Just fractions of a second after polls closed on the West Coast, CNN called the election for Barack Obama. Regardless of your political team, this is an amazing moment for America.
When you look back at the history of European countries, or the Islamic golden age, or the incredible history of Greece and China, you really get a sense of how young our country is.
It was only 220 years ago that we adopted our Constitution, in which we allowed slavery to continue and counted slaves as only 3/5 of a person.
It was only 143 years ago that the Civil War ended and we no longer counted human beings as property.
It was only 4o years ago that Martin Luther King Jr. gave his last speech before he was shot down.
It was only 4 years ago that our country re-elected George Bush, despite his record of divisiveness.
That is the wonder of this country: that we have a system by which we can make these strides in such a short amount of time, and that our new President-elect will be ushered into his new position without violence or chaos.
We have been an incredibly fortunate nation, that the experiment that is our system of government has worked so well for so long. I hope that by the time my grandchildren (if any!) can vote, it will seem ridiculous that race had any role in our election of President Obama, and that history will look upon him well.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
And hopefully gender will be the same - that we will look beyond skin (we got that one right) and beyond gender (almost there) and pick the best candidate. We are an amazing country with the strides we have accomplished and will continue to forge.
Post a Comment