Barack and the Birthers

It is the issue which won't go away, and we will accept our role in keeping it afloat so far as our little influence may have been. Yet it will probably never go away completely; scholars a hundred years after his Presidency will likely still address it. The debate over whether Barack Obama meets the Constitutional qualifications for the Presidency of the United States will never fully end.

So be it. His legacy won't be the first dampened however slightly by vague scandal; that's how history seems to work. There will always be those who look under the rugs in the attic, who peer deeply into empty closets in search of the sensational. But the main trouble today is that the whole birther scheme simply distracts people at both ends of the political spectrum from the real problems our nation currently faces.

To the birthers it must be said: get over it. Get over it for two reasons: one, that Barack Obama indeed meets the qualifications to be President whether you like it or not, and two, even if you are so gosh darn sure he doesn't, the practical matter is that he holds the office anyway and will not be removed until either after the 2012 or 2016 elections. The question is, for all realistic purposes, moot. If you continue to push it you will only be labeled racist, and you indeed hurt the overall conservative effort to remove him via the next election.

To the attackers of the birthers, we must insist that it simply isn't fair to dismiss the birthers as racists. That's what the philosophers call the hasty generalization: lumping everyone who questions a certain point or who ask for a certain standard into one camp. There is not one thing wrong, in itself, with requiring presidential candidates to prove who they are. Period. Besides, it is at the very least possible that maybe some of those who want such proof are actually concerned with the direction of the nation? Or that it may be politics and not race which drives the issue? Yet even if some in the movement are in fact racist, and we must, sadly, allow that some may be, that does not and cannot mean that demanding proof of citizenship for presidential aspirants is wrong in itself. In fact, such proof would prevent this type of issue from coming up again.

To the general charge of racism, it is interesting to note that supporters of the President have quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) hinted that any opponent of Mr. Obama must be a latent racist. Perhaps; we must allow that this could be the case, on an individual basis. But has anyone ever considered that maybe some of his supporters are themselves guilty of racism? Indeed, that they may be guilty of that kind of patronizing racism which hurts more than it helps, which in itself is insulting to Mr. Obama's dignity? How many supporters of the President voted for him precisely because he is black? That's hardly a vote on the content of his character.

In short, to the birthers, shut up already. You only muddy the waters. To the opponents of the birthers, put a sock in it too. You only jump to conclusions which are unfair and often insulting in themselves.