And Another Thing...

Ok, so I guess I actually have three points I want to make about the Obama speech.

(3) Could the disparity between Obama - a professor of constitutional law - and Bush, who seems to prefer his reading material be of the Sunday-morning-illustrated-and-serialized variety, be any greater? Throughout his campaign, Obama has made a conscious, concerted effort to transcend the politics of race. And, in my mind, he has succeeded. From Andrew Sullivan, last spring:

My favorite moment was a very simple one. He referred to the anniversary of the March on Selma, how he went and how he came back and someone (I don't remember who now) said to him:

"That was a great celebration of African-American history."

To which Obama said he replied:

"No, no, no, no, no. That was not a great celebration of African-American history. That was a celebration of American history."

I wrote in an email to a friend the other day:

"I've got a poster of latter-day Malcolm X in my room at school and I've had students - white & black - ask me why I would have something like that up. And I tell them that his epiphanies in Mecca, among the multicultural pilgrims he met, are inspirational, even for me, a non-Muslim of European descent. It might be a small point or a silly gesture, but I think that impressionable minds should be exposed to a white man with black heroes. A straight man who gets mad when he hears the word 'faggot.' A...uh...male...... man who periodically wonders aloud how a school with a large majority of female students still seems to so overwhelmingly support boys' sports despite the fact that the girls' basketball team won the state tourney a few years back."

This is more than mere political correctness. It is a politics that reflects reality. As such, it is a far cry from the divisiveness of Bush/Cheney/Rove. And they hate it. Just as they hate anything from the "reality-based community."

In Obama's political vision, our interests, our goals are bound up with one another's. If the sanctity of my civil rights is contingent upon the principle of exclusion, then they are not rights at all. They are - by definition - privileges. In short: my rights cease to exist when you are denied yours. That's what I'm talking about.

Years ago, I was discussing civil rights with my esteemed friend and roommate, Sean O'Brien. Now, Sean's politics are much more sophisticated than mine and he made the point that he could see no evidence for anything like "self-evident natural rights." I concede the point. One has to suspend a fair amount of disbelief to buy into the tenability of the Enlightenment project in general and the American version of it in particular. So our government, which Sean would also (rightly) consider to be more plutocracy than democracy, is based in part - if not in toto - on a lie. But I still belief that it is - or at least has the potential to be - a noble lie. And, at the end of the day, I see in Obama's candidacy a chance to realize some of that potential, to make our union - in his words - a little more perfect.