Post-Election Thoughts

To President-elect Barack Obama,
Congratulations. You fought hard, and you won. And you showed us that the American dream is still alive.

You also showed us a new kind of campaigning for the 21st Century. In many ways your campaign was masterfully run and will no doubt be carefully studied in the next few years.

Please take the next four years as an opportunity to prove your detractors wrong. Govern as a uniter, not an ideologue, and you will truly go down in history as a good president, not just a first.

To the American people,
We have showed the world that America is a spectacular country. Though our race issues are far from solved, we have come so far from the eras of slavery and Jim Crow that we have elected a black man president. We can be proud of our growth as long as we realize there is more room to grow.

To Republicans,
We lost. Move on. Barack Obama will not be the "president" or their president but the President. Let us be gracious in defeat and spend the next four years as the loyal opposition.

To conservatives,
Already people are talking about what needs to change in the Republican Party. It is not party leadership as much as it is operating philosophy. With every passing year the difference between the two major parties seems harder and harder to identify. Remember what you stood for and stand for it again. Don't take this election as a repudiation of conservatism but a reaction to the way it has been abandoned.

Thank God there is still a chance to maintain some influence in the Senate, and we still have a voice in the House. Use it wisely. When the Democrats start work under the new president, we cannot just oppose them, we must counter-propose. We must work very hard to get our ideas into the light, and we have to accept that the media is not our friend in that endeavour, but it can be done and must be if we want to win anything back in 2010 and 2012.

To Christians on both sides of the aisle,
Remember that we're all family. We disagree just as much as any biological family, but in the end we have "one body and one Spirit... one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all." Let us disagree in love and remember that what happens here on Earth is only really important as it relates to the mission of our Master.