With Pennsylvania and Ohio lost, the Gormogons are calling the election for President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama. We congratulate him and his supporters, despite the fact that his policies are decidedly not ours. He is the President of the United States and emphatically our President.

We hope (probably in vain) that his supporters will refrain from triumphalism and viewing this as the defeat of evil by good, when it’s merely the change of party in a two-party system. We hope President Obama—with potentially a Democratic-run Congress—will not govern from the left, ramming through statist (and yes, socialist) programs which are not only opposed by about half the country but which, more importantly, violate and make meaningless the Constitution which guarantees our liberties and orders our Republic. Alas, the left has refused to abide by the niceties of law ever since the Wilson Administration, so it’s probably a moot point. Finally, we hope that those on the right will not view President Obama as the left has President Bush, petulantly making opposition to the man they didn’t elect the sine qua non of legitimacy in their party and the fundamental principle to all policy decisions—like favoring an American defeat and retreat from Iraq. We hope the right will act as small-r republicans, regroup, and defeat their opponents—not enemies, opponents—in an honorable fashion.

This does not mean the right will not have to fight and fight harder than they have in the past—the left’s embrace of a win-at-all-costs ethic has made them a formidable, often contemptible, anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional opponent, too often opposed by good-loser, get-along Republicans like Bob Dole and (yes) John McCain. One hopes that the saner elements in the Democratic party will regain control of their party. However, with Rahm Emanuel being mentioned as Chief of Staff and Obama’s combination of hard-left background and wily empty-suit cipher politics, more than likely it’s going to be a nasty four years of the government making war on the loyal opposition.

Finally, this is a signal day in the history of the United States of America. The election of a black man in a country in which blacks were a enslaved race, then a despised, marginalized group still legally oppressed in some states as late as the 1960s, and suffering from widespread bigotry even thereafter, cannot be minimized. This a signal day in the history of black America and all America. Obama has not and can not redeem a nation or its history, but his election is a sign that America has become in one very, very important respect a much better place than it was a generation ago. Let no one take excessive pride in this, but be humbled by the generations of steadfast and perseverant black Americans who held the nation to the truths held self-evident in its Declaration of Independence often at the cost of bodily harm, degradation, and even martyrdom, as well as the Americans of the white majority (and other groups) of good will who supported their cause and without which they’d never had a chance in a democracy which requires legislative majorities. Even if we Gormogons suspect the Obama Administration may be headed for a disastrous tenure of Carterian proportions and Constitutional disaster, we note and celebrate this magnificent, long-overdue event in American history.

Rejoice therein.

And thank God it looks like the GOP has 41 senators. Whew.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.