I offer up this well written piece that my father wrote. My father is a highly educated man with multiple degrees, a brilliant mind, and he's a wonderful writer. Here is his response to an article written by Thomas Sowell.
A Response to Thomas Sowell’s “Obama and McCain”
Thomas Sowell is certainly a man whose opinions we should listen to. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Harvard College, where he graduated magna cum laude; a Master of Arts in Economics from Columbia University, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Economics from the University of Chicago. He has taught at several prominent American universities, and he is a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. I am sure he would agree that no opinions, his own included, should be accepted without a reasoned examination. The following is a response to his recent article about the current Presidential campaign.
Obama and McCain
By Thomas Sowell
Townhall.com
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Now that the two parties have finally selected their presidential candidates, it is time for a sober--if not grim--assessment of where we are. Not since 1972 have we been presented with two such painfully inadequate candidates. When election day came that year, I could not bring myself to vote for either George McGovern or Richard Nixon. I stayed home.
Thomas Sowell’s contention that the two candidates for President in 2008 are “painfully inadequate” is not only a cynical assessment of the political arena; it is also insulting, to both Obama and McCain as well as the millions of Americans who selected them after a long primary campaign.
One may wonder what Sowell is looking for. Is it a candidate with knowledge of how government works, knowledge that is gained from experience in the United States Congress? Someone with energy, drive, and commitment to the Presidency? Someone who can inspire the electorate? Someone who can unite the country? Someone with an understanding of the world community and the problems that we and other nations face? Someone who is totally committed to the security of America?
Apparently, if he is looking for any of these things, he does not find them, in sufficient quantities at least, in either Obama or McCain. In these and other areas, we can assume, both are “painfully inadequate.” Therefore in November we must choose between the lesser of the two evils, the candidate who is slightly better qualified, if not adequately qualified, to be President. In 1972, faced with the choice of McGovern or Nixon, Sowell exercised the “luxury” of staying home. This year, he will hold his nose, cross his fingers and toes, and vote for McCain.
This year, none of us has that luxury. While all sorts of gushing is going on in the media, and posturing is going on in politics, the biggest national sponsor of terrorism in the world-- Iran-- is moving step by step toward building a nuclear bomb.
The reference to “all sorts of gushing” in the media reflects the antipathy among McCain supporters toward the popular enthusiasm for Barack Obama, who has awakened an interest in politics among people who have never participated in the process before. I am amazed, and disheartened, by the sneering references to “mere words” and “lofty ideals” (in Sowell’s piece, “gushing”) that have emerged in the primary and the campaign thus far. Have we sunk so deep in the quicksand of cynicism and partisanship that we dismiss rhetoric and idealism so easily?
Let’s recognize this for what it is: a negative reaction from people who realize that John McCain has no such idealism and skills. Their answer to the challenge of Obama’s popularity is to claim that he is an “empty suit,” that his supporters are gullible, star-struck fans (“Obamamaniacs”), that he is a dangerous demagogue. (Some have even likened Obama to Hitler. Big crowds in outdoor venues, a cheering mass of humanity? It must be evil.)
The reference to “posturing” in politics is equally revealing of Sowell’s antipathy toward Obama. The message the word conveys is obvious: the image that Obama is presenting to the public is false, calculated, and “political.” He is “arrogant” in claiming that he is qualified to be President and Commander in Chief and that he has solutions to problems that have not yet been tried. They would prefer a milk-toast, pardon-me-for-presuming-that I-am-somebody image, which would enhance McCain‘s image as the tough Commander in Chief. Sowell is Black, and there surely no racist intent in his words; but his reference to “posturing” doubtlessly resonates with those who are: Obama is an uppity Black who doesn’t know “his place.”
The point when they get that bomb will be the point of no return. Iran 's nuclear bomb will be the terrorists' nuclear bomb--and they can make 9/11 look like child's play.
Can we imagine a better example of fear mongering than this? The idea that Iran would use atomic weapons against the enemies of Islam, particularly America, scares the bejesus out of us. But how likely is that to happen, in face of a possible nuclear response on the part of America? Is it true that “Iran's nuclear bomb will be the terrorists' nuclear bomb”? Does Ahmadinejad speak for all of the leadership in Iran when he threatens to wipe Israel off the map?? Does he speak for the masses of young people who would welcome a democratic, free-market economy? Are his words not cartoonish, braggadocio posturing (to use Sowell’s word)?
Nuclear proliferation and “loose nukes” should be a concern, of concern, and Obama has addressed these issues; but the use of nuclear weapons against the United States, while possible, is by no means probable. For years, other committed enemies of the United States—Russia, China, and North Korea—have had nuclear weapons, but have not used them. To do so would be suicidal. Are even the most fervent Islamist extremists that crazy?
Sowell’s rhetoric is frighteningly apocalyptic: “The point when they get that bomb will be the point of no return.” Oh, my. As REM has put it in one of their songs, “It’s the end of the world as we know it!”
We are faced with a doomsday scenario, but not the one that Sowell creates. Joining with former Vice President Al Gore and 182 signatories to the Kyoto Protocol, Barack Obama warns of possible ecological catastrophe, a catastrophe just as deadly as a nuclear holocaust, albeit a gradual and more abstract one. All the options that are on the table right now will be swept off the table forever. Our choices will be to give in to whatever the terrorists demand-- however outrageous those demands might be-- or to risk seeing American cities start disappearing in radioactive mushroom clouds.
By “the options . . . now on the table,” I assume, Sowell means the use of nuclear weapons. How could they be “swept off the table forever”? I suspect that he is envisioning a scenario like this: Islamist terrorists manage to smuggle a nuclear weapon into this country, or secrete one in a freighter off our coast (either seems a frightening possibility, considering our porous borders and lax port security), and threaten to detonate it. Horrified at the prospect of the death of millions of Americans, the government caves in to whatever demands the terrorists make (more likely, Sowell thinks, if the government is headed by an “inexperienced” President Obama, who favors talk and diplomacy to solve international crises).
If I have correctly interpreted what Sowell implies, he is guilty of two logical fallacies: first, the appeal to probability, in which one argues that because something could happen, it inevitably will happen; second, the Scylla and Charybdis Dilemma, in which one argues that we are faced with only two dangerous choices, one of which must be made. The possibility of nuclear blackmail becomes the inevitability of nuclear blackmail; we either vote for John McCain or we will experience nuclear blackmail; we either accede to the blackmail or we are destroyed in a nuclear holocaust.
Nuclear blackmail is not inevitable. An Obama administration would end the illegal and ineffective war in Iraq and divert billions of dollars to the war effort in Afghanistan, thereby keeping al-Qaeda on the run, and much-needed dollars could be diverted to the creation of adequate border and port security.
The probability of “American cities disappearing in radioactive mushroom clouds” (another example of Sowell’s use of fear as a motivator) is absurd. Even if terrorists should threaten us with a nuclear event, how would it be possible for Iran and/or al-Qaeda to deliver multiple warheads and wipe out multiple American cities? Would America, with its massive retaliatory capability, grovel before a nation that attacked it with a nuclear weapon and accede to any outrageous demand that nation might make? I cannot believe that any American President—either President McCain or President Obama—would give in to nuclear blackmail. The option of nuclear retaliation would remain on the table.
All the things we are preoccupied with today, from the price of gasoline to health care to global warming, will suddenly no longer matter.
Sowell’s strategy here is transparent: since McCain’s strong suits, supposedly, are foreign policy and national security, we must relegate such comparatively trivial things as the price of gasoline, the lack of access to health care, and global warming to the status of “preoccupations.” (Perhaps Sowell would agree with former Senator Gramm and President Bush that the current recession is only in our heads.) Removing Iran’s nuclear threat, then, must be the number one concern of the public and the number one issue of the candidate. The result? Advantage, McCain.
Sowell’s political smokescreen obscures issues that are very real and in actuality more important to America’s future than Sowell’s Doomsday Scenario. The high price of gasoline, which in itself is a hardship on American families, has led to higher prices in almost every facet of the consumer economy; the absence of affordable health care and skyrocketing health care costs create real pain and contribute to the collapse of families; and global warming probably presents a direr threat to our existence than nuclear holocaust.
Just as the Nazis did not find it enough to simply kill people in their concentration camps, but had to humiliate and dehumanize them first, so we can expect terrorists with nuclear weapons to both humiliate us and force us to humiliate ourselves, before they finally start killing us.
With all due respect to Sowell’s credentials, this is silly. If the threat of nuclear winter doesn’t do the job, try Hitler and the Holocaust. That will do the trick. Again we are presented the absurd prospect of a crying, cowering, totally impotent American government.
They have already telegraphed their punches with their sadistic beheadings of innocent civilians, and with the popularity of videotapes of those beheadings in the Middle East . They have already telegraphed their intention to dictate to us with such things as Osama bin Laden's threats to target those places in America that did not vote the way he prescribed in the 2004 elections. He could not back up those threats then but he may be able to in a very few years.
Again we see the strategy of fear. Our blood runs cold at the vision of a masked terrorist holding up the bleeding head of an American soldier. Of course there are terrorists who would not hesitate to humiliate and torture Americans, and all Americans are justly horrified, and outraged, at the beheadings Sowell refers to. But we must not miss Sowell’s intent is clear: to make us turn gratefully to McCain, The Deliverer.
At the risk of seeming to defend Osama bin Laden, which I cannot and will not do, Sowell shapes the message of bin Laden’s November 2004 tape a bit in order to support his scenario of an impotent America groveling at the feet of the Prince of Terror. In his statement of November, 2004, bin Laden says flatly, “I tell you in truth that your security is not in the hands of Kerry, nor Bush, nor al Qaeda. No, your security is in your own hands. And every state that doesn't tamper with our security, has automatically guaranteed its own security.” There is no threat “to target those places in America that did not vote the way he prescribed.”
The terrorists have given us as clear a picture of what they are all about as Adolf Hitler and the Nazis did during the 1930s-- and our 'leaders' and intelligentsia have ignored the warning signs as resolutely as the 'leaders' and intelligentsia of the 1930s downplayed the dangers of Hitler.
Again we see the strategy of fear. When all else is in danger of failing, just bring up Hitler and the Nazis (a dubious comparison with the amorphous, splintered threat presented by radical Islamic terrorism).
And again we see Sowell’s penchant for sweeping generalizations:
“. . . our 'leaders' and intelligentsia have ignored the warning signs as resolutely as the 'leaders' and intelligentsia of the 1930s downplayed the dangers of Hitler.” By not saying that “some of our leaders and intelligentsia” have ignored the warning signs of the threat of Islamist domination of America, he implies that all of them have.
We are much like people drifting down the Niagara River , oblivious to the waterfalls up ahead. Once we go over those falls, we cannot come back up again.
Again there is the emotionally charged idea of an apocalypse: “. . . we cannot come back up again.”
What does this have to do with today's presidential candidates? It has everything to do with them. One of these candidates will determine what we are going to do to stop Iran from going nuclear-- or whether we are going to do anything other than talk, as Western leaders talked in the 1930s.
Of course, Sowell is entitled to his opinion, but I must reject his assertion that only one candidate, McCain, will be able to stop Iran from achieving a nuclear bomb. Might not international sanctions, and negotiations conducted by a less bellicose President Obama, achieve positive results? Like Neville Chamberlain, he insinuates, Obama will just prattle about “Peace in our time.”
There is one big difference between now and the 1930s. Although the West's lack of military preparedness and its political irresolution led to three solid years of devastating losses to Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, nevertheless when all the West's industrial and military forces were finally mobilized, the democracies were able to turn the tide and win decisively.
Why is Sowell not as confident that democracies working together can “win decisively” in the confrontation with Iran as they did in WW II? Perhaps it is because he imagines a McCain administration. In November, we can choose a candidate who has an international perspective, who has been warmly greeted in Europe, and who is likely to be more successful in bringing our democratic allies into a closer partnership with the United States: Barack Obama.
But you cannot lose a nuclear war for three years and then come back. You cannot even sustain the will to resist for three years when you are first broken down morally by threats and then devastated by nuclear bombs.
Again, Sowell raises the spectre of a helpless, whining United States, refusing to retaliate with its nuclear arsenal against states that promote terrorism. Again, he strikes the apocalyptic note: “But you cannot lose a nuclear war for three years and then come back.” (His specificity eludes me: three years of nuclear war?)
Our one window of opportunity to prevent this will occur within the term of whoever becomes President of the United States next January.
The Scylla and Charybdis Dilemma appears again: there is one, and only one, “window of opportunity.” If we do not elect John McCain in November, the end is in sight. Only McCain can save us from doom.
At a time like this, we do not have the luxury of waiting for our ideal candidate or of indulging our emotions by voting for some third party candidate to show our displeasure-- at the cost of putting someone in the White House who is not up to the job.
Can you have your cake and eat it too? Although Sowell seems to align himself with McCain supporters who are scathingly scornful of those who see in Obama the ideal candidate, here he professes some faith that eventually—just not now—the ideal candidate, one that he can enthusiastically endorse, will appear!
How many candidates have heard the cliché, “not up to the job”? One thinks of Andrew Jackson, and the dismay at his rabble invasion of Washington. One thinks of Lincoln, another President from Illinois who had no national experience and who, although he was vilified as a baboon, guided the nation through the cataclysm of the Civil War. One thinks of Teddy Roosevelt (ironically, one of McCain’s heroes) and the dismissive remark, "Now that damn cowboy is President." One thinks of Truman, and the dismissive quip, “To err is Truman.”
Why are Sowell and so many others certain that John Mc Cain is “up to the job” as Commander in Chief? Perhaps it is the strength and courage he displayed in the Hanoi Hilton. Perhaps it is his military career. Or perhaps it is his supreme self confidence (a quality which in Obama is anathema to them). “I know how to win wars," he says with a swagger, implying, of course, that he has knowledge and experience that Obama does not have. "In wartime,,” he continues, “judgment and experience matter. . . . The commander in chief doesn't get a learning curve."
I know how to win wars." Umm, let’s see. That would be . . . . the Korean War? the War in Vietnam? Desert Storm? the Iraq War? McCain thiks he needs no “learning curve” because (in his imagination, at least) he has already served as Commander in Chief; he has already had to make the final decision to initiate conflict, has already had the heavy responsibility of sending troops into combat, has already led a nation to victory. What an accomplished candidate! But he not only knows how to win wars. He has also said, “I know how to handle Iranians.” Precisely where did he learn this skill? Was it the time, as former Senator Thad Cochran recalls, when he saw McCain angrily jerk a Nicaraguan Sandinista up by the shirt-collar? There is no training to be President of the United States but on-the-job training. John McCain is no more ready for the job than Barack Obama.
Senator John McCain has been criticized in this column many times. But, when all is said and done, Senator McCain has not spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America.
The hyperbolic implication is quite clear: Barack Obama has spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America. Decades. Let’s see. Obama is forty-six; if we take “decades” to mean at least twenty years, this means that while Obama was in college from 1981 to 1983, at Occidental College and Columbia University, he was aiding and abetting his professors, or members of some dark, secret underground movement of people who hate America; from 1981-1983, when he worked at Business International Corporation and the New York Public Interest Research Group, he was aiding and abetting his employers and co-workers, the business types who are more concerned with hating America than making a profit; from 1985-1988, when he worked as a community organizer with the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization on Chicago's far South Side, he was even then aiding and abetting people who were more concerned with undermining America with hatred than ridding their apartments of cockroaches; from 1988-1991, while he was attending Harvard Law School, from 1992-2004, while he taught Constitutional law at Chicago Law School, and from 1993- 2004, while he worked in a prominent Chicago law firm, he was aiding and abetting his fellow students, his professors, and his colleagues, all of whom were more intent on hating America than on maintaining the rule of law; from 1997-2004, while he was an Illinois State Senator, he was aiding and abetting his colleagues and constituents, whose sole purpose was hating America; and even as the United States Senator from Illinois, from 2004 to the present, he has been aiding and abetting his fellow Senators and constituents who hate America.
Such an absurdly sweeping generalization was doubtless not Sowell’s intention, but one must guard against the appearance of such. What Sowell is really talking about, I suspect, is the twenty years or so that the Reverend Jeremiah Wright was Obama’s pastor. Let’s examine the allegation, for allegation it is; “aiding and abetting” is a serious charge. “Aiding and abetting” is a term in criminal law which says that a person may be found guilty of a crime, without evidence of personal involvement, if he had prior knowledge of the crime, if he directed another person to commit the crime, or if he provided advice, encouragement, or financial support to that person.
If we take Sowell’s assertion literally, it is ludicrous: Wright is guilty of the crime of preaching hatred for America (never mind the protection of the First Amendment), continually, over a period of twenty years, and Obama—by attending Wright’s church, continually, over a period of twenty years; by making financial contributions to that church; and perhaps by offering Wright advice on how to preach hatred of America—is equally guilty of that crime. If he is speaking figuratively, meaning “giving tacit approval to Wright’s hatred of America,” he should have made that clear. Perhaps he chose the emotionally charged phrase deliberately.
Let me present the indictment against Obama implied by Sowell. Charge one: Barack Obama, on various occasions, “aided and abetted” Wright in his dissemination of hatred for America by attending worship services and by giving tacit approval to what Wright said.
Do we know how faithful Obama was in his attendance? Are there any records? Is there any evidence that he ever heard such remarks? Sowell apparently needs no evidence; elsewhere he has said, “[There was] no way that [Obama] didn’t know about Jeremiah Wright’s anti-American and racist diatribes from the pulpit." Is it not possible that Obama told Wright that he did not agree, that he asked Wright to tone down his rhetoric?
That Jeremiah Wright’ sermons contained statements of hatred of America is open to debate. Few have bothered to place them in the context of the entire sermon from which they have been lifted, and few have tried to see them in the context of Black liberation theology. But let’s grant for a moment that he did preach hatred of America. it is still a stretch to believe that he never preached about anything else, that he frequently made such inflammatory statements, and that Obama must have heard them. Erikka Yancy, a former member of Wright’s church, suggests that Wright did not preach hatred for America at all in the three years of her attendance at that church: “When Obama said he'd never heard Wright say things like he said in that video, I believed him. In three years, I never heard anything like that either. . . . . I never heard him say the things Fox News found.”
Charge two against Obama: Obama “aided and abetted” Wright by contributing money to the programs of Wright’s church. Were all of those programs directed toward the building of hatred for America? Even if some of the church’s programs did attempt to disseminate hatred for America, isn’t it possible that there were some members of the congregation, Obama included, who thought for themselves, rejected that message, and expressed their disapproval to Wright? According to Newsweek reporter Laura Miller, after the controversy over Wright’s statements began, there were three factions in Wright’s church: those who agreed with what he was saying, those who wished the controversy would go away, and those who wished Wright would not speak any more.
On the contrary, he [McCain] has paid a huge price for resisting our enemies, even when they held him prisoner and tortured him. The choice between him and Barack Obama should be a no-brainer.
Because McCain has paid such “a huge price for resisting our enemies, even when they held him prisoner and tortured him,” Sowell seems to be saying, he is uniquely qualified to be President. Moreover, his heroism must be rewarded: he has paid a huge price and we must repay him with our vote.
As General Wesley Clark recently pointed out (only to be immediately attacked by many in the media and by the Doberman Pinschers on the right), “riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is not a qualification to be president." Clark was not denying McCain’s heroism, nor besmirching his reputation; he was simply saying, I believe, that these experiences are not, in and of themselves, qualifications to be President. Nor, I might add, are being imprisoned and tortured, and even declining an offer of freedom unless his fellow prisoners were freed as well, in and of themselves qualifications to be President. If they were, then any POW who experienced the same things would be just as qualified to be President.
McCain’s experiences in North Vietnam are certainly heroic, as both Obama and General Clark have said repeatedly; they are a testament to strength of character, and toughness, and a number of things, but by themselves, they are not qualifications to be President, as Sowell implies. Let’s look at the statement again:
Senator John McCain has been criticized in this column many times. But, when all is said and done, Senator McCain has not spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America. On the contrary, he [McCain] has paid a huge price for resisting our enemies, even when they held him prisoner and tortured him. The choice between him and Barack Obama should be a no-brainer.
There is no mention here of McCain’s 26 years of service in the United States Congress, or his maturity, or his good judgment, or his ability to work across party lines, or any other qualification. McCain is Sowell’s choice for President because he has not aided and abetted those who hate America and because he is a war hero. For Sowell, it is a “no-brainer”: John McCain loves America; he is a true patriot (in contrast to Obama, whose name is un-American, who hasn’t been imprisoned and tortured, and whose former pastor hates America); it is John McCain, and only John McCain, who will protect us from our enemies, as he proved when he endured the prison-camp torture.
(If love of country qualifies one to be President, I think I’ll throw my hat in the ring. I’m the same age as McCain, and I really, really love my country. Moreover, I’m white, and I have no Muslim-sounding name. I’ll even wear a flag lapel pin!
Of course, McCain is patriotic. But just how pure and absolute a strain of patriotism does McCain represent? He himself has said, “I didn't really love America until I was deprived of her company” [during his imprisonment]. Was he feeling unadulterated love of country when he flew combat missions in Vietnam? To a reporter from Esquire, he once said, "I enjoyed shooting rockets and dropping bombs and shooting off guns. Nobody in their right mind wouldn't enjoy that. . . . You're a young, single guy, and you go out and you fly for a couple of weeks, then you come in for a week and carouse . . . . Nobody deserves to get paid for that."
Let me also address for a moment Sowell’s use of the expression “no-brainer.” How much more contemptuous can one be of other people’s convictions? “If you have a brain, you would think the way I think.” This intolerance can well breed an opposing intolerance: “If you had even half a brain, you would think the way I think.” Such language can only widen the divides between us.
To wrap all this up: Sowell has a perfect right to support McCain and advocate his election. I’m not complaining about that. What I do complain about is his use of logical fallacies and sweeping generalizations, the total lack of evidence to back his assertions, and his shameful appeals to fear rather than to reason. He could do better, and the McCain campaign could do better. America deserves better.
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