Thomas Sowell once again demonstrates his knack for geting it wrong.
BELIEVERS IN BARACK
Apparently Obama-love is blind
by Thomas Sowell
OK, so it's clear this is not going to be yet another conservative coming out for Obama, but let's read the article.
Come on!! It'll be FUN!
<span>Telling a friend that the love of his life is a phony and dangerous is not likely to get him to change his mind. But it may cost you a friend.
It is much the same story with true believers in Barack Obama. They have made up their minds and not only don’t want to be confused by the facts, they resent being told the facts.
An e-mail from a reader mentioned trying to tell his sister why he was voting against Obama but, when he tried to argue some facts, she cut him short: "You don’t like him and I do!" she said. End of discussion.</span>
An e-mail from a reader! Oh, I love that technique! It's so...utterly unverifiable! Here, let me try:
"In an e-mail addressed to the Core4, a reader said that he saw McCain personally sodomize goats, while Sarah Palin pissed on a copy of the Constitution. This writer has no reason to doubt these allegations as of yet."
Wow, that IS fun. But let's keep going.
When one thinks of all the men who have put their lives on the line in battle to defend and preserve this country, it is especially painful to think that there are people living in the safety and comfort of civilian life who cannot be bothered to find out the facts about candidates before voting to put the fate of this nation, and of generations yet to come, in the hands of someone chosen because they like his words or style.
There are a couple of implications and allegations contained in Sowell's run on sentence. Let's break it down:
Only men put their lives on the line? I know Sowell is 78, but I hope he realizes that this is not true.
Once again, we get that old canard of the lazy civilian who has no appreciation for freedom not being free.
His ultimate assumption - that anyone who supports Obama simply doesn't know the "facts," is the most disturbing and to borrow a word - elitist. He is saying that the only possible way to disagree with him is if you don't know what you're talking about.
But there's lots more to come:
Of the four people running for president and vice president on the Republican and Democratic tickets, the one we know the least about is the one leading in the polls — Barack Obama.
Well, at least he admits that Obama is leading in the polls. His assumption that we know the least about him, however, is arguable at best and - I think - flat out wrong. Obama has been on the "mainstage" politically for the last 4 years (3.9 years longer than Palin) since he gave the 2004 DNC keynote. He ran against some stiff competition in the Democratic primary - one that lasted longer and was more hard fought than any in recent memory. And he has given multiple policy speeches, statements, and press conferences.
He has done a hell of a lot more than a simple sitdown with Katie Couric.
Some of Senator Obama’s most fervent supporters could not tell you what he has actually done on such issues as crime, education, or financial institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — much less what he plans to do to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear nation supplying nuclear weapons to the international terrorist networks that it has supplied with other weapons.
The magic word "change" makes specifics unnecessary. If things are going bad, some think that what is needed is blank-check "change."
Again, with the unverifiable and idiotic statements. "Some of Obama's most fervent supporters...?" OK, I'm game. Let me try this too:
"Some of McCain's most fervent supporters are bigots and skinheads who would like nothing more than the eradication of the black race."
Fun!
But history shows any number of countries in crises worse than ours, where "change" turned problems into catastrophes.
In czarist Russia, for example, the economy was worse than ours is today and the First World War was going far worse for the Russians than anything we have faced in Iraq. Moreover, Russians had nothing like the rights of Americans today. So they went for "change."
That "change" brought on a totalitarian regime that made the czars’ despotism look like child’s play. The Communists killed more people in one year than the czars killed in more than 90 years, not counting the millions who died in a government-created famine in the 1930s.
Other despotic regimes in China, Cuba, and Iran were similarly replaced by people who promised "change" that turned out to be even worse than what went before.
And this is where Sowell goes into batshit-crazy-motherfucker-land. He is writing an article about Obama, and he raises the spectre of the Bolshevik revolution, Mao, Castro, and Khomeini??? This is some crazy-ass writing we got here - even for the Moonie owned Washington Times - and Sowell should apologize to his readers for going this far out on a limb. He is truly, madly, and deeply nuts.
Yet many today seem to assume that if things are bad, "change" will make them better. Specifics don’t interest them nearly as much as inspiring rhetoric and a confident style. But many 20th-century leaders with inspiring rhetoric and great self-confidence led their followers or their countries into utter disasters.
These ranged from Jim Jones who led hundreds to their deaths in Jonestown to Hitler and Mao who led millions to their deaths.
Holy crap, Batman, he really means it. Now Sowell is afraid not only that Obama's supporters have drunk the figurative Kool-Aid, but that he's going to make America commit mass suicide. All because Sowell is too lazy to actually get all the readily available "specifics" on Obama the Google can provide.
What specifics do we know about Barack Obama’s track record that might give us some clue as to what kinds of "changes" to expect if he is elected?
We know that he opposed the practice of putting violent young felons on trial as adults. We know that he was against a law forbidding physicians to kill a baby that was born alive despite an attempt to abort it.
We know that Obama opposed attempts to put stricter regulations on Fannie Mae — and that he was the second-largest recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae. We know that, this very year, his campaign sought the advice of disgraced former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines.
Fannie Mae and Raines were at the heart of "the mess in Washington" that Barack Obama claims he is going to clean up under the banner of "change."
The public has been told very little about what this man with the wonderful rhetoric has actually done. What we know is enough to make us wonder about what we don’t know. Or it ought to. For the true believers — which includes many in the media — it is just a question of whether you like him or not.
All of these "specific" allegations have been debunked time and time again, one only needs to spend a few minutes at FactCheck.org to view the material for yourself. But the underlying fallacy of Sowell's screed is that the only way to disagree on who should be President is to not know enough about it.
That's So Wrong.