For the cons

So, I've noticed this truck at work that has a homade sign reading "Liberty vs. Socialism," clearly referring to the accusation made by the right that Barack Obama is a socialist. This is ironic for two reasons: 1) we both work at a school, which is essentially a socialist entity. It is funded by public money, run for the public good, and ruled by anal government regulations. To be clear, it is run poorly, and Bush's No Child Left Behind is the worst kind of socialist reform there is, because it reduces human beings to numbers and spreadsheets, provides insufficient funding to its purposes, and sets unnattainable standards that exacerbates the rift that exists between the haves and the have nots. 2) We both work at a school, and one would hope that teachers and people working at schools are rational, reasonable people, because in the end, we all strive to teach our students to think critically.
Therefore, though he is accutely aware of the pitfalls of a socialist run entity, especially one as badly run as public schools, he should also surely be aware that many of the problems particular to schools have their root in NCLB. Moreover, for him to buy into the absurdly simple-minded allegation that Obama is a socialist can only be interpreted to mean that he is neither rational nor reasonable, and that he lacks, or refuses to use, critical thinking skills.
Let me just lay it on the line for the grumbling conservatives out there:
1) Obama is no more a socialist than McCain, who I'd like to point out, has helped oversee an unprecedented expansion of the federal government and allowed the GOP, a party that formerly believed in states rights, to completely reverse their position in order to dictate federalist mandates from Washington.
2) On election night, a lady in the 7-11 I was at, upon seeing me high five an African American woman wearing an Obama T-shirt, complained that, "this country is going to hell." OK, first of all, discontent was one of the primary reasons for Obama's historic election to president. But second, and more importantly, the feeling that America is not headed in the right direction has nothing to do with Obama, who, in point of fact, is not yet president. Look, even if you want to blame everything on Clinton, conservative, remember that that was 8 years ago--6 years for which your party had complete control of the government, and 8 with the executive branch. In those 8 years, Bush and his buddies did NOTHING to make you feel good about our country. Why then you would be foolish enough to believe that 4 more years of your party's rule was going to make things better is beyond me...I'll refer back to Einstein: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
3) You lost because your party is ideologically bankrupt. You ran a person for VP, a person that would have been a heartbeat away from the presidency, who thought Africa was a country, not a continent, and could not name the countries involved in NAFTA (So Sara, NAFTA stands for the North American free trade agreement--North America consists of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico). More importantly, your platform had nothing to do with the problems we face as a nation in the 21st century; instead, your guy continued to trot out tax cuts and more of the same bankrupt economic policies that have not worked since Reagan first tried them in the 1980's. Finally, your campaign strategy relied on name calling, fear mongering, and bullying, with the hope that lingering racism among southern and rural voters would buoy your cause. Put all of these things together and you have a dumb, immature, foolish, and bigoted campaign; that you thought you would somehow win was a joke.