Eyefire, America

So I have wanted to write a follow-up to the election, but a combination of internet outage, busy-ness, and exhaustion have won out until now. But time has probably been a good clairifyer of thought, so I hope this will resonate with you, weather you agree or disagree.

What We Have Learned

Color matters more than we wish it did. If Obama does nothing else (do we dare to hope?), he has enfranchised the African-American voters. I believe there were many new voters who had never felt like they had a reason to vote until now. This is sad for many reasons, but perhaps this election will make voting more of a priority in citizens' lives in the future. The disappointing part about this is that it seems many voters chose Obama based mainly on the color of his skin, and not the content of his character. But perhaps this is simply a baby step we must take to progress--a step backwards to move forward.

Women have not come as far as we had hoped. It became obvious with Sarah Palin that people (even women!) would do anything possible to undercut a strong woman who holds to conservative values. The things said about her in the "journalistic" media were downright despicable! She was attacked at every turn (even now by her own party!) and has handled herself with grace and poise with every cut. Her family was attacked and brought under more scrutiny than any of the other candidates, who, I suppose, just happened to be male. What we have learned is that liberal women do not have the so-called glass ceiling, but we backwoods conservative women have to know our stuff better than most, because the rug will be pulled out from under us by someone.

If they hear it enough, they will believe it. Voters were fed a distorted truth. I know that money played a big part. Each candidate tried to sell his "truth" to the public, and with the help of the media bias, the richer candidate won out. Not only did Obama have the Hollywood money to buy advertisement at every turn, but he had the Hollywood elite and liberal "mainstream" media touting his messiah-ship everywhere. I suggest we just get rid of all political commercials as an uninformed voter seems less dangerous than a misinformed voter.

HEY REPUBLICAN PARTY, WE WANT A CONSERVATIVE! As much as Obama rallied African-American voters, McCain disenfranchised the conservative voter. I know of too many voters who just didn't vote because they didn't want McCain as much as they didn't want Obama. This is undermining our two-party system that ironically makes Washington work. The only thing I learned from one of my government classes in college was that an inefficient government is the result of, and/or possibly the cause of, a free society! I fear the efficiency of the liberal democrats with control of the three branches of government! In effect, McCain was the third-party candidate who undermined the Republican party. We did it to ourselves! (Don't look at me; I voted for Ron Paul--in June, mind you, when it was all over.)

We are not getting the right lessons from history. You might be able to blame it on the agenda of public schools, but nonetheless, Americans know very little about the right parts of their own history! I have been faced with my lack of knowledge of certain events in the recent political season and I intend to fix it! I mean, what was the Vietnam War really about and why did it end so poorly for us? What did Carter et. al. do to make our economy such a mess in the 70's? And what did Reagan do to fix it so well? What was the Iran Contra affair all about? Anyone? Might we perhaps be able to avoid such mistakes in the future by studying up on these things? Isn't that the whole point of studying history?

There's something wrong with the church. Unfortunately I can't pinpoint what just yet. But it seems with such a polarization between young, hip Christians, and old-school Christians, there has been a breakdown somewhere. Is the church looking to government to cover our mishandling of the widows and orphans? Are we trying to influence the government to mandate the Christian values we hold important to make things easier on us? I don't know. Should we ignore our Christian values and truly separate church and state? Tough questions that we would rather avoid.

What We Will Learn

Democrats will be Democrats. Even though Obama ran on some conservative platforms and claims to be a center right politician, he is a Democrat, and his party will carry him to do liberal things. Perhaps he won't like it, I can't say. But he chose to join the democratic party for a reason.

Our country was set up with a strong system to correct itself. I do believe that our founding fathers set up a good system of government. Even thought I am a cynic, and believe that system will be tested to the fullest in the coming years, I hope and believe freedom will win out!

God is the God who doesn't CHANGE! Though we may not understand what he is doing and (thankfully) do not know the future, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever! Amen and amen!