Obama gains coveted Nietzsche endorsement

Walter Kaufmann reports on a private admonition from Nietzsche delivered to Obama by the tree on the mountainside:

"Indeed, I know your danger. But by my love and hope I beseech you: do not throw away your love and hope. You still feel noble, and others too feel your nobility, though they bear you a grudge and send you evil glances. Know that the noble man stands in everybody's way. The noble man stands in the way of the good too: and even if they call him one of the good, they thus want to do away with him. The noble man wants to create something new and a new virtue. The [GOP] wants the old, and that the old be preserved. But this is not a danger of the noble man . . . Alas, I knew noble men who lost their highest hope. Then they slandered all high hopes. Then they lived imprudently in brief pleasures and barely cast their goals beyond the day . . . Once they thought of becoming heroes: now they are voluptuaries. The hero is for them an offense and a fright. But by my love and hope I beseech you: do not throw away the hero in your soul! Hold holy your highest hope!"

The Obama campaign will probably keep this private due to the elitist nature of philosophy and the pejorative references to John Edwards.