The American Spectator

The Nation's Pulse

I have a brother who revels in an old joke; so that when the gender of a family newborn is announced, he asks: "What does that make me, an aunt or an uncle?" As corny as that sounds -- if you only knew my brother -- it is, like all jokes, based in part on a kind of reverse reality.

The notion that a particular happenstance should determine your identity is, of course, silly and therefore funny. But how about the opposite? The idea so popular with pollsters and pundits -- especially in this presidential election -- that what you are should determine your political ideology and how you vote is equally inane, yet inexplicably and sadly a way of life in modern America.

Whereas our founders were able to put aside their conditions in life, whether innate or acquired, in order to form a more perfect union and ensure a just and prosperous way of life for their posterity, this no longer appears to be true. Identity politics and class warfare have further polarized an already divided nation, especially along the lines of gender, race, and religion. But does it have to be this way? I decided to conduct a poll of one likely voter: myself.

I am a woman, so what does that make me? On the one hand, I'm supposed to vote for John McCain because he had the courage to make Sarah Palin his running mate. She "looks like me," ergo I must vote with my own kind. Except that, as the liberal sisterhood tells me, no real woman could vote Republican since they refuse to support women's "reproductive rights." Sorry, but I'm not buying either pitch; my own kind is the human race, and abortion has as its aim the destruction of the most helpless of that race for the sake of convenience.

I am also a single woman, which should make me, in the eyes of popular culture, either an unhappy shrew or a lesbian, or both. In either case, this should most definitely make me a man-hater. But of course I am neither. I'm just a woman who has simply waited for the good man that God has finally sent me. Far from hating men, I adore truly manly men, particularly those who are man enough to want to fight to protect me and the country we love.

I am a New Englander and unfortunately I know what this is supposed to make me: a knee-jerk liberal. Living as I do in Connecticut, a state that is traditionally at the top of the list of states paying out the most per capita in federal taxes and receiving the least back from Washington, I know all too well that I am virtually surrounded by the left. Yet, I choose to follow in the footsteps of the great New England patriots who railed against unfair taxation and government officers who "harass our people, and eat out their substance."

I am a Catholic, and worse yet, a faithful one. So this makes me either one of the millions of Christians who, like the founders of our country, believe in our national motto, "In God We Trust," or a dangerous, religious fanatic. Until the last decade or so, Catholics were a reliable Democratic voting block, but since then, more and more have refused to follow that party down the path toward a culture of death. And unlike John Kerry, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, I am secure and joyful in the practice and knowledge of my faith.

I am a white person of European ancestry and, were I not a woman (or a liberal), that would make me a racist, domineering, greedy pig. So, to assuage the guilt I must surely feel about all this, I would have no choice but to vote for Barack Obama instead of John McCain who "looks like me." Of course, our black brothers and sisters are exempt from this redemptive process since racism in this country is a one-way street. Except that I am not ashamed of my heritage and therefore feel zero guilt, and I resent those who advise otherwise.

In summary, this likely voter loves liberty as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and hates Communism, Socialism, Nazism, Fascism, and any other form of government that values human beings only as tools of the State and would dispose of those whose lives have no value in its eyes. I believe in a greater good than that which enriches only my social stratum or my pocketbook. And that makes me an American.