My favorite parts from Obama's "The Audacity of Hope"

[prostock69]

Pages 37-38:

"Not all Republican elected officials subscribe to the tenets of today's movement conservatives. In both the House and the Senate, and in the state capitals across the country, there are those who cling to more traditional conservative virtues of temperance and restraint--men and women who recognize that piling up debt to finance tax cuts for the wealthy is irresponsible, that deficit reduction can't take place on the backs of the poor, that the separation of church and state protects the church as well as the state, that conservation and conservatism don't have to conflict, and the foreign policy should be based on facts and not wishful thinking.

But these Republicans are not the ones who have driven the debate over the past six years. Instead of the 'compassionate conservatism' that George Bush promised in his 2000 campaign, what has characterized the ideological core of today's GOP is absolutism, not conservatism. There is the absolutism of the free market, an ideology of not taxes, no regulation, no safety net--indeed, no government beyond what's required to protect private property and provide for the national defense.

There's the religious absolutism of the Chrisitan right, a movement that gained traction on the undeniably difficult issue of abortion, but which soon flowered into something much broader; a movement that insists not only that Chrisitianity is America's dominant faith, but that a particular fundamentalist brand of that faith should drive public policy, overriding any alternative source of understanding, whether the writings of liberal theologians, the findings of the National Academy of Sciences, or the words of Thomas Jefferson.

And there is the absolute belief in the authority of majority will, or at least those who claim power in the name of the majority--a disdain for those institutional checks (the courts, the Constitution, the press, the Geneva Conventions, the rules of the Senate, or the traditions governing redistricting) that might slow our inexorable march toward the New Jerusalem."

"Of course, there are those within the Democratic Party who tend toward similar zealotry. But those who do have never come close to possessing the power of Rove or Delay, the power to take over the party, fill it with loyalists, and ensrine some of their more radical ideas into law."

After I read the entire book, I knew that Obama "got it" and I couldn't be happier that he is our president.