Open Letter to Barack Obama

Dear Senator Obama,

As one approaching Eighty years, I have heard your message and am both thrilled and appalled.

You are offering the transcendent moment. You do give the promise that we can leave the race issue behind. You do give us another view of a shining city on the hill; a city absent the strife of race, prejudice, and built-in disadvantage. You appeal equally to aspiring people of color, and whites who yearn for that distant level playing field, and don’t know how to get there. I applaud you.

A caveat. It is true, I believe, that not to learn from history is to be forced to live it again.
I am not sure you have learned, and I need your reassurance.

Our country was built by millions of people reaching for a better life. Some achieved it some did not. They worked for it and they paid for it or they failed; the mighty and the average man. There always has been and will be a degree of special advantage: it is in the nature of Man. That being said, how best can we minimize that impact?

All I read of your philosophy and the programs you offer tells me you see government as the answer to that question. Why?

For those of us who lived through the Depression, the Stalinist years, the Hitler years, and the benign, but unimpressive, socialist systems of other countries around the world, please explain how you will reconcile the basic entrepreneurial characteristics of America with the government you propose.

We have seen governments that promised what you offer become the worst possible enemies of their citizens, their neighbors and the world at large.

We are watching China and India step back from Government programs and become more entrepreneurial. Why are they embracing what you ask us to reject?

Much as I would like to see you succeed and bring about Philip Wylie’s happily tea-colored world, I believe you will fail if you cannot answer the question I ask. Please reply.