The Issues, No. 55 - Extremism and the 2008 Presidential Race

I'm in Naples, Florida this week visiting my Mom and my sister. Naples is a bastion for mostly wealthy conservative retired business people who have come here principally from the mid-west. So, the area has been, as one would expect, basically Republican in its leanings. Shortly before I arrived, the local newspaper, "The Naples Daily News", announced, much to the chagrin of many of its subscribers, that it was endorsing Barack Obama for president.

Ever since, the newspaper, which prints lots of letters to the editor every day, has been flooded with and has printed a number of particularly venomous letters that express very extreme feelings about Mr. Obama, the Democratic Party, and "The Naples Daily News". People have indicated they are cancelling their subscriptions to the paper, which has betrayed them and our democracy by supporting a socialist who is intent on destroying America. They have talked about Mr. Obama's background and his associations with terrorists and Reverend Wright. In other words, they have totally trashed Mr. Obama and everything he has ever done or everyone he has ever touched or spoken with or listened to. One would think he is the devil who, if given the chance, will destroy us all. I personally find all of this amusing on one hand but frightening on the other.

I can't believe that wealthy, educated, successful American people, or any people in America for that matter, can have such extreme feelings about anything, let alone one of the two candidates for President of the United States. Barack Obama loves the United States just as much as John McCain. He just has a different view about what needs to be fixed and how to fix it. You don't have to like him or the approach he wants to take to fix things, but you are not too bright if you think because he believes differently than John McCain that he is a bad person. And, obviously, the same thing is true for those who think ill of John McCain.

If both candidates believed the same thing and had the same approach to everything, there wouldn't be any point in having two people running for President. And, isn't it a great thing about our democratic society that we can have people disagreeing with one another, at the highest levels of our society, without one of them being shot or sent off to a prison camp somewhere for reeducation? So, come on Naples, Florida, and the rest of you political extremists everywhere,
get over yourselves and recognize that whoever is elected is going to do their best for the country, even if what they do is different from the way you would like to see it done. And, if you still feel so strongly about something, run for political office yourself.