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Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Spaghetti Feed Obamafest

posted by on November 4 at 18:33 PM

S.E.C.B. is on the scene of a house party in Green Lake. We are soaking wet after having braved a flooded Ravenna on a wobbly bike made unsteady from having a 24-pack of beer spilling out of our backpack. A fire burns in the fireplace warming a living room full of young Democrats attentively watching the election returns.

It has been nearly two years since Barack Obama declared his candidacy. It has come to this: beer, a huge pot of spaghetti boiling in the kitchen, home-made hummus on the table and a roomful of young citizens feeling excited about the future.

“He has the potential, the oratorical ability, the best chance to change the collective American consciousness and to change the trajectory of America and the world,” says John Muller, one of the guys hosting the gathering.

Well, maybe he does and maybe he doesn’t. That’s what the next four years will be all about.

That fire crackles in the corner and the S.E.C.B. is reminded of the 10th Federalist Paper. Madison wrote:

Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.

Citizenship , which in America can mean the ability to choose, is truly a great right to exercise.

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