American Phoenix

I posted a link last week to an article called American Adam, which ran in The New Republic. It is about Barack Obama and, what it argues as, his quest to help America break from its past. This is a response to that article from The American Prospect online that argues that what Obama is really doing is urging not a new beginning completely, but forging a new future from what has come before. It dispels the claims that Obama's message is easy, sugary hopefulness, which are dumb to begin with. But this article does it in a way that brings to light that what Obama is doing is actually a challenge to the American people.

He is preaching an inclusive civic nationalism—an American ideology with deep roots in post-Civil War America onward—and juxtaposing it to a discredited ethnic or racial nationalism that sees blood and race and the entitlement they bring as constitutive of national creed.

Its a quick and interesting read and one of the countless pieces focusing on Obama's importance as a historic American figure. He is certainly more so than any one I've seen in my time as a conscious American.

...

And while America's greatest intellectuals and political thinkers are writing about Barack Obama at a fervent rate, Ms. Clinton is proving to me to be a disgusting political player. I've tried and tried to keep her in good favors because of this or that, like we just need a Democrat in the White House blah blah blah or that she really has done some good for the country blah blah blah, but she just keeps sinking lower and lower, like extending a suggestion to Obama that he consider a Vice Presidency (even though he is the front runner, not to mention it is mathematically impossible for her to come out ahead of him in pledged delegates), leaving the doors open on the outlandish claim that Obama is a Musilm, and even intimating that McCain would make a better President. She is sabotaging this and it makes me sick. It is damaging to everyone. Except John McCain.

Excuse me.
mark.