I never thought our first African American President would be the one to bring back slavery. But obviously I’m no psychic.

In a hideously underpublicized clause of Barack Obama’s plans for his first term, one I wasn’t even aware of until yesterday, there is word of a mandatory service initiative, a “calling on” of all American citizens to donate a certain amount of time per year to community projects. Every middle and high school student will be required to do 50 hours, and every college student will be required to do 100 hours per year of enrollment. Retiring citizens, age 55 and over, will be “encouraged” to serve in programs appropriate for their age group, and all other citizens will be pushed to join one of the many programs Obama wants to either grow or start up, namely the Peace Corps, Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, Veteran Corps, Head Start, and Youth Build.

Note that I am not anti-community service. I have done a decent share of it throughout my life, starting with making layettes in my dad’s Crisis Pregnancy Center office to participating in Walk for Life to giving 17 inches of my hair to Locks of Love to tutoring, and I don’t plan on being an stingy, uncharitable adult in the years between now and my death. Charity is good. Community service is good. People should do it.

But requirement? Not only does this completely contradict the very heart of charity, it is borderline slavery. The government cannot control our time and our good deeds. We are not indentured by our citizenship. If a legal adult does not want to do community service, that’s a legitimate choice. It is none of anyone else’s business. We’re being treated like criminals, but instead of a court-ordered service to compensate for a misdemeanor, it’s a government mandate to further a socialist, false utopian agenda.

Did I mention the bribery involved? Obama is offering a $4,000 tax credit to be applied directly to a college student’s tuition should he or she complete the 100 annual hours of community service (overall, $1,000 per year for the average student). This promise 1) negates the term “charity” and 2) forces American taxpayers to shove out payment for work that would have otherwise been done by true volunteers at no cost. Even as a college student who could certainly use an extra 4k in my UNC account, I think this idea is ludicrous and backwards.

While change.gov has made some slight alterations to the careful wording of the “Service” paragraph, eliminating the word “require” that appeared frequently in the first published draft, the principle is the same, as is the underlying problem: we are being turned into the government’s slaves.

Time to re-excavate the Underground Railroad, huh?

I just got my daily email from newsmax.com informing me that Obama has won the delegates and will be the official Democratic nominee for the 2008 presidential campaign. Half of me is happy it's not Hillary (one, because I'm not exactly a fan of hers and, two, because I think she would've had a better chance at beating McCain), and the other half is shriveling up into a terrified little rat fetus thinking about Obama winning in November.

I know that a huge number of Americans support Barack Obama, and I do not think any less of them as human beings because of that choice. I am able to distinguish someone's political views from their moral cores, from their personalities and souls. It is because of the distinction that I think a good chunk of these Obama fans could still be saved. There is hope that their characters will be empowered enough to beat the hell out of the political counterpart with which it shares a body (my sincerest apologies to any of you who sensed that condescention).

I never thought it was a big deal that I didn't like Obama. I thought, silly me, that it was my right as an American and, moreover, as a Republican. But evidently democracy is a bit more about face value and popularity these days. I once got the opportunity to explain to a friend, a tried and true blue-stater, exactly why I didn't like Obama. It's about his platform, I told him, and his background and his beliefs and the way that his stances on issues are polar opposites to mine. "Oh," he said back to me, "I thought it was just because he was black."

Now, I don't know if he was serious or not, because you never really can tell with him, but I know it's an assumption Democrats are making about Republicans on a daily basis: we're all just a bunch of redneck racists with active NRA memberships and moose heads mounted above our mantles. I call mine Morton. Wrong! It seems to me that in this election, race, a thing that many thought would work against Obama, will, in fact, work in his favor as a subliminal guilt tactic. Thanks to the blind blissfulness that the backwards logic of affirmative action has induced in us Americans, we will vote for Obama not because he's black, but because he's not white. Because if we don't vote for him, we're racists.

Funny, I thought I was supposed to be colorblind.

The way I see it: He's inexperienced. He's unqualified. He has skeletons being dragged out his closet at a rate I can only compare to watching bunnies mate, but no one seems to care. He's developed some sort of Messiah aura, and no matter what he says or does wrong, he is forgiven. I saw a poll today on Fox News (which is obviously an incredibly biased source because sometimes they present a story from the sides of both parties. What jackasses.) that said the 48% of Democrats thought it was likely that Obama shared anti-American and racist views with his pastor, Reverend Wright. It's pretty intense that almost half of his own party thinks he might be a racist. But what shocked me most was that of this 48%, only 26% would question voting for him because of it. They've acknowledged his racist tendencies, and they'd still put him in office. I'm a little dumbstruck.

Whenever I tell someone I'm voting for McCain, the first thing they throw in my face is how he voted against MLK Day, saying he's some kind of white supremacist. So, fine, it looks like we have two racists pitted against each other. Why is mine somehow worse than yours?
I can honestly state that race is not a factor for me in this election. And I'd appreciate it if you'd all allow me my free speech (even though that's a right typically reserved for Democrats, I know) in supporting the candidate I see fit, even if he's just an old white guy. Thank you.