What Obama Has Yet To Learn About Slavery, Race And U.S. Exceptionalism

IBD Editorials ^ | August 22, 2008 | Thomas Krannawitter

[Kaslin]

Barack Obama launched his presidential campaign from Springfield, Ill. He was to announce his vice presidential running mate on Saturday from Springfield as well. Why Springfield?

Obama is clearly trying to capitalize on the legacy of America's most captivating president, Abraham Lincoln, for whom Springfield was as much of a home as he ever knew.

But in a 2005 feature essay in Time magazine, Obama distanced himself from what he called Lincoln's "limited" views on race. So, it seems, Lincoln leaned more toward bigotry than justice, at least for Obama.

What about America?

As we learn more about candidate Obama, many are troubled by Obama's attraction toward William Ayers, member of the terrorist Weather Underground organization, the God-damning-America Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Saul Alinsky, founder of the socialist Industrial Areas Foundation, all of whom share utter contempt for the principles and practices of the United States.

From his statements and affiliations, it's hard not to assume that Obama thinks America is racist and immoral, just like its most famous president. But if Obama paid less attention to America haters and more to America and its foremost defender, Lincoln, he might begin to understand the true ground of American goodness.

[EagleUSA]

Hussein should be running for president of Venezuela, not America.

[MtnClimber]

I just wonder...under the principles of Black Liberation Theology it seems like destroying whites or enslaving them is AOK.

[sheik yerbouty]

“Our time has come...” was a code for it..

[TruthSlayer]

I’ve said for twenty years that blacks will never be satisfied with equality. The only satisfaction they will ever have is to have the white man’s neck under their boots for 400 years. I could understand that attitude coming from a true slave but not from these coddled suckers of the American teat.

[MtnClimber]

The african nations have almost all elected Marxist tyrants that treat their people worse than slaves. These tyrants can only feel great in comparison to their subjects if they push everyone else down in prosperity. Then they can admire how great they are in comparison to their sujects which I suspect they despise. I suspect that Obama wants to play God himself.

[junta]

What the hell does “racist” mean anyway? It seems the IBD people (normally smart) just want to engage the wacky Left in a “how many angels on the head of a pin” debate.