Bitter...

"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." - Barack Obama

He was talking about the poor slobs in small towns in Pennsylvania and around the country who haven't had jobs in twenty-five years, and who (according to him) believe that the government has not done enough for them.

Well, I don't live in the "Rust Belt", but I do live in small-town America, and I am bitter.

You're doggone right, I am.

I'm bitter when I see my government planning to spend a trillion (or more) dollars of taxpayer money to prop up the mortgage industry and keep housing prices impossibly high in perpetuity, even though they have absolutely no Constitutional authority to do so.

I'm bitter when I think about the fact that I decided last year to rent a house rather than buy one, and instead buy my own truck and try to better myself through hard work, and then partly because of flawed (and again, extra-Constitutional) governmental meddling with the petroleum industry, fuel prices ate up whatever profits I could have realized, and my truck was reposessed.

Nobody offered to bail me out.

But now, I get to help bail out the millionaires at Bear Stearns.

I'm bitter because I am being asked to choose between possibly the three least qualified Presidential Candidates in the history of the United States. None of these people have any business anywhere near the government at all, let alone the highest office in the nation...

But I have to choose one of them... or not. I cannot in good conscience vote for John McCain, and neither can I vote for an unabashed Socialist panderer running on a Democrat ticket.

I still believe that the Constitution means something, and that it limits what the federal government can do for me, or to me, and no matter how good an idea it seems to be, or how many people think that they might benefit from government bailouts and interference in their (and my) life, the Constitution prevents MOST of what the federal government does now.

I'm bitter because none of the Presidential candidates seems to understand that.

I'm bitter because my nation, the greatest nation in the history of the world, seems to have forgotten how to win a war. Regardless of whether you agree with the reasons for going to war, we shouldn't be having this much trouble defeating an enemy that basically fights with sticks and rocks.

War is a terrible thing for all concerned. But if you are going to engage an enemy, for whatever reason, it should be so much more terrible for the enemy than for you, that they beg you to stop, and then for decades to come, any potential enemy you might face would rather do ANYTHING than have to engage you in armed conflict.

It's a simple concept. DEFEAT the enemy, soundly and without remorse or mercy, and then you will have peace.

Then comes the nation-building, the aid for refugees, the humanitarianism.

No one in our government seems to understand this, and I learned it on the playground when I was five years old.

These are just a few of the things that I am bitter about.

Not that the government hasn't done enough for me, but that the government will not leave me alone, and it screws up everything it touches.

So yes, I cling to my Constitutional Right to my gun, my religion, my expectation of border security and fair trade practices.

I cling to them because these Rights are under attack by the very people who are supposed to be defending and protecting them.

Obama is right. I am bitter.

And I have every right to be.