Article Contributed on: 5/31/2009 9:17:37 AM
In October of 2008, I was doing the first Friday art walk on Tennyson St. in Denver when I was accosted in a friendly fashion by a Democrat activist my own (middle-) age. "Vote for Obama!" was his enthusiastic message.
"I'm a Libertarian," I told my new friend, "Still, I'm going to vote for Mr. Obama. But I venture to predict that after he's elected, he's going to tell you three things: One, we aren't pulling out of Iraq. Two, you're not getting your civil liberties back. And three, your taxes are going up."
If anything, I "misunderestimated" how closely the new Obama administration would follow in the footsteps of the old Bush administration.
The New York Times pointed out this month how much Obama has
backtracked on his pledges about national security.
Attorneys for several Gitmo detainees describe today in the Denver Post the
torture their clients have undergone and still undergo as their long-planned release still hangs fire.
On Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald, possibly the savviest national security pundit in the blogosphere, demonstrates how Obama personally is
verbally defending ideals while carrying out policies in direct contradiction to his speeches.
And as I myself point out in a recently published letter in the Denver Post, the
drug war continues under Obama.
We voted for change. To observe frankly that such change is not forthcoming is not to slam Barak Obama, whom we all greatly admire as a person. Instead, it's indicative of how little can be achieved by grassroots action as the greatest Democratic Experiment in the history of mankind falls to its knees and surrenders to the National Security State.