Dear Senator Obama:

Grow up.

Sincerely, Michigander4Dean

Grow up.

Sincerely,
Calteacherguy

Whats your point?

Love,

DU

Screw those old civil rights hippies, eh Barack? What did they ever do for you?

Why fight them over and over again?

We have other problems now.

nobody ever names one of these fights that is a) already won, and b) still being fought.

gay rights. Stuff like equal rights for transgender people and gay marriage, the full encompassing of equal rights for all. Stuff like bigoted policies. Stuff like the rejection of our beloved and honorable gay citizens. Stuff like gay families adopting children.

That kinda stuff, that Obama seems to regard as 'old, passe' fights, that need not be fought anymore.

Oh, yeah... I am an old boomer, so I don't really matter anymore, because I still fight old battles. So never mind me. My experience and that that I learned from my elders does not matter anymore.

If that's passe, I will take passe.

I think we all appreciate being diminished and discounted, whether because of our age, orientation, or views.

"PROUD OBSOLESCENT!".

Today our concern must be with the future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.

The New Deal and the Fair Deal were bold measures for their generations – but this is a new generation.

There has also been a change – a slippage – in our intellectual and moral strength. Seven lean years of drought and famine have withered a field of ideas. Blight has descended on our regulatory agencies – and a dry rot, beginning in Washington, is seeping into every corner of America – in the payola mentality, the expense account way of life, the confusion between what is legal and what is right. Too many Americans have lost their way, their will, and their sense of historic purpose.

It is a time, in short, for a new generation of leadership – new men to cope with new problems and new opportunities.

All over the world, particularly in the newer nations, young men are coming to power – men who are not bound by the traditions of the past – men who are not blinded by the old fears and hates and rivalries – young men who can cast off the old slogans and delusions and suspicions.




Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom promised our nation a new political and economic framework. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal promised security and succor to those in need. But the New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises, it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride, not to their pocketbook – it holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.

But I tell you the New Frontier is here, whether we seek it or not. Beyond that frontier are the uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus. It would be easier to shrink back from that frontier, to look to the safe mediocrity of the past, to be lulled by good intentions and high rhetoric – and those who prefer that course should not cast their votes for me regardless of party.

But I believe the times demand new invention, innovation, imagination, decision. I am asking each of you to be pioneers on that New Frontier. My call is to the young in heart, regardless of age – to all who respond to the Scriptural call: “Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed.”