I’ve been in the great state of Georgia for more than a week now. I preached at a couple of churches in Danville (follow I-16 from Macon on a map and you’ll eventually find it) and spent a few nights in Statesboro (the same town the Allman Brothers once sung about). This past Friday, I drove near Milledgeville to my fourth church meeting since being here, and then returned to Danville for the fifth this morning. Tonight, I’m in Athens, home of the Georgia Bulldogs.

Josh, my cousin and lifelong friend, took me on a quick tour of the UGA campus by night. I got to see where the Tom Green Road Trip scenes were filmed and, of course, Sanford Stadium where the Dawgs play. We walked through downtown Athens, which is a really neat college town, and even saw the home of Michael Stipes (lead singer of R.E.M.). Before taking a trip through the campus or strolling among the hippies downtown, we ate at a small Italian joint called DeSomething. Lucky for me, someone left a copy of a local paper on our table called Flagpole.

It took me all of about five minutes of being in downtown Athens to realize it’s your typical liberal, college town. The current issue of Flagpole only confirmed it. I did not know there were people out there who would consider Barack Obama as being a centrist, but apparently they come even farther left than him. Tom Hayden, a political activist and author, believes Barack is not progressive enough (he wrote the article I’m referring to which you can read here). Hayden says:

For many Americans, the possibility of Obama is a deeply personal one. I mean here the mythic Obama who exists in our imaginations, not the literal Obama whose centrist positions will disappoint many progressives.

Really? What more does the man need to do to satisfy the far left? Should he extend his acceptable abortion age to already-born infants? Should he promise to pull out of Iraq within weeks rather than months? Should he support taxing the rich beyond the already talked about fifty-some percent? Seriously. How in the world can this man gain the approval of the progressives?

Dreams of Obama presents Barack, despite his flaws of being too much of a centrist, as the historically necessary candidate. According to Hayden, the entire civil rights movement has all been for this moment…this man.

The early civil rights movement, the jazz musicians and the Beat poets dreamed up this mythic Obama before the literal Obama could materialize.

What does that even mean? This guy writes as though great men like Booker T. Washington would have supported Obama because he’s black regardless of his policies. If you’ve ever read anything by Washington and other prominent leaders in the civil rights movement throughout America’s history, you’d know they believed the color of a man’s skin is never enough. Your skin does not make you great or lesser, but your actions tell all. As far as I’m concerned, voting for a man because of his skin color is just as racist as not voting for a man because of his skin color.

I have met John McCain, and I happen to like him as an earthy sort of guy. But I am constantly aware that he bombed Vietnam at least 25 times before being shot down in a war that never should have been fought, in a defeat that still cannot say its name…McCain wants to reignite the Cold War…

I believe we had reasonable justification for invading Iraq. I also believe we have accomplished a lot of good by our involvement there. Regardless of what anyone thinks of President Bush, we have not had a single terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. No one can say whether or not that would have been had we not begun the Iraq War.

John McCain’s proposed mission to leave Iraq only after we have accomplished victory does not make him a war-monger. We are winning and he’d like to see it through to the end. But Hayden, like so many others, paint McCain as being a war-hungry lunatic who’s anxious for power so that he can continue the war and even start new ones.

Hayden specifically criticizes McCain’s involvement in Vietnam which is an insult to our entire military. He didn’t begin the war in Vietnam. Don’t be ridiculous. John McCain has certainly given no one reason to believe that he’s wanting to reignite the Cold War. Where do people come up with this stuff? Come back to reality where sometimes war is necessary and just because you support certain military actions that does not make you a war-monger.

But there is the improbable hope that the movement set ablaze by the Obama campaign will be enough to elect Obama and a more progressive Congress in November, creating an explosion of rising expectations for social movements – here and around the world – that President Obama will be compelled to meet in 2009.

That is a moment to live and fight for.

I really don’t know what’s made me more upset to my stomach; this article or the disgusting pesto spaghetti I accidentally ordered. I’ll be in Athens through Friday. I’m sure there will be more to come.

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