Stephen B. Young's blog

by Stephen Young, 7/5/08 • I read the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July and, to my surprise, the words came up with a new meaning. Or maybe my current distemper about our politics put new meaning into the old words.

Steve Young, 3/14/08 • Iran is electing members of a new parliament today, March 14. But it is not exactly a free and open election. The Guardian Council, an unelected body of clerics and jurists created by the constitution to protect the regime from ideological deviation, disqualified some 1,700 potential candidates.

1/19/08 – Competitive elections are like strong sunlight – shining into dark recesses and bringing out the truth. Given enough competitive pressure even the best of spin comes unstuck and spins off into irrelevance.

New Hampshire primaries in particular have given us good examples of this exposure process. Ed Muskie’s presidential hopes vanished when he cried in public on a snowy New Hampshire evening over a nasty smear of his wife; Ronald Reagan endeared himself to many when during a primary debate he grabbed the mike away from a competitor saying: “It’s mine; I paid for it”

Something is getting under my skin about racial references to Barack Obama. He is being called the “Black” candidate for President.

My question is: is he really black? Why is he called “Black” and not “White”?

He is as much his white mother’s offspring as he is the child of a man from Kenya.

Why one label over the other?

The heritage of racism I suppose.