Paying Lip Service to Selflessness

Last night, the two remaining contenders for the presidency took the stage together for the first time in the election cycle. The event, as you probably know, was held at Saddleback Chruch in Lake Forest, California. All in all, this event showed us two things:

  • Any casual observer learned (and probably already knows) that Barack Obama cannot preform well off-the-cuff, and that John McCain can; this means the debates between these two are going to be interesting, and that this election may be a lot closer than many of us previously thought.
  • We also learned that both candidates despise their own happiness– or at least consider it something to feel guilty for, to try to hide from the public.

Case in point: when asked what his greatest moral failure was, Senator Obama mumbled something about drug use, but then went on to say that it was a “fundamental selfishness”

I am proud to say that what Barack Obama lists as his greatest moral failure is the thing that I would consider to be the greatest moral achievement a person could aspire to: selfishness.

When Pastor Rick Warren asked McCain why he wanted to be president, he said that he wanted to,

“inspire a generation of Americans to serve a cause greater than their self interest.”

For all their disagreements (and agreements) on foreign and domestic policy, these two candidates sure do come down together on the issue of whether or not Americans have the right to live for their own sake: the answer, firmly, emphatically, is: no.

John McCain is not the first politician that has called for a generation to bow to a cause greater than themselves; watch the clip. Barack Obama is not the first politician to call for a country that– like in the clip above– “knows no class distinction;” This is not a Change I can believe in– in fact, its not a change at all. Its been done before.

You see, ladies and gentlemen, the actors change, but the course of history stays the same.

John McCain wants you to serve your country; Barack Obama wants you to serve, not just your country, but an amorphous “others.” But what these men forget– or rather, what they do not forget– but instead, what you forget is that where there is a servant, there is a master, ladies and gentlemen.

And don’t comment saying that its inappropriate for me to compare modern day political figures to Adolf Hitler, because it isn’t; watch the video.

Besides, that’s just what I do: I compare people to Hitler.

5 Responses to “Paying Lip Service to Selflessness”


  1. 1 Nicky Cheese Aug 17th, 2008 at 7:15 pm

    Haha: “Besides, that’s just what I do: I compare people to Hitler.” I appreciate your forthright honesty.

  2. 2 thesilentmajority Aug 17th, 2008 at 9:51 pm

    Keep comparing people to Hitler, Bill. It’s funny, and people that have a problem with it are Nazis.

  3. 3 george Aug 17th, 2008 at 11:52 pm

    We have to wonder, how can these guys say this and still try to get us to decide to vote for them? If we need to crack down on self-interest, I suppose I should vote against my self-interst, which would consist of them trying to persuade me that voting for them will impact my life negatively but improve the lives of others. So much for the traditional salesman model of “It will be good for you if you vote for me”; we can only uphold selflessness and persuasion at the same time if we furher dissociate benefits of a given administration from the individual and reallocate them to some floating abstraction like “the public”.

  4. 4 pragmaticallypolitical Aug 18th, 2008 at 9:59 am

    Saying you aren’t comparing Obama to Hitler and then making a post that has no relation to Hitler with a Hitler video front-and-center doesn’t mean you aren’t comparing Obama to Hitler.
    Seriously, your academic legitimacy and integrity are taking a severe beating.

  5. 5 bpoi Aug 18th, 2008 at 11:47 am

    What? I don’t think you understood this post…

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