No, I just don't like people sticking their noses in my business and telling me how to live. Nor do I like people who claim real Americans are only those who think like themselves. Both of which the religious right does flawlessly.

Nor is their any need to call me a pathetic, small-minded bigot. You don't know me well enough. Now if you did know me and call me that then I'd take notice. But you have no stock with me and your comments (and their tone) are not likely to engender constructive dialogue, either.

One can give a variety of examples of how diversity can in fact strengthen a unity or simply not undermine it in any way. If you have a mathematical bent, most entities can be broken down into subsets. Any set of numbers can be broken apart into diverse subsets without harming the overall unity of the entire set. If you have a biological bent, probably the best guess for why sexual reproduction exists is that it introduces diversity into the gene pool, which asexual reproduction does not. It is precisely this variability that gives the whole species as a unit (note the connection to the word unity) greater strength. Similar biological arguments could be made for the benefits and drawbacks to only being able to exist in a highly restricted niche.

On a more everyday level, often the best couples complement each other in some way. The whole opposites attract. When one person is willing to lie back and go along, the other partner will rise up and fight for what the family needs. Same goes on with parenting. My wife is better at certain aspects of parenting than me, and vice versa. We are much better parents as a pair exactly because of our diversity.

I'm sure you get the point. Deciding how societies function by looking in the dictionary is like looking up the word “atom” and thinking you are doing particle physics.

Yep, direct antonyms. The more diverse a people the less they have in common, it's a rigidly inverse relation. Look, I think Obama is probably quite a pleasant person and I don't fear his presidency at all. That's not the point. The point is that politicians aren't creating divisions, rather those divisions exist in objective reality. We have a fragmenting country and we are seeing special interests goups, we are all part of at least one, fighting over access to governmentally directed resources.

Von Clauswitz wrote that war is politics by other means, but the reverse is cleary true, that politics is war by other means. Government is nothing outside the use of force, or the threat thereof.

@Stockboy

“Nor is he pandering to a single, narrow demographic (the religious right).”

Knock off this silly pablum. I'm no fan of the “religious right” but it is not a narrow demographic. You're probably talking about 30 percent of the American population, depending on how you define that term, and those people pay taxes, get married, have children, have low crime rates, etc., everything a country wants in good citizens.

This mindless “religious right” crap is every bit as bad as KKK'ers in the 50s talking about “n*****s”

You're just a pathetic, small-minded bigot. (Oh, and I'm a rabid atheist, it's just like I call it as it is)

I have to disagree with you that “united” and “diverse” are antonyms; They are actually two unrelated words, that if used in conjunction describe what I, and many other of the “small donors” to the Obama campaign are hoping for. Homogeneous and diverse are antonyms. United and divided are antonyms. America is inherently diverse. If we can work together towards a common goal we can be united.

Of course not every person will agree on every goal. And we will not all agree on every strategy to achieve those goals. But if our leaders can appeal to our similarities and “better sides” and improve the standards of living for everyone in this potentially great nation of ours, how is that less desirable than an administration that will divide us further to achieve a political agenda that helps only the very wealthy and the very powerful.

I know that Obama is simply a man, but he is an intelligent, well-spoken, and pragmatic man, who possesses the ability to improve our standing internationally, and unite our diverse nation domestically.

(And yes, I know I have been drinking the Kool-Aid, and I have been drinking it for over 2 years. But Kool-Aid doesn't have to have cyanide in it.)

Not everyone will agree with government, not even everyone who was in the colonies at the time of the Revolution agreed with the Founding Fathers' vision. But Obama wants to be as inclusive as possible. He is not separating the country (lke McCain/Palin) into patriotic and unpatriotic regions. Nor is he pandering to a single, narrow demographic (the religious right).

If Obama does “unite” America it will be done by crushing the groups of people who do not share his vision of the world, because, after all, government is force, and nothing but.

Yes I agree. And didn't Obama and his wife only repay their student loans four or five years ago?

And, yes, if one campaign doesn't buy airtime for the other campaign, they should be ridiculed. Clearly.

McCain (and Palin) only talk about how their supporters are “real” Americans and those who disagree with them are unpatriotic.

Obama talks unity, McCain talks division.

How much did Obama gave, in this economy he is asking us to give, he will tax the business making 250.000.000 to spread the wealth from someboby else his money, why does'nt he use some of his money and buy time for Mccain on tv like he is doing tonight, isnt that spreading the wealth also.

“He ticked through the series of crises that have taken place in recent days, including the hurricane on the gulf coast, the deadly train crash in nearby Los Angeles and the turmoil in the nation’s financial markets.”

I can't say whether he asked those people to donate money to Galveston, but on that day you hate so much, he asked all of his donors to give money to Galveston and mentioned it as one of the crises facing the nation that day.

Interesting article. We will (probably?) see….