "tax cuts for the rich" as something unfair and evil --when the rich are already carrying the nation tremendously on their backs and providing all the jobs.

Change such as Obama talks about sounds like revolution--of the type that denies free choice, kills incentive to get ahead, blames the rich for the needs of the poor.

We don't need a world leader who stirs up violent passions of the masses against the job-creators and the wealthy of the world. We do need to help the masses who are suffering under Hussain, Al Quaeda or Taliban, however --and those who declare death to us or their neighbors who are our allies.

That you see Obama as better than I do, that's obvious--and so be it.
We'll find out, I guess.

But my concerns about him are not as follows: I don't think he's Muslim; I don't think he's a Communist; but I do suspect he is not favorable to our capitalist, free enterprise, western systems. I think he's a BIg Brother and Big Gov't. man --and I do think he's very liberal in all ways --and very inexperienced in any practical WORK or administration.

BUT --IF HE WINS --he will have my prayers and hopes for the best --not vitriol and hatred. I just hope he doesn't give us all reason to regret electing him. I hope America doesn't let him change our liberties --or socially liberalize our culture --such that we cease to be a wholesome and good nation as described by de Toqueville who said "America is great because she is good." He correctly identified "the secret of our greatness" as our "churches, with pulpits aflame with righteousness."

Protestant Christianity in America was unique among religions --for preaching in the language of the people --for minimizing the value of ritual while maximizing the need for holiness in our lives --ever challenging us --such that, together with people in England, we outlawed slavery in the 1800's --though slavery was entrenched all over the world throughout world history as a given feature of national economies. It was just taken for granted. It was the Christian reformers who fought to abolish this evil---just as they fight today to abolish abortion and experimentation on unique, tiny people --our babies in their earliest stage of development.




"God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance and have eternal life."--the Bible