I really do hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you are very misguided in your statements vietvet. In regards to slavery you are wrong. The Civil War was not originally about the morality of slavery, nor the desire to end it. The Emancipation Proclamation was given near the middle of the War; the original cause was simply the Federal Government enforcing it's authority to prevent the secession of the South. The call for secession? you might ask? Unfair tariffs on Southern exports. Products could be exported from Northern Ports of Call at next to no tariff at all, while Southern tariffs were subject to heavy tariffs. As a result, the Southern States voted to secede from the Union. This was likened at the time to the same dilema that the Colonies faced prior to the Declaration of Independence. Contrary to popular culture, the media and movies like Roots, most Southerners did not own slaves. A higher percentage of slave holders were actually in the Northern States. As a valuable source of revenue would be lost should the South be allowed to secede, the Civil War was started. Abraham Lincoln gave the Emancipation Proclamation at a time when the majority of the population of the Northern States were starting to question the ethics and morality of the conflict. In in effort to win hearts and minds, he freed the slaves. Incidentally, there were slaves that were the property of the White House prior to the Proclamation who were then set free. Not before, but AFTER the famous speech was given.

For the record, I abhor the thought of slavery. However, the misrepresentation of historical fact and authenticity of your post sickened me. Yet another example of the proverbial "dumbing-down" of America by government run schools. You would be amazed at the lack of true historical fact that is being taught to my girlfriend's 10 year old niece in public school today. Not the least of which is the belief the FDR was aware of the attack on Pearl Harbor days before it happened, all in an attempt to justify going to war with Japan. That statement alone is a slap in the face of all of America's Sailors who died that day.

On to the remark about the Swastika Flags on Federal Buildings. In 1936 the Nazi Party was alive and well and thriving in America. Regular Nazi Youth Camp outings were held, grand meetings and marches were held, and not a peep was said. The Nazi Party had a great number of supporters in our own government at the time, until Hitler began rounding up the Jewish people in Germany and Austria.

As for the wonderful things that Obama has promised Americans, it is unlikely that any good will come of it. President Bush did trample on many of our sacred protections guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, yet Obama is poised to do the same. Our Constitution isn't merely a document to state what the government can do, it is intended to outline what the government CAN'T do. The whole purpose of the Supreme Court was to ensure that no legislation passed by Congress was in violation of those tenets. President-elect Obama has stated on numerous occasions that he feels that the Constitution is an antiquated and outmoded document and needs to be disregarded for being irrelevant. Our country was never a Democracy. It is, was, and should always be, a Representative Constitutional Republic. The authority of the Federal Government did not, nor should it ever, include giving free hand outs to any and all that ask for it. We see before us a welfare state created by the Left, embodied in FDR's "New Deal" and promulgated throughout our recent history to today. This will continue until there are no longer rich or poor, haves or have nots, but merely "Us" and the Government.

Our current financial and economic situation is not due to merely the actions of one political party or another. There is more than enough blame to go around for that. Much of the situation was sparked by legislation that was signed into law at the end of the Clinton Administration that de-regulated the banking industry. A very un-Democrat decision to be sure, but one that had previously unforseen consequences. Fast-forward a few years, and we have Alan Greenspan encouraging the Sub-Prime Mortgage craze, and Democrats throwing money at pet Social(ist) programs while Republicans were throwing money at pet pork projects. That was merely business as usual. Americans got ourselves into this mess by taking out far more debt than we could afford to ever pay off in a reasonable amount of time, and now it's coming back to haunt us. We need to learn from our mistakes and move on.