African Americans were first permitted to vote in 1870.
American women were first permitted to vote in 1920.
That’s 50 years that for one reason or another that African Americans were essentially treated with more dignity and respect than women. Think of it, they received more respect than the wives, daughters, and sisters did from their own husbands, fathers, and brothers. It took 50 years for the male voters to eventually see the cruel and unforgivable lack of fairness in the status of women between the sad years of 1870 and 1920. And, it was THE WOMEN, the suffragettes, who forced the issue–and championed their own defense of their Right to vote. The men eventually acceded to their entreaties for justice, but it was the women who brought the issue to the fore.

Now, in 2008, we as a nation of voters–and especially women–are again confronted by two choices: Do we again slight women by voting to favor an African American for the prestigious job of President of the United States merely because he is personable and has excellent oratorical abilities? And do we then exclude a wonderfully personable and charming woman who also possesses outstanding oratorical abilities? What, ultimately, are our aspirations?

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a groundbreaking election. It is precedent setting just as was the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870, and the Nineteenth Amendment of 1920. It is impossible to imagine women back in those sorrowful years…shaking their heads in utter disbelief at their second class status….

Men need to respect women more, but in truth, women also, need to respect themselves more. Once again it is women who are called upon to stand up for themselves and claim their Right to high executive office. Just as freedom needs to be defended (and that means fought for) so does breaking through the ‘glass ceiling!’

Women in particular should review their choices carefully, and ask: Who would best represent my interests? Which candidate is most likely to lend a sympathetic ear to the difficulties and challenges that I must personally face? Which of these two candidates would be most accessible, most likely to take my phone call, most likely to read my letter with heartfelt understanding and concern?

Ladies: The time has again come to defend your interests. Vote to achieve greater respect. Vote your heart. Vote for what feels right. Vote to advance your status in America. You have the power if you use it.
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Please feel free to blog these thoughts along. CK Young

We aren’t united because we aren’t going anywhere. You can’t rally a people behind a cause that doesn’t exist, that they don’t perceive. We’ve become a backward-looking people. Left as well as Right, we are turning European.

What are we after? What do we want? What are we setting out to do as a people?

The Right’s answers are all strictly individual: get ahead, succeed. The Left’s answers are all strictly governmental: more for this program or that.

But none of it forms a picture of where we are going, what we need to accomplish. The Right wants to exaggerate some threats and ignore others. The Left is a perfect mirror, exaggerating different threats. Both are wrong. It won’t be Islamicists or global warming that destroy us. It will be aimlessness, passivity, trivialization and a sort of society-wide lack of focus.

We don’t need a threat to unite us, that’s why 9/11 didn’t do the job. We need an idea of what we want to create. We need a future. And the future will have to be more than killing Osama and driving a Prius.

The odd thing is, that I believe Barack Obama would as well. If you watch his interview at Columbia University today, I think you will see what I mean.

I long for a country in which we can disagree and still respect those with whome we don’t agree with, because we understand that our hearts are in the same place. I believe that voices like yours can help take us there.

There was a fascinating book by Niall Ferguson written a few years ago called Colossus that also dealt with the idea that 9/11 might have forced us to refocus but the game itself has changed very little.

Frankly though, I don’t know if I prefer the health nazis on the left or the bible bangers on the right when it comes to culture wars. While I may disagree about the left being the only side that is “trashing culture”, I certainly agree that any talk of of Islamization is ridiculous. Muslims peacefully living in the United States and Britain is the best evidence that Islam and modernization are not natural enemies.

Nice analysis. Probably the best I’ve seen in the past couple of years.