Yes We Can
Posted on 04/28/2008 2:04:33 PM PDT by The_Republican
WILMINGTON, N.C.--Barack Obama defended his commitment to patriotic ideals this afternoon, telling a town hall meeting in North Carolina that "I always have the flag in my heart."
Obama has yet to comment directly today on the public re-emergence of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose incendiary sermons have stirred political controversy.
Speeches that Wright delivered Sunday to NAACP dinner in Detroit and today at the National Press Club in Washington have brought a new round of media attention to past sermons in which he suggested the U.S. policies were partially to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks and one in which he suggested blacks should sing "God Damn America" instead of "God Bless America."
Obama offered an affirmation of his devotion to America in response to an audience member at a town hall meeting in Wilmington, N.C. She asked the Illinois senator what she should tell a family member concerned Obama's patriotism because the senator does not typically wear a flag pin on his lapel, as some politicians do, as well as fictitious reports on the Internet that he refuses to salute the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance.
"Sometimes I wear a flag pin, sometimes I don't," Obama responded. "But I always have the flag in my heart and in my head, when I am running for president and when I am not running for president."
Obama said his loyalty to country stems from the American ideals of equality and opportunity that he suggested were embodied in his own life story.
"This is the only country in which I could even be standing here, coming from where I came. Right? A lot of people have that same story," he said..
"That's what makes me a patriot," Obama continued. "This campaign is about America and it's about the American people, and whether or not we're going to continue to live up to those values and ideals that say everybody is worthy, everybody is deserving of respect, every single individual, we are all created equal.".
He argued that controversies over the flag pin and other symbols of patriotism are a distraction from issues that relate more directly to the country's ability to deliver on its ideals.
"What I think is unpatriotic is when I see trade agreements that are designed only from the point of view of corporate profits and aren't designed to think about what happened to those textile workers that have been laid off here in North Carolina. That makes me angry," he added.
"When I hear people questioning my patriotism, I'm not worried about people criticizing me. That's what I signed up for when I ran for president. But when I see that being use to distract voters from those unpatriotic acts that are making it harder for the American people to live out the American Dream, that makes me angry," Obama continued.
Neither the questioner nor Obama mentioned Wright. In rebutting the persistent Internet report that Obama does not salute the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance, he noted that he regularly holds his hand over his heart when saying the Pledge and has led the U.S. Senate in saying the Pledge on occasion.
I don’t think somebody has to wear a flag pin to prove their patriotism, so I don’t much care if he has one or not.
Yes We Can
A Flag in his heart and wearing his hate mongering Uncle around his neck like an albatross.
<< Obama: flag always in my heart >>
Ew.
I want the media to question him about Wright. Even though they’re liberals, surely they’re interested enough in a story to just ask him a few innocuous questions.
I wonder how understanding Michelle would be if he stopped wearing his wedding band and told her the ring was “always in his heart.”
I agree. The issue isn't that he doesn't wear a lapel flag pin, the issue is that with the help of the media, he's created a completely false persona of himself that doesn't match what he truly is.
How about that picture of the dem candidates where he is the only one while anthem played does NOT have hand on his heart? I think he is a total racist like his wife & like Wright. Everyone keeps saying oh he doesn’t believe all that but if that was the case he would not have gone to that church for 20 yrs.
Obama makes a fetish of “authenticity”. That’s why he sought Wright out - to give himself second-hand authenticity as a Black American to offset his exotic, non-ghetto background. Not wearing the flag lapel pin signals to his loony left base that he is authentically one of them - that he doesn’t kowtow to the symbols of right-wing USA jingoism. In reality, he’s neither pro- nor anti-American. He’s just pro-Obama.
He dissed anyone wearing one, and in so doing raised the question himself.
Then, in PA, when a disabled veteran gave him one, he wore it for a day I guess to show that he would do so (it would have been pretty unseemly for him not to at that point), but then stopped wearing it thereafter.
He is a politician through and through, and his own associations, IMHO, show him to be a far left, anti-American one at that.
Yeah, but which one?
Senator, that is
Which flag is that, Barack?
How about a wooden stake, instead?
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