Thanks, Dad

So, my dad sent me this beautiful op-ed by Frank Rich from the latte-liberal NY Times this morning. Those crazy socialists. If you have 5 minutes, it's a great summation of why I am hopeful for the first time in my voting life; not so much because Barack Obama is black (a nice plus), but that our country (minus a few Christians who want to have Sean Hannity's babies) has finally rejected the horrible neo-con paradigm of the Republicans. I don't know why it didn't happen in 2004 (unless it did), but at least we can start picking up the pieces now. Even if you don't read the whole op-ed linked above, here is the end, and a sentiment with which I whole-heartedly concur:

The actual real America is everywhere. It is the America that has been in shell shock since the aftermath of 9/11, when our government wielded a brutal attack by terrorists as a club to ratchet up our fears, betray our deepest constitutional values and turn Americans against one another in the name of “patriotism.” What we started to remember the morning after Election Day was what we had forgotten over the past eight years, as our abusive relationship with the Bush administration and its press enablers dragged on: That’s not who we are.

So even as we celebrated our first black president, we looked around and rediscovered the nation that had elected him. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” Obama said in February, and indeed millions of such Americans were here all along, waiting for a leader. This was the week that they reclaimed their country.

And to go along with that idea, here is our national anthem (or what it SHOULD be, rather):