Thursday, December 18, 2008
Colin Powell had better watch out or he’ll become the conscience of a nation. That’s a title he doesn’t seek. It’s already claimed anyway, by Rush Limbaugh.
Powell recently said that his party, the Republican Party, was listening too closely to voices like Limbaugh’s and heeding its “lesser instincts rather than its better instincts.”
Among those are intolerance and barely subtle race-based appeals.
On cue, Limbaugh’s rambling defense asserted among other things that Powell supported Barack Obama because of his race. Maybe that’s how some of Limbaugh’s constituency assigns its affections. But if Powell has demonstrated anything in his long career, it is that he’s not a one-note instrument.
Powell also derided a campaign appeal beat into paste by Sarah Palin — that rural islands of small-town homogeny represent America values while more diverse urban centers do not.
“Most of us don’t live in small towns,” Powell told CNN’s Fareed Zakharia last weekend. “I was raised in the South Bronx, and there’s nothing wrong with my value system from the South Bronx.”
The ‘real America’
This statement, and the false dichotomy that exalts red-state sameness as the “real America,” comes to mind with a wonderful anecdote from a man in New York who got to introduce a Russian couple to America.
Rick Slevens lives in upstate New York. But he was in the Big Apple at JFK International last March to welcome Igor, Ina and their son to the United States for the first time. They were blown away.
The beauty: “We were driving over the 59th Street Bridge into Manhattan. The sun was just starting to set and all the lights were on. Even as a jaded Manhattanite with 25 years living on the island (I now live in upstate NY), I was still spellbound by the sight.”
The plenty: At an ethnic restaurant, the waiter brought salad the visitors ate with great relish, then a beef barley soup. “They ate that and were stuffed. When the waiter brought the entree — beef goulash over buttered noodles with sauteed string beans on the side — they looked quizzically as though to say, ‘So, what’s this?’”
They had thought the soup was the entree. It was more than enough for them.
Slevens recounts the couple’s astonishment at the quality and variety of food. At an Italian bakery in the East Village, Ina was “almost in tears when she saw the pastries displayed.”
But it wasn’t just food and bright lights that left an impression.
“They kept remarking at all of the different people they saw on the streets: Caucasians, Asians, blacks, Hispanics,” Slevens wrote. His guests “had been under the impression that Manhattan was only home to wealthy whites, with all of the other races relegated to positions of servitude.”
This is the part of this feel-good story worth retelling. The essence of America in these people’s eyes wasn’t just the means of production, the means of getting around, the means acquired to survive and thrive.
What was remarkable also was the synthesis made out of difference.
As with New York City, America’s president-elect embodies this — son of a mixed marriage, a black child owing much of his upbringing to a white grandmother. The appeal in the campaign used against his was a specious “he’s not one of us.” Of course, that was code for an “us” that never defined us, even back to this nation’s colonial origins.
The vote tally Nov. 4 demonstrated that we can rise above our lesser instincts. A nation the world has come to observe with suspicion and derision can again be the model for civility and inclusiveness symbolized by a certain lady in a certain harbor.
John Young’s column appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.
Comments
By Yashar
Dec 18, 2008 4:33 PM | Link to this
John Young, john young, the man without a conscience. He thinks his twisted junk writing helps sell newspapers. I got news for you JY. If it does, why is the Tribune so thin that it is difficult to pick one up, let alone try to read it. All news (old news) is on one page.
John Young and liberals in general think that because there are mixed marriages (many which are through adultery) that it is a wonderful thing to see so many different races and cultures and diversities walking the streets. Thus, liberals think, there must be laws that in general protect all races, all cultures, and diversities of thinking, which requires that all laws are free of religion, cultures, and diversities. In other words, there is no God and His law; our Constitution is null and void; our country is not a Christian nation; life isn't important except according to the dictates of liberals.
The John Youngs of this country do not even realize that atheism is a religion; the right to kill the unborn is a religion; samesex marriage/homosexuality is a religion; devil worship is a religion, et. al.
I was trained up by mother and father and by schooling from grade 1 to grade 12 (1948-1957) that our Constitution and other laws of our land were based on the moral laws of God. This good teaching began to change quickly in the 1960s when the tip-toe- thru-the-tulips John Young crowd began to hatch. Moms and Dads began to fail training up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, allowing them to run loose, become alcoholics, drug addicts, gangbangers, devaluing life to the degree that it is okay to kill the unborn.
What a sick society we now have so openly sinful. But, there are still a people in our country who know and appreciate the order that God set in His creation and these are the people who suffer the less among today's Sodom and Gomorrah.
By Schadenfreude
Dec 18, 2008 12:29 PM | Link to this
I have a running bet with some of my friends that the person "John Young" doesn't exist. I believe Mr. Young is a pseudonym for Bobby Seale; (former co-founder of the Black Panthers). I know I saw that guy on the picture professing to be 'John Young'. He was the curator at the Jerry Lee Lewis Family Museum, in Ferriday, Louisiana.
Love ya,
Schadenfreude
PS. Hey "John Young"(Bobby Seale), what do you think about Obama's choice of Rick Warren give the invocation at his inaguration? That's pretty 'tough love' for you guys on the left.
By Robbie
Dec 18, 2008 9:33 AM | Link to this
What a rambling compilation of junk! I know John Young is not after my personal affections, but seriously... This has got to be the worst of his worst... and that's pretty bad. By the way, John, how's the sale of Cox News working out for you guys at the Trib?
When you get Rush's information from a MediaMatters Post-It, you are getting a biased stamp and a brief snippet of the point that Limbaugh was making. To base an editorial, at least in part, on that is ridiculous.
His overall point was that Powell was wrong about the entire election process and the statements that Powell had made, in and of themselves were incorrect. The Republican Party DID move to the center for this election, as people such as Powell had been suggesting they do. They did not listen to Limbaugh and the strong Conservative base, and the election was an abysmal failure for them. The irony that Limbaugh had pointed out was that Powell was calling for the exact thing that had just happened, and it failed! To top it off, Powell did not even support his own statement when he supported Obama for President over McCain. McCain was the embodiment of the statements that Powell made, yet he threw his support behind the only African-American running for President.
In addition, the absurdity of your Russian family example made my eyeballs pop right out of my head. The Russian family lives under the banner of a country that is a giant welfare state. The government seeks to replace income. They want to replace retirement savings. They want to produce the food supply. They want to take masses of money from the people that make it to provide for those that donýt. Any of this sound familiar? As such, they repress human innovation and entrepreneurship. It is no wonder that they were overwhelmed when they witnessed what the principles of hard work and capitalism can provide for a society.
The ultimate sadness in this article is your view that you and Obama represent what is greater than the "lesser instincts" of small-town America. These are the people that provide the vegetable at your stores and on your plates. They raise your dairy. They raise your proteins. They feed America. The overwhelming arrogance and condescension represented by such statements is disgusting.
By mec
Dec 18, 2008 7:35 AM | Link to this
I small problem. Limbaugh does not seem quite so racist as the people who never listen to him like to believe. In fact he doesnt seem racist at all unless you tack the term onto everybody who opposes hive communitarianism or would like to see the United States become a constitutional republic. Walter Williams, an African American with traditional values, hosts the radio show from time to time and Justice Thomas-another boogy man to the post-american left, performed his marriage ceremony.
By Fred
Dec 18, 2008 5:22 AM | Link to this
Hey sammy.....are you kidding? The Waco Tribune is a slanted, yellow-journalistic Rag and John Young's door is painted bright RED. John Young is just a bit LEFT of Russia's Putin on the political spectrum. When you see John Young's smiling face you are looking at a card carrying Gore Vadal "Commie" who does NOT have any Jesus stickers on his car bumper. It's rather EASY to follow John Young's point-of-view. Whatever the Bible says.....John Young's view is the opposite. You will never see John Young wearing Jesus sandals......he can't hide his red cloven hoofs.
By sammy
Dec 18, 2008 4:03 AM | Link to this
Aw, shucks, you big Palooka, I almost misted up over this tearjerker. You are such a patriot, so proud of this big tent we call America. It's big enough for all regardless of race, color, culture, religion, residency status, sexual perversion, social class, criminal history, crooked governance; everyone except Republicans and the filthy rich, which are synonymous terms in your vocabulary.
Question, John: This is your third column since news of the for-sale Illinois Senate seat scandal broke over a week ago, and you have yet to publish one syllable of commentary on the subject. You typically trashed the GOP in two columns and in the other just as typically subjected your readers to another unwanted column on homosexuality. Is the Democrat scandal re Blagojevich and possibly Rahm Emanuel not suited to your word construction skills? Or, more likely, have you just turned a blind eye to it? In fact, the only Trib editorial addressing the scandal was unattributed and the length and depth of your average "letter to the editor." What gives? Can't any of you editors muster moral outrage or courage over this Democrat scandal, or is that reserved for the GOP scandals?
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