Anti-Obamaism: From the Almost Legitimate to the Scurrilous

Look what arrived in my inbox this morning: an email forwarded by my Italian grandfather, Nonno to us grandkids, mostly containing this article by Ken Blackwell. I love Nonno dearly, but the email angered me so much that I had to respond to it. What follows is excerpts of Blackwell's article (in italics for clarity) and a slightly edited and reformatted version of my reply.

Because the truth is that Mr. Obama is the single most liberal senator in the entire U.S. Senate. He is more liberal than Ted Kennedy, Bernie Sanders, or Mrs. Clinton.

It's true that the National Journal ranked Obama as the most liberal senator in 2007, but I challenge this on two counts: (1) Liberalism is not a bad thing, in my opinion. I understand if somebody disagrees with that, which brings me to my second point: (2) The ranking is nonsense. Two votes that the National Journal considered "liberal," he voted against Sen. Clinton and with such conservatives as Sens. John McCain and Chuck Hagel.

Start with national security, since the president's most important duties are as commander-in-chief. Over the summer, Mr. Obama talked about invading Pakistan, a nation armed with nuclear weapons; meeting without preconditions with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who vows to destroy Israel and create another Holocaust; and Kim Jong Il, who is murdering and starving his people, but emphasized that the nuclear option was off the table against terrorists — something no president has ever taken off the table since we created nuclear weapons in the 1940s. Even Democrats who have worked in national security condemned all of those remarks. Mr. Obama is a foreign-policy novice who would put our national security at risk.

What Obama actually said about Pakistan:

I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.

I fail to understand the neoconservatives: We shouldn't go into Pakistan (where al-Qaeda is), but we should go into Iraq (where al-Qaeda isn't).

As for diplomacy without preconditions, when the Bush Administration refuses to talk with people with whom they have disagreements, nothing constructive is accomplished. In fact, refusing to talk with people in Iran or in Palestine bolsters the hardliners in those areas. They can take our actions and say that we're out to get them, that we're on a crusade against Islam, etc. In fact, the major success of the Iraq War--getting al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) out of al-Anbar province--was achieved by working with former Sunni insurgents. And even the Bush administration has met with Kim Jong Il.

And I don't understand how you could use a nuclear missile against an organization. I can understand how it can be used to annihilate a city, to end a conventional war against a state, but how can it be used against a group of individuals?

Furthermore, Obama is not out of the mainstream on foreign policy.

Finally, look at the social issues. Mr. Obama had the audacity to open a stadium rally by saying, "All praise and glory to God!" but says that Christian leaders speaking for life and marriage have "hijacked" — hijacked — Christianity. He is pro-partial birth abortion, and promises to appoint Supreme Court justices who will rule any restriction on it unconstitutional. He espouses the abortion views of Margaret Sanger, one of the early advocates of racial cleansing. His spiritual leaders endorse homosexual marriage, and he is moving in that direction.

To some extent, haven't Christian leaders hijacked Christianity? Haven't some far-right Christian leaders made outrageous statements in the name of Christianity? I don't think most Christians would identify with these statements:

• Pat Robertson: "I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if [Hugo Chavez] thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war, and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."
• "[John] Hagee has argued that Hurricane Katrina 'was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans' for hosting a gay-pride parade."

I could go on, I'm sure.

Just because Obama agrees with Margaret Sanger on one issue doesn't mean that he agrees with that person on all issues. This is another scurrilous attack that has defined the Republican/conservative machine since at least 2000, when the Bush campaign implied that the girl John McCain adopted from Bangladesh was his illegitimate, black daughter.

And why shouldn't gay people receive equal treatment with straight people? Surely, allowing gay people to marry would be less of a threat to the sanctity of marriage than two-day, celebrity marriages.

Ken Blackwell's moral outrage is particularly hypocritical, considering that during the Ohio gubernatorial race, he implied that his opponent was having a homosexual affair with a man convicted of public exposure. The Courier, an Ohio newspaper, thought his actions so egregious that they took the unusual step of un-endorsing him.

What's worse than Blackwell's actual editorial is the statements that succeed it, statements so vile that I think even Blackwell would be appalled by it:

According to The Book of Revelation the anti-christ...will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal....the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything. Is it OBAMA??

First, the Book of Revelation does not say this, nor could it have, because Islam wasn't even founded until centuries after Revelations was written. Second, Obama is not a Muslim. Finally, just as Blackwell rightly says that eloquence and race should not be criteria by which we elect a president, neither should his religion. Even if he were a Muslim, why should that matter?