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  An American Manifesto
Friday May 25, 2012 
by Christopher Chantrill Follow chrischantrill on Twitter

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Fannie and Freddie Hit the Buffers Is Abortion the 21st Century Equivalent of Slavery?

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A Open Letter to Sen. Obama

by Christopher Chantrill
September 09, 2008 at 11:42 am

HERE AT Road to the Middle Class we are not exactly fans of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL). He seems a nice enough chap, son of a liberal anthropologist who turned to raciial identity politics. But we hate to see his campaign imploding. Somebody do something! Best thing to do is to write a letter.

Honorable Barack Obama
United States Senate
Washington DC 20510

Dear Senator:

I’ve never been a supporter of yours, but I just can’t watch and do nothing while your campaign goes down the toilet.

By my reckoning, your campaign has been dead in the water for nearly two weeks. No it wasn’t the introduction of Gov. Palin that killed the motor; it was the speech from the silly sophomoric Greek Temple. Whose brilliant idea was that?

The problem is that the GOP team of McCain and Palin have stolen your issues of Hope and Change, stolen them fair and square.

The further problem is that they make a better argument for representing Hope and Change than you do. After all, what have you ever done to buck the system? What have you ever done?

And for goodness sake, stop with the attacks on Gov. Palin. First of all, she’s not the candidate, John McCain is. And secondly, we are getting to the point where many Americans actively like her and they are not going to put up with anyone criticizing her. And that goes in spades because she is a woman. Women hate it when another woman gets attacked by a man. It activates all their protective instincts and there is nothing you can do about it.

Forget the Swift Boat narrative. A lot of Democrats are running around saying that we must never let the Republicans Swiftboat us again like they did in 2004. They are missing the point. The point was that John Kerry decided to run as a war hero. But John Kerry didn’t really have a very good story on his war service, at least, not in the sense of “I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for duty.” John Kerry made his bones as an anti-war political activist. That’s who he was in the 1970s. By 2004 he was just another undistinguished liberal Democratic senator with many years of service in the Senate.

You must learn from Kerry’s mistake. Your narrative has to tell the voters who you are, not who you are pretending to be.

Focus on the issues. The three big issues right now are: energy, the economy, and the mortgage meltdown. The American people want to know what you are going to do about these issues. You do have a plan, don’t you? Of course it’s true that we have an energy crisis because Democrats have spent the last generation standing in front of the oil derrick plafform, standing at the nuclear plant gate, stopping all energy development, but the American people don’t mind that. They just want someone to get gas prices down.

On the economy, you ought to be sweeping the floor with the Republicans. What’s with you guys? Here you are proposing gigantic spending programs and tax increases when you should be proposing to cut wasteful special-interest spending and cut taxes to get the economy moving.

And the mortgage mess. Today it is reported that you don’t like it that the CEOs of Fannie and Freddie are walking away with big severance packages. Very deep that. How about a real plan to solve the problem of unaccountable government sponsored enterprises going belly up?

Frankly, Senator, I don’t know if there is time to turn your campaign around. I don’t think you have the experience of dealing with a crisis like this. But if you can pull it out and turn your campaign around you will deserve to be president.

sincerely,

Christopher Chantrill

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com.  His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.


Comments:


Posted by: Jeff on 10/06/08 11:33pm

Obviously, a dated letter at this point.


 TAGS


Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust


What Liberals Think About Conservatives

[W]hen I asked a liberal longtime editor I know with a mainstream [publishing] house for a candid, shorthand version of the assumptions she and her colleagues make about conservatives, she didn't hesitate. “Racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-choice fascists,” she offered, smiling but meaning it.
Harry Stein, I Can't Believe I'm Sitting Next to a Republican


Liberal Coercion

[T]he Liberal, and still more the subspecies Radical... more than any other in these latter days seems under the impression that so long as he has a good end in view he is warranted in exercising over men all the coercion he is able[.]
Herbert Spencer, The Man Versus the State


Moral Imperatives of Modern Culture

These emerge out of long-standing moral notions of freedom, benevolence, and the affirmation of ordinary life... I have been sketching a schematic map... [of] the moral sources [of these notions]... the original theistic grounding for these standards... a naturalism of disengaged reason, which in our day takes scientistic forms, and a third family of views which finds its sources in Romantic expressivism, or in one of the modernist successor visions.
Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self


US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism


Society and State

For [the left] there is only the state and the individual, nothing in between. No family to rely on, no friend to depend on, no community to call on. No neighbourhood to grow in, no faith to share in, no charities to work in. No-one but the Minister, nowhere but Whitehall, no such thing as society - just them, and their laws, and their rules, and their arrogance.
David Cameron, Conference Speech 2008


Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006


Never Trust Experts

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
Lord Salisbury, “Letter to Lord Lytton”


Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph


Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”


Government Expenditure

The Union publishes an exact return of the amount of its taxes; I can get copies of the budgets of the four and twenty component states; but who can tell me what the citizens spend in the administration of county and township?
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America


Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity


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©2007 Christopher Chantrill