Tears everywhere, but not here until the acceptance speech. My wife, the local Atlanta white male anchorman, Jesse Jackson, Oprah, Tom Brokaw (almost, seriously) and random people who had long ago given in to a life just inches from despair.
   Some on the Right might categorize those tears as tears for a "rock star," like when the Beatles first played the Ed Sullivan show. The idle tears of people with a "teenage girl" mentality swept up in a trivial moment, victims of their own overwrought emotions.
   But I knew better as the tears came.
   Four thousand brave, dead Americans. Gone forever. For a greedy, overreaching mistake. Reliable estimates of 1 million dead Iraqis. One million people who would be alive were it not for the blundering, blind-cyclops mentality of the past eight years.
   And one terrorist, very much ALIVE in the mountains of Afghanistan/Pakistan.
   The tears were for Andrew Veal, a 25 year-old UGA graduate and employee who did not have a history of emotional problems, but gave into despair and climbed the fence at Ground Zero a day or two after the 2004 election and shot himself dead.
   And there was laughter through the tears when remembering the French woman in the recent PBS documentary "The America Haters" who said the debt from WWII has been paid, thank you very much, and besides, "America is a racist country."
   And the tears were for the personal struggle, the bouts of despair, and feeling that it was indeed "over" and that survival was the only attainable virtue left.
   Remembering the personal battles against the bullies who pressed their advantage and, yes, made me fear for my personal safety and that of my family.
   But mostly the tears were for someone else's tears. Those of my two-year-old son. They started flowing during the acceptance speech. He only wanted a drink and to be tucked in.
   But until tonight his future was in grave peril. Yes, it still is, but there was a man of great empathy and intelligence on the TV screen as my wife attended to him.
  And finally, of course, it was not about that man at all. It was about his nation and the people in it. The people elected themselves tonight and my son will be the better for it.
  
   Special thanks to Josh and TPM. Your role in this victory might not be fully appreciated for some time. This is in no way a "finish line." This is the beginning, just as a graduation ceremony is called a "commencement."