Barack Obama was just named the President Elect with a possible 297 electoral votes to McCain's 155.

It was only a few years ago that the vast majority of  people, American and non-American, would have seen a mixed race president, let alone a part African president, as an impossibility, just as we all thought that Communism would never fall during its impenetrable heights of the 1980s and then within years it was gone from Europe.

With Obama's magnificent sweeping to the White House not only does he change America but, just like Gorbachev's election and subsequent policies, he changes the world forever.

Senator McCain, in his concession speech, was the warrior and gentleman that garners the respect of even the most liberal of Leftists. For me it is not an election he lost, but an election the world won. Won by removing the stain of our collective faults, most notable by the subjugation of one group of people by another.

I look to the day when we live in a world where there is no subjugation... A Zimbabwe where being a white farmer or a Ndebele farm worker is not a death sentence, or a Palestinian who doesn't feel the need to attack his Israeli neighbours.. or a young girl and her girlfriend who wants to be able to be loved by her family as much as her straight sisters.

Is it too much of a fantasy? After today I think not, and for that I am happy.