Posted on 03/18/2008 9:46:22 PM PDT by Main Street
Imagine in 1999, that a videotape had come to light showing the pastor of Texas Gov. George W. Bush's church making vicious, hateful comments about America and cruel, racist statements about Americans of color.
Suppose this preacher had given a lifetime achievement award to former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and had traveled to Europe with Duke to meet with neo-Nazi terrorists.
Now try to envision that the candidate's family had attended this church for more than twenty years, that George and Laura Bush had been married there, by this pastor, and that the Bush daughters had been baptized by him.
Picture George Bush titling his autobiography after a phrase in one of this minister's sermons, writing that the man was his mentor, and then putting him on the presidential campaign staff as a trusted advisor and confidant.
Say it came to light that for several years George W. Bush had been friends with Eric Rudolph, the notorious Olympic Park bomber and anti-abortion terrorist. Furthermore, let's suppose that Bush had remained friends with Rudolph over the years and still considered him a colleague today.
Now imagine Laura Bush, on the campaign trail for her husband, telling supporters and the national media that America is "mean" and that for the first time in her adult life she was proud of her country.
Is there a doubt that Republican officeholders would have run from the Bush campaign like rats from a burning barn, that he would have become the political leper of the 2000 campaign? And what about the media? They virtually crucified candidate Bush that year for daring to give a speech at Bob Jones University, which had once banned interracial dating. I cannot imagine the field day they would have had with something like this.
And yet excuses are made for Barack Obama, who now finds himself in exactly this situation. Obama's pastor of more than two decades - the man who married Barack and Michelle Obama, who christened their daughters, who inspired the title of the candidate's book, "The Audacity of Hope," - is now at the center of a storm that would have destroyed the candidacy of any Republican the day the story broke.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for the last 36 years, has been caught on tape denouncing the United States and the white race in terms that should shock and disgust every thinking American. Wright and the church swear allegiance to the "mother country" - Africa. (Presumably this includes the Obama family.)
Rather than trying to infuse his congregation with hope and encouragement, Wright poisons them with vitriol about how the U.S. government has tried to commit genocide against the black community using drugs and the AIDS virus as weapons of choice.
"Don't say God bless America," Wright screams in one sermon. "God damn America!"
Wright, representing the church, bestowed a lifetime achievement award on Louis Farrakhan, the racist leader of the Nation of Islam. In the 1980s, Wright traveled to Libya with Farrakhan to meet with Muammar Gaddafi.
If Barack Obama has not been paying attention in church, it is apparent that his wife, Michelle, has. Campaigning for her husband recently, she said that for the first time in her adult life, she is finally proud of her country. In a separate speech, she said America is "a mean country."
Obama is friends with William Ayers, an admitted domestic terrorist with the Weather Underground, which declared war on the United States and claimed responsibility for bombing several government buildings, including the Pentagon and the State Department building, in the 1970s. In an interview with The New York Times, ironically published on the morning of September 11, 2001, Ayers was quoted as saying, "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough."
Now a tenured professor at the University of Chicago (only in America!), Ayers met Barack Obama in the 1990s. They have remained friends ever since.
We are judged not just by our words, but by the company we keep. The litmus test should not be whether or not everyone a candidate knows is ideal. That is an impossible standard. The true measure of a man is in his ability to choose friends with which he can be proud to stand shoulder to shoulder, not those about whom he must equivocate and for whom he must apologize.
-------
Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and public policy advisor. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online, TheConservativeVoice.com and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.
No free pass for OBama!
Better question.
Why no press untill **now**? Where was the MSM before Super Tuesday?
This has the fingerprints of the Clinton slime machine all over it.... except its too late now. LOL
mark
I cannot believe that a Christian man of God would presume himself Christ to damn a whole nation. Is this common in C of C churches?
It isn’t too late. The primary isn’t over. It is leading up to the perfect storm for their convention.
Have they bothered to check which party has had control of the schools for DECADES???
Well framed.
The convention will be on the TeeVee.
Already have extra popcorn on hand....
That's not the way it works.
Double standard, dontcha know.
Another thread here on Free Republic stated that Obama was one of the first to call for Don Imus to resign. If so, that needs to be exploited by the GOP.
Another way to play the “white minister” vs “black minister” analogy that leads to the opposite conclusion from this piece:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/03/17/wright/index.html
Monday March 17, 2008 15:45 EDT
The difference between Jeremiah Wright and radical, white evangelical ministers
excerpt:
But the idea that America deserves terrorist attacks and other horrendous disasters has long been a frequently expressed view among the faction of white evangelical ministers to whom the Republican Party is most inextricably linked. Neither Jerry Falwell nor Pat Robertson ever retracted or denounced their view that America provoked the 9/11 attacks by doing things to anger God. John Hagee continues to believe that the City of New Orleans got what it deserved when Katrina drowned its residents and devastated the lives of thousands of Americans. And James Inhofe — who happens to still be a Republican U.S. Senator — blamed America for the 9/11 attacks by arguing in a 2002 Senate floor speech that “the spiritual door was opened for an attack against the United States of America” because we pressured Israel to give away parts of the West Bank.
The phrases “anti-American” and “America-haters” are among the most barren and manipulative in our entire political lexicon, but whatever they happen to mean on any given day, they easily encompass people who believe that the U.S. deserved the 9/11 attacks, devastating hurricanes and the like. Yet when are people like Falwell, Robertson, Hagee, Inhofe and other white Christian radicals ever described as anti-American or America-hating extremists? Never — because white Christian evangelicals who tie themselves to the political Right are intrinsically patriotic. Does Douthat believe that those individuals are anti-American radicals and that people who allow their children to belong to their churches are exercising grave errors of judgment?
Those advancing the argument of Douthat’s are also wildly understating the magnitude of the association between “anti-American” white evangelicals and Republican leaders. By all accounts, George Bush had private conversations with Pat Robertson about matters as weighty as whether to invade Iraq. Isn’t that a big scandal — that the President is consulting with an American-hating minister — someone who believes God allowed the 9/11 attacks as punishment for our evil country — about vital foreign policy decisions? No, it wasn’t controversial at all.
Ironically, he *forgot* to insult Muslims. Probably just slipped his mind.
The fact that there is any chance that a candidate endorsed by the most extremist members of our society from black supremacists to domestic terrorists to foreign terror sympathizers even has a chance to be elected says a lot about the state of affairs today.
I’m waiting for someone to video tape some of the San Fransico radicals and ask Nancy Pelosi if she will distance herself from them. Then we could move on to Harry Reid and try the same thing in Nevada, if they have any big mouthed radicals there.
Exactly. I am so disgusted with the double standard. Grrr.
I have to wonder if Wright actually attended a theological college. If so, which one?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.