Booker T. has got me thinking about our current leadership.

NO! Not Booker T. the wrestler. Booker T. Washington. I may be a dumb redneck, but Booker T. Washington is one of my heroes. He was not a professional wrestler, he was not a basketball star or a football star. He was educated and educated others.

I've been reading some perspectives and quotes by Booker T. Washington, and frankly, I would have to say that based on his own words, Washington would be greatly disappointed in the leadership of this country today; black, white or other, Democrat or Republican.

Lets just get a look at some of his quotes:

“Most leaders spend time trying to get others to think highly
of them, when instead they should try to get their people to
think more highly of themselves.
It’s wonderful when the people believe in their leader.
It’s more wonderful when the leader believes in their people!
You can’t hold a man down without
staying down with him."

“Character is power.”

“No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.” (Does this apply to jobs at McDonald's?)

“Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the every day things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.”

“Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.”

- Booker T. Washington

The man understood that the building blocks of society had a foundation of common labor. Without that foundation, the rest does not function well. Our current leaders don't seem to understand this. They have what I call "Top-down" thinking. Only those at the top, the elite, the upper echelon, are those who matter, and the scraps fall wherever they fall.

The elitist idea that intellectual property comes above and before labor and manufacturing will be the ruin of this nation, if that hasn't already happened. I just hope that Obama will heed some of the wisdom of a hero we share in common. Though it is easy for an elitist to forget where he comes from, no matter how humble his beginnings. Unfortunately, he is married to a social climber, and the evidence shows that he is one himself, and experience has shown me that social climbers rarely show true compassion for those who are below their perceived station. That doesn't bode well for most of us.