Well I guess it would be nice...

Bill O'Reilly makes me laugh. This is the only reason I will watch Fox news because, despite claims to the contrary, they are not fair nor are they balanced. But Mr. O'Reilly said something one day that has stuck with me, played like a refrain in my mind. Democrats can not be people of faith. This strikes me as extremely ignorant. Maybe it's because I am a Southern girl, born and bred, but I think that Southerners have come way off the mark since the days of Reconstruction. The goal of Southerners during Reconstruction was to defeat the Yankee propaganda by giving all good and genteel Southerners their right to vote back and that meant a vote for the Democratic party. How, then, has the South become a "red zone" for America? During Reconstruction Republicans were though equal only to the Scallawags, Carpetbaggers, "free issue darkies", and the devil.

In the 2008 election, John McCain, a God-fearing Republican, won the state of Georgia by a margin of 5%. In the 1872 election, Ulysses S. Grant, a God-fearing Republician, lost the election in the state of Georgia by a margin of 9%. Georgia voted "blue" in every election from 1868 until 1960, when the Civil Rights Act was effectively explotted by the Republician party, in what they called "the Southern strategy". This strategy was popularized by Richard Nixon's strategist, Kevin Phillips, who was quoted in the New York Times in 1970 saying:
"From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."

Basically Phillips and the GOP counted on the fear and ignorance of white Southerners. People who still play "Dixie", wave the Stars and Bars, and ride around in their mud-covered pickup trucks with white robes hidden under the seat.

Never have I been so worried about a President before Barack Obama. I fear for his safety and pray daily that he will not be assasinated because I, like many other Americans, feel that his administration will bring "Change we can believe in". Unfortunately there is not much I can do to change the minds of my fellow Southerners. I remember the night of the election, as I danced joyfully around the living room, feeling prouder to be an American than I have since Clinton left the White House, my cousin recieved a text message from her best friend that said, "Better start praying". And I've felt her attitude reflected a thousand fold in conversations that I have had with people since the election. They are afraid of Barack Obama, afraid of a "black man in power". Do people not realize what a triumph of the American spirit this is? Almost every single person who lives in American today is from immigrants. I know my pedigree if French, English, Irish, Spanish, and Native American. I'm royalty and an aristocrat married to pirates, gyspies, and a madame of a whorehouse. Only in America can this make for the quality of stock that is me. Barack Obama is the ultimate representative of what America, the melting pot of the worls, stands for. People keep harping on the fact that Obama is a "black man", when in fact he is the true epitamy of an "African-American"; his father was a Kenyan, his mother a Kanasan. How beautiful and poetic is that?

I am proud to be a Democrat at this moment, proud that we can show America that there is hope for the future. How can O'Reilly say that the Dems lack faith? We have the ultimate of faith in our chosen leader and the cabinet that he has picked to guide us through this "Third Reconstruction". I believe that Americans have fallen so far away from the Constitution that they have completely forgotten about the First Ammendment and reiterated by both Thomas Jefferson and the Supreme Court. Religion has no place in politics but you will often find that they are made to be strange bedfellows. It is my personal hope that we can go back to the basics of our government and rebuild a better future for America. The framers of the Constitution did not intend for us to be an unchanging, inflexible country. They intended for our country to help our people. "In order to form a more perfect union" states the preamble to our constitution. Ammendments were made to ensure that we could change our government as the times and the people changed. In order to not fall like Rome, we must adapt to changes. And that is something I can believe in.