Now, if we were to buy into the attacks on Obama advanced in those 61 books, we might imagine that he is some kind of radical liberal. But for the most part, Obama has governed as a centrist, not as a radical liberal.
Indeed, after President Obama won re-election, William Saletan at SLATE MAGAZINE online published an article telling the GOP to cheer up because we had just elected a moderate Republican. I understand his point. However, he does not comment explicitly on the trend of radical Republicans attempting to purge moderate Republicans from the party by referring to them pejoratively as Republicans in name only (RINOS, for short).
Certain Republicans like to console themselves by repeating the mantra that we are a center-right nation. It makes me sad to say, but, yes, today we probably are a center-right nation. However, for the most part President Obama has governed as a center-right president. But the very same Republicans who repeat the mantra about our being a center-right nation do not seem to take any comfort from having a center-right President. On the contrary, they assail him for an endless array of thought crimes, some of which are real but many of which are imaginary. Indeed, he seems to be a lightning rod for conservative attacks, as First Lady Hilary Clinton was for years a lightning rod for a vast right-wing conspiracy.
To be sure, Obama often pays lip-service to certain liberal ideas. Occasionally, he even shows some backbone and stands up for women's rights. As I say, I think that William Faulkner was prescient in connecting white supremacy and manipulative male patriarchy in his portrayal of Thomas Sutpen. Because of the color of President Obama's skin, it is not hard to understand why people whose attitude of white supremacy remains unvanquished in their hearts and minds would see him as a symbolic target to their reservations about the proposition that all men and women are created equal. Because he occasionally shows some backbone in supporting women's rights, it is not hard to understand why he has drawn the fire of rear-guard defenders of manipulative male patriarchy.
But if all men and women are by nature equal because all of us share the same human nature, then our nation is dedicated to a radical proposition, and a government dedicated to such a radical proposition is a radical experiment in human history.
So I agree with Charles M. Blow that today there are two
Another civil war will not resolve this divide in the hearts and minds of the American people, just as the American Civil War did not once and for all resolve this divide in the hearts and minds of 19th-century Americans.
Nor would the assassination of President Obama resolve this divide, just as the assassinations of President Lincoln, President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, did not resolve this divide in the hearts and minds of earlier Americans.
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