Tony Stark: I endorse Senator Obama
I think it was Ronald Reagan who was quoted as saying, “I didn’t leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me.”
Seeing as the government is Stark Industries’ largest costumer I try to stay on the sidelines of elections, since I’m not wanting to anger either party. I’ve worked closely with presidents in both parties, and served in the Cabinet as Defense Secretary previously.
Still I suppose on most issues I’d be termed as a classic Republican. I think business should, for the most part, be free to do their thing and I think if you’re smart and hard working you deserve to be free to make of your life what you want and can. So while I don’t really think it’s anyone’s business who I vote for, I’ve cast ballots for George Bush in 2000, Bush Senior and of course Reagan. I voted for Clinton twice however, and I voted for Kerry in ’04. Yet one of the beautiful things about our system of government is that until now you never knew, the secret ballot is a great thing. I could vote for who I thought best, without hurting the strong ties Stark Industries has with both parties.
So why today am I changing and openly supporting Barack Obama? McCain’s a war hero, and a good man. He’s the man I wanted to vote for in 2000, rather than George W. Bush, and I’ve supported him via donations in each of his campaigns for the Senate.
Personally it’s just that I’m no longer comfortable pretending the religious right does not exist in this country, and pretending that they do not hold an inordinate amount of sway over the Republican Party. I don’t care what church you go to, and I’m even comfortable breaking bread with people like Tom Cruise who clearly have a bizarre and wrong religion / pyramid scheme. If you want to believe that God designed humans that’s okay by me, it’s your life and you should be free to do what you want with it.
But don’t you remember when science, true wonderful science, used to be something that people trusted? Remember when Kennedy made it a national goal to marshal the country’s best scientific minds to reach out to the stars? We stopped on the moon along the way, but haven’t gone any further because; well because we’ve stopped caring about science.
While it’s true, in a Philosophy 111 sort of way, that the only thing we can ever really know is that we know nothing science offers our best guess. And yes science is wrong, a lot. That’s the thing about it, it’s always updated, changed and corrected. As long as results are achieved via the scientific principal, then they’re open for debate.
Bringing God into the laboratory never has worked, and never will. You can’t prove God, not as he’s defined by modern Christianity, and so why try and fail? Why foist Intelligent Design on us just to prove in a quasi-scientific way that God exists? Why teach our children to question the results of science, and replace it with an outdated mysticism?
The John McCain that I would have voted for in 2000 would not have put up with that. He say the religious right for what it was, and rightly called them a dangerous element within the party. That McCain is gone, and now a vote for the Republicans under him is a vote for against science and learning and knowledge.
Moon rocks weren’t the only things that a love of knowledge and science gave us. Do you like the iPhone? I do. In a generation we’ll be lucky if we can improve on it if we keep moving away from the founding principals of science to accommodate religious beliefs. People always ask me where the next Tony Stark, or the next Reed Richards is going to come from. If the Republicans win this election I’m afraid the answer will not be “America” for a very long time.
That is why I am endorsing Barack Obama as President.
Thank you.
- Tony Stark, October 24th 2008
3 years ago • 1 note
