Posted on 03/20/2008 11:27:51 PM PDT by kellynla
WASHINGTON -- The beauty of a speech is that you don't just give the answers, you provide your own questions. "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes." So said Barack Obama, in his Philadelphia speech about his pastor, friend, mentor and spiritual adviser of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright.
An interesting, if belated, admission. But the more important question is: which "controversial" remarks?
Wright's assertion from the pulpit that the U.S. government invented the HIV virus "as a means of genocide against people of color"? Wright's claim that America was morally responsible for 9/11 -- "chickens coming home to roost" -- because of, among other crimes, Hiroshima and Nagasaki? (Obama says he missed church that day. Had he never heard about it?)
What about the charge that the U.S. government (of Franklin Roosevelt, mind you) knew about Pearl Harbor, but lied about it? Or that the government gives drugs to black people, presumably to enslave and imprison them?
Obama condemns such statements as wrong and divisive, then frames the next question: "There will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?"
But that is not the question. The question is why didn't he leave that church? Why didn't he leave -- why doesn't he leave even today -- a pastor who thundered not once but three times from the pulpit (on a DVD the church proudly sells) "God damn America"? Obama's 5,000-word speech, fawned over as a great meditation on race, is little more than an elegantly crafted, brilliantly sophistic justification of that scandalous dereliction.
His defense rests on two central propositions: (a) moral equivalence, and (b) white guilt.
(a) Moral equivalence. Sure, says Obama, there's Wright, but at the other "end of the spectrum" there's Geraldine Ferraro, opponents of affirmative action and his own white grandmother, "who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." But did she shout them in a crowded theater to incite, enrage and poison others?
"I can no more disown (Wright) than I can my white grandmother." What exactly was grandma's offense? Jesse Jackson himself once admitted to the fear he feels from the footsteps of black men on the street. And Harry Truman was known to use epithets for blacks and Jews in private, yet is revered for desegregating the armed forces and recognizing the first Jewish state since Jesus' time. He never spread racial hatred. Nor did grandma.
Yet Obama compares her to Wright. Does he not see the moral difference between the occasional private expression of the prejudices of one's time and the use of a public stage to spread racial lies and race hatred?
(b) White guilt. Obama's purpose in the speech was to put Wright's outrages in context. By context, Obama means history. And by history, he means the history of white racism. Obama says, "We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country," and then proceeds to do precisely that. And what lies at the end of his recital of the long train of white racial assaults from slavery to employment discrimination? Jeremiah Wright, of course.
This contextual analysis of Wright's venom, this extenuation of black hate speech as a product of white racism, is not new. It's the Jesse Jackson politics of racial grievance, expressed in Ivy League diction and Harvard Law nuance. That's why the speech made so many liberal commentators swoon: It bathed them in racial guilt, while flattering their intellectual pretensions. An unbeatable combination.
But Obama was supposed to be new. He flatters himself as a man of the future transcending the anger of the past as represented by his beloved pastor. Obama then waxes rhapsodic about the hope brought by the new consciousness of the young people in his campaign.
Then answer this, senator: If Wright is a man of the past, why would you expose your children to his vitriolic divisiveness? This is a man who curses America and who proclaimed moral satisfaction in the deaths of 3,000 innocents at a time when their bodies were still being sought at Ground Zero. It is not just the older congregants who stand and cheer and roar in wild approval of Wright's rants, but young people as well. Why did you give $22,500 just two years ago to a church run by a man of the past who infects the younger generation with precisely the racial attitudes and animus you say you have come unto us to transcend?
a - how did I miss this bump
You must be wrong.
The history books tell us that black Africans were enslaved in America.
Are you suggesting that they were not free people until they reached our shores?
A big politically incorrect demerit for you,my friend—you will have to pay extra reparations under Pres Obama for such blasphemy.
No. I did not put that in my letter to the editor. I revised it and said:
“In other words, I’m not buying what you and your racist pastor are selling.”
Thought they might not print if I sent it in it’s original form.
Righto.
What I suspect is most appalling to white people is the blase black response that such blatant racism is common and accepted in the black community. This is no doubt true, but most of us have tried not to believe it.
Perhaps this whole thing could lead to a truly honest discussion about race in this country, the one liberals have been squelching for at least 30 years.
Inaccurate. I believe the only western nations to not abolish slavery before the USA were Brazil and Cuba.
Brazil was an independent nation at the time, and Cuba was a Spanish colony.
Of course, slavery hung on a lot longer, to this day in some cases, in Muslim, Middle Eastern and Far Eastern areas.
“...slavery hung on a lot longer, to this day in some cases, in Muslim, Middle Eastern and Far Eastern areas”
I thought that’w what I said.
Colonial powers in the 19th century abolished slavery in the areas under their control.
Slavery lingered the longest not in colonized areas but in independent nations and tribal areas.
IOW, the expansion of colonization in the middle and late 19th century meant the gradual end of slavery, not its expansion or toleration.
None.
Did you have anything to say about the troupe of carnival freaks Mr. No-Pants President had in HIS cabinet?
There were most defintely many African collaborators in the slave trade just as there were many French collaborators with the Nazis in World War Two.
Doesn’t make the practice any less sordid,though.
Certainly spreads the guilt
Oh,for sure.No one came out of the whole slave trade clean-Europeans,Arabs,Africans.They all were complicit and all need to be called on it.
Yes. Why do you even ask?
We need to hammer this point home. I’m tired of all of the talking heads giving him a pass and saying that they don’t think he believes what Pastor Wright said on the videos. I say we don’t KNOW that he doesn’t hold the same beliefs, AND what his wife has said about not having been proud to be an American indicates that she is in Wright’s camp.
I just checked out Krauthammer at Wikipedia. I am including an excerpt from them below. I have the greatest respect for his political/ foreign policy opinions. I would say that we need him for President, but for a couple of his views, against abortion, and the death penalty. He is magnitudes more brilliant than any of the candidates that we fielded for '08.
"In 2006, the Financial Times named Krauthammer the most influential commentator in America,[8] saying “Krauthammer has influenced US foreign policy for more than two decades. He coined and developed `The Reagan Doctrine’ in 1985 and he defined the US role as sole superpower in his essay, `The Unipolar Moment’, published shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Krauthammer’s 2004 speech `Democratic Realism’ set out a framework for tackling the post 9/11 world, focusing on the promotion of democracy in the Middle East.” "
A Krauthammer Bump!!!!
Excellent and Concise!
Can I use it in other venues?
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.