‘Congratulations, America. Today you have fulfilled the dream’

I am 77 years old, born during the Great Depression and schooled in the great promise of America; tempered and tested by wars; and led to believe that anything -- any dream, any desire -- can be fulfilled in this great country. Today, with the election of Barack Obama, I can for the first time say “with liberty and justice for all” honestly.

Congratulations, America. Today you have fulfilled the dream.

John W. Strobel III
Lake Los Angeles

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I am a 38-year-old black male. For all my life, I have considered myself an American. On Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, for the first time, I am finally convinced that America agrees.

Brian Thompson
Signal Hill

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I am in mourning this morning because political correctness, redemptive liberalism and youthful ignorance triumphed over logic and reason in the presidential election.

Let’s be honest. Obama, with virtually no experience, was elected only because he is black and liberal. Any white candidate with a resume as thin as his and similar ideas about redistribution of wealth would have been laughed off the stage.

Obama’s policies are a naive vision of how he believes things should be, instead of how things really are and have been proved to work best.

James B. Davis
Beverly Hills

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Election results: All Americans 1, “Real” Americans 0.

Michael Smith
Tarzana

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I was in Los Angeles on a Fulbright exchange when Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were shot in 1968. Hope was assassinated for millions of Americans.

As Obama becomes president, hope is back. I share the emotion and the sense of history that I see on so many faces.

Roland Faure
Serres-sur-Arget, France

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Today, for the first time in my adult life, I am afraid to be an American.

Charlotte Sale
Placentia

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Your endorsement reminds me of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Regardless of how you try to package and sell him, Obama has none of the experience required to be president of a nation of 300 million people.

Ira Thierer
Los Angeles

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The American public has spoken as we embrace Obama in a new spirit of hope. Now it is our patriotic duty to work together to support his policies and save our great nation from the immense crisis we face. There is no time for partisan division. We must stand united as Americans first and last.

Michael A. Alvarado
San Jose

From letters published Oct. 20 and Nov. 6.