Progressive Bumper Sticker

Barack Obama Lapel Stickers

This web site is entitled Progressive Bumper Sticker because it is about progressive political bumper stickers. That’s pretty simple, in a way.

However, this site is actually about a larger sphere of information. Yes, we talk about progressive bumper stickers, but we do so with the goal of discussing the ideas that provide the foundation for the bumper stickers’ power. There is poetry in the brief form of the bumper sticker, and we read bumper stickers with toward that end.

So, every now and then we take a look at other forms of progressive political speech, besides bumper stickers. We’ve examined the meaning of t-shirts and buttons, for example.

I’m happy to say that I’ve found a new source of progressive political lapel stickers, and I intend to explore those too. No, they’re not bumper stickers, to put on the back of a car, but they have the same potential for expression and representation of ideas.

So far, from what I’ve seen, the lapel sticker looks like a shorter form, a kind of political ping, a way of saying “Here I am, and here’s what I stand for.” I see more imagery and simple wording, declarations of support or opposition. A page of lapel stickers for Barack Obama provides an example with its very first sticker - the simple image of the face of Barack Obama, without any words. This sticker tells me that the face of Barack Obama has become an icon, representative of meaning in itself, a powerful cultural symbol that is regarded as needing no explanation.

Can You Fight Terror By Torturing People?

One of the strongest criticisms of war is that the causes that lead people into war are often betrayed through the course of war. When I use the word “causes”, I’m not talking about things like an effort to recapture a piece of territory. Those are tactics, not causes.

A cause is referred to in the Republican language about the current constellation of military actions: The War On Terror.

The implied cause in this war is an end to terror.

The obvious irony is that the tactics used by the United States government include the infliction of terror. The strategy for the invasion of Iraq, for example, was called “shock and awe”. The idea was to cause so much fear amongst Iraqis that they would give up hope and end resistance to the American invasion and military occupation almost immediately. Five years later, Iraqi resistance is continuing. The tactics of inflicting terror haven’t worked, but they were the admitted tactics of the United States nonetheless.

Then, of course, there’s torture. The Republicans continue to insist that they need to torture, or as they say “use extreme interrogation methods”, in order to defeat terror. They don’t appear to grasp the irony that the very purpose of torture is to increase terror, not to defeat it.

How can you fight terror by torturing people? You can’t.

Barack Obama For A More Perfect Union

One of the best qualities of Barack Obama is his ability to think thematically about the important events and issues of the present. Barack Obama has a deep mind that is able to perceive the patterns of meaning in public debates over policies and politics.

Yes, Obama has the intelligence necessary to understand the literal specifics of policy matters. A lot of people have that kind of mind, however. What a most politicians don’t have, however, is the contemplative strength to understand how the literal specifics of policy come together to create meaning. That rare ability distinguishes Barack Obama from the crowd of Washington policy wonks.

Barack Obama’s skill in grasping the meaning of an historical moment, and seeing how varied issues come together within the moment, was showcased yesterday, in a speech he gave that might be entitled, A More Perfect Union - Obama ‘08.

The speech began with the following paragraph: “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.” Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The beauty in Barack Obama’s mind is that, in introducing this speech, he was simultaneously able to touch upon the direct matter at hand, the state of race relations in the United States, but also upon the fundamental promise of his presidential campaign: A More Perfect Union. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has, from the start, been based upon the promise that the United States of America can do better than it has done in the past, and that we don’t have to settle for a repeat either of the 1990s or of the last eight years. We can do better. America can grow to become a more perfect union.

Yesterday’s speech by Barack Obama was not the typical laundry list of political platitudes that America has become used to hearing. It wasn’t written by committee, either. Barack Obama wrote the speech himself.

Yesterday, Barack Obama proved that he is not only a great speaker. He is a profound thinker as well.

A President who thinks. Wouldn’t that be nice? Please, let’s put Barack Obama in the White House.