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Yeah, that's me.
I'm one of those simpletons, a Bitter Clinger, as Barack Obama would characterize me. I will vote in this election, as I did in the last election, on a single issue alone. There has been much talk about single issue voters this election, and much of it negative. We're portrayed as ignorant, poorly educated, mindless evangelical drones who care only about one aspect of our favored candidate, be it abortion, gun control, gay marriage or school vouchers. What's worse, from the perspective of most media pundits, these issues are supposed to be unimportant, or else already won by the liberals in the government. How dare we, the unwashed masses who went to public schools and got jobs where our hands get dirty, choose our candidates based on their stances on issues that don't fall within their worldview as something important?
In my recent discussions with liberal acquaintances of mine, I've discovered that they honestly feel those of us on the right, who opposed McCain in the primaries with some vehemence and now support him outspokenly, are rather shallow of intellect, and care only about winning (well, yeah, winning is pretty important). On the other hand, they view themselves as intellectual superiors, choosing their candidates based on some transcendent understanding of things far above the minds of us plebes, and a broad agreement across a variety of policies.
But I would challenge any of them, and indeed anyone from the left, to demonstrate to me how any issue, or any collection of issues, is more important than the single issue on which this voter is making his decisions. The simple fact is that in this era, national security is more important than anything else at stake in the coming election. Truth be told, it always has been, but we were more than fortunate for a good 40 years or so to not have to worry about it so much as we do today. But today, at this critical juncture in American history, we face an enemy so evil and bent on our destruction that we must elect government officials who are going to stand strongly in our defense. If we lack security, nothing else matters. We can continue to bail out Wall Street giants, send out stimulus checks, reform social welfare programs and improve our education and healthcare systems, but if people who are bent on our destruction are not stopped, it is all for naught.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: The primary purpose of any government is to ensure the sovereignty of its nation, and to protect its citizens from foreign attack. Everything else is a far distant second.
While I do not agree with Senator McCain on a variety of issues (economic policy and environmental policy come to mind), I trust him infinitely more than Obama to do what is necessary to defend our nation and its interests from foreign attack. I believe that a President Obama would leave us incredibly weak and vulnerable to aggressive rogue nations like North Korea and Iran, and to new, anti-American alliances like the one forming between Russia and Venezuela. The world is only getting more dangerous by the moment, and we need a president who is prepared and resolved to do anything necessary to ensure our survival in it. John McCain fits that description, and Obama simply does not.
So call me simple, or uneducated, but that's the single issue I'm voting on. And it will continue to be so, until we have two candidates who are equally capable of preserving our union.
~Cephas
THE FREE RADICAL
[Cross posted from A Host of Contributing Factors]
Yeah, here I am.
My on-again, off-again flirtation with political writing has again reared its ugly head. There was a time, some years ago, when I was a walking talking-points memo, a repository of political discourse far out of place with my station in life. I dabbled in podcasting for a bit at the advice of close friends, but I found its medium to be insufficient to effectively express myself. Around that same time (shortly following the 2004 presidential election), I became increasingly disillusioned with politics in general. The election had yielded us a moderate president who was stellar on a single, overarching issue, but basically lacking in nearly everything else. I was, I admit, a bit emotionally drained from the drama and fighting of the previous six months of campaigning, and I looked at Washington, my generation, and the world as a whole as being too big, too complicated, and too far gone to solve.
And yet, here I am again, doing all the proverbial "arguing on the internet" that my new marriage and employment schedule allow. I have held off of solo writing (well, I had a LiveJournal some years ago, but I was rather bitter and lonely at that time in my life...), preferring instead to participate in the epic displays of intellectual might known as... message boards. I hid there, in a way, stirring the pot of angry liberals and taking pot shots here and there when someone would make a particularly asinine comment. I almost have the feeling, at times, that what I'm doing there is almost unfair. After all, arguing with facts and logic, as I do, against those armed only with several pages of emoticons and a vocabulary restricted to what they can type to their homies on their cell phones, is something like fishing in a kiddie pool. With a hand grenade.
But nevertheless, I stayed far clear of making any forays into the world of political writing proper (well, as proper as blogs can be considered to be, anyway), because I've always found myself to be much more gifted in the discipline of dialogue, but somewhat uncomfortable and unsuited to monologue. To say it more directly, I am not a creative person. I would much rather let someone else plunge into the waters of public discussion, and then come swooping in with my own replies and rebuttals. Far easier than actually coming up with your own subject matter, your own topics to research and points to raise. So yeah, in short, I was being intellectually lazy.
But something has changed this year for me that has driven me not only back into arguing on the internet, but to even try my hand (er... keyboard) at writing my own things. More accurately I suppose, several things have changed.
I would not be here typing this rambling nonsense if the Presidential tickets were Romney-Tancredo and Clinton-Daschle. But two things have brought me, and thousands of others like me, back to the table of discussion for this election. First, the Democrats accidentally nominated Barack Obama as their nominee for president. I say accidentally because, watching the primaries, it seemed as if, at the last moment, they realized their mistake and tried to reverse course, only to find it was too late. Obama coasted to the nomination on pure momentum, all the while getting beaten and bloodied by a clearly experienced (and equally ruthless) Clinton campaign. I believe, for reasons I'm sure we'll cover later on, that the election of Barack Obama to the highest office in the world would be a dangerous and grevious error for our country, and one the consequences of which may prove eventually mortal to the survival of our nation. See here for a taste of what I'm talking about.
My second motivation to return to this wild, silly, confused and contentious arena we call American politics is the rebirth of the McCain campaign, of which the nomination of Sarah Palin is the primary example. For months (unable to fully take my fingers off the pulse of the political scene) I watched and scratched my head as McCain, apparently fully able to take advantage of an early start to the campaign over his Democrat rivals, seemingly floundered and bumbled his way about the country, not really doing anything of note, at all. I was actually starting to believe the assertions of guys like Michael Savage, who insisted that McCain was nominated to lose the race for the GOP on purpose. But then, something happened. The McCain Machine fired up, opened up the gun case and unleased with all barrels on the Obama campaign, with an aggression and purpose that I haven't seen out of a Republican since, well, never (I was a bit young for politics when Reagan left office).
So count me among the growing demographic of conservatives coming out of the shadows, heartened by a candidate showing every mark of a true leader, as well as a true resolve to hit our esteemed opponents from across the aisle right where it hurts. A few months ago, I was going to hold my nose, close my eyes and pull the Republican lever. Now, I can't wait to pull it, and want to do everything I can to convince everyone I know to pull that lever with me. Even my mother-in-law.
Till next time...
~Cephas
THE FREE RADICAL
Yeah, here I am.
My on-again, off-again flirtation with political writing has again reared its ugly head. There was a time, some years ago, when I was a walking talking-points memo, a repository of political discourse far out of place with my station in life. I dabbled in podcasting for a bit at the advice of close friends, but I found its medium to be insufficient to effectively express myself. Around that same time (shortly following the 2004 presidential election), I became increasingly disillusioned with politics in general. The election had yielded us a moderate president who was stellar on a single, overarching issue, but basically lacking in nearly everything else. I was, I admit, a bit emotionally drained from the drama and fighting of the previous six months of campaigning, and I looked at Washington, my generation, and the world as a whole as being too big, too complicated, and too far gone to solve.
And yet, here I am again, doing all the proverbial "arguing on the internet" that my new marriage and employment schedule allow. I have held off of solo writing (well, I had a LiveJournal some years ago, but I was rather bitter and lonely at that time in my life...), preferring instead to participate in the epic displays of intellectual might known as... message boards. I hid there, in a way, stirring the pot of angry liberals and taking pot shots here and there when someone would make a particularly asinine comment. I almost have the feeling, at times, that what I'm doing there is almost unfair. After all, arguing with facts and logic, as I do, against those armed only with several pages of emoticons and a vocabulary restricted to what they can type to their homies on their cell phones, is something like fishing in a kiddie pool. With a hand grenade.
But nevertheless, I stayed far clear of making any forays into the world of political writing proper (well, as proper as blogs can be considered to be, anyway), because I've always found myself to be much more gifted in the discipline of dialogue, but somewhat uncomfortable and unsuited to monologue. To say it more directly, I am not a creative person. I would much rather let someone else plunge into the waters of public discussion, and then come swooping in with my own replies and rebuttals. Far easier than actually coming up with your own subject matter, your own topics to research and points to raise. So yeah, in short, I was being intellectually lazy.
But something has changed this year for me that has driven me not only back into arguing on the internet, but to even try my hand (er... keyboard) at writing my own things. More accurately I suppose, several things have changed.
I would not be here typing this rambling nonsense if the Presidential tickets were Romney-Tancredo and Clinton-Daschle. But two things have brought me, and thousands of others like me, back to the table of discussion for this election. First, the Democrats accidentally nominated Barack Obama as their nominee for president. I say accidentally because, watching the primaries, it seemed as if, at the last moment, they realized their mistake and tried to reverse course, only to find it was too late. Obama coasted to the nomination on pure momentum, all the while getting beaten and bloodied by a clearly experienced (and equally ruthless) Clinton campaign. I believe, for reasons I'm sure we'll cover later on, that the election of Barack Obama to the highest office in the world would be a dangerous and grevious error for our country, and one the consequences of which may prove eventually mortal to the survival of our nation. See here for a taste of what I'm talking about.
My second motivation to return to this wild, silly, confused and contentious arena we call American politics is the rebirth of the McCain campaign, of which the nomination of Sarah Palin is the primary example. For months (unable to fully take my fingers off the pulse of the political scene) I watched and scratched my head as McCain, apparently fully able to take advantage of an early start to the campaign over his Democrat rivals, seemingly floundered and bumbled his way about the country, not really doing anything of note, at all. I was actually starting to believe the assertions of guys like Michael Savage, who insisted that McCain was nominated to lose the race for the GOP on purpose. But then, something happened. The McCain Machine fired up, opened up the gun case and unleased with all barrels on the Obama campaign, with an aggression and purpose that I haven't seen out of a Republican since, well, never (I was a bit young for politics when Reagan left office).
So count me among the growing demographic of conservatives coming out of the shadows, heartened by a candidate showing every mark of a true leader, as well as a true resolve to hit our esteemed opponents from across the aisle right where it hurts. A few months ago, I was going to hold my nose, close my eyes and pull the Republican lever. Now, I can't wait to pull it, and want to do everything I can to convince everyone I know to pull that lever with me. Even my mother-in-law.
Till next time...
~Cephas
THE FREE RADICAL
I've finally broken down and done it.
I'm starting a personal blog. I should have done it a long time ago, as friends, family and other interested parties are often asking for updates, pictures and stories from my forays into the world of motorcycle road racing. But on a larger scope, I'd like this to act as the catch all for all things going on in my life, for my random and often, well, radical political musings, and generally all sorts of interesting things. I truly wish I had done this sooner (say, last December before I proposed to my wife), but it's never too late to start. And now that I've made the obligatory opening post, let's get down to business.
~Cephas
THE FREE RADICAL
I'm starting a personal blog. I should have done it a long time ago, as friends, family and other interested parties are often asking for updates, pictures and stories from my forays into the world of motorcycle road racing. But on a larger scope, I'd like this to act as the catch all for all things going on in my life, for my random and often, well, radical political musings, and generally all sorts of interesting things. I truly wish I had done this sooner (say, last December before I proposed to my wife), but it's never too late to start. And now that I've made the obligatory opening post, let's get down to business.
~Cephas
THE FREE RADICAL
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