B. Hussein Obama’s Moral Equivalence Speech — Final installment

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances — for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs – to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives — by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Are we to expect more insistence of justice of the type that Al Sharpton insisted upon for Tawana Brawley? Are we to expect more insistence of justice of the type that the Duke Lacrosse players were threatened with in that case? Are we to expect more insistence of justice of the type recently promoted with the Jenna six? If Obama is going to insist on justice, how about justice for all those black unborn babies that are slaughtered every year in abortuaries throughout the nation? Nope… nothing but silence from Obama for justice for the black babies.

Also note here that Obama’s vision of America is one that sees America as oppressive. White women are oppressed by glass ceilings — blacks are oppressed with injustice, the immigrant oppressed by lack of food. The area that is the most clearly oppressive in America is abortion and Obama say’s nothing.

By the way … Why is it that Rev. Wright is upset about the US Government in the US of KKK A producing the AIDS virus in order to kill off the black population but says nothing about the US Government trying to kill off the black population by abortion? Why is it he complains about Tuskegee and doesn’t complain about White Margaret Sanger’s racism being embraced by the US government in abortion policy?

Ironically, this quintessentially American — and yes, conservative notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

Yes, Rev.Wright should have believed that whitey could eventually be snuffed out.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination – and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds — by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

“Investing in our schools” means the government takes more money from the taxpayer and gives it to the teachers unions. Socialism.

“Current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed,” means more affirmative quota programs and possibly reparations.

“Investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children,” means taking more money from the taxpayer and giving it to the government so it can pour it down the rat hole of a managed health care system. More Socialism.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand — that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

We don’t need the State to force us to be our Brother’s keeper. Some of us would get more joy out of being our Brother’s keeper if we weren’t being told we had to be our Brother’s keeper while having a gun pointed at us.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle — as we did in the OJ trial — or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina – or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

Moral equivalence.

Ferraro equals Wright.

White racist men will only vote for white McCain.

It’s not fair that Rev. Wright’s sermons are played nightly.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

My children do not belong to America, and as such I don’t want America taking care of my children. That is my job. That language reveals Obama’s socialistic mindset.

The best thing that could happen to the government schools is if they would all crumble to the ground.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

If Obama is proud of the flag, then why does he refuse to wear the standard flag pin on his lapel? Could it be due to Rev.Wright’s influence? If Obama is proud of the flag then why is the Cuban flag flying in his Huston campaign office and not the American flag? And what gives with the Che Guevara picture Barack? If Obama is proud of the flag, then why has is wife only recently felt proud of this nation?

Overall, I think Obama’s speech is beautifully crafted. It will definitely be swooned over by those who only hear whats on the surface. However, if people begin to dig into this speech they will see the problems of the speech.

My opinion is that Obama will not be able to transcend Wright’s turning him into a uniquely black candidate. Before this gaffe I didn’t think America was ready to elect a black liberal and the Wright event and this speech only confirms that instinct. When people begin to see the moral equivalence argument that this speech represents they are not going to embrace Obama.

Shelby Steele’s Outstanding Analysis

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120579535818243439.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

I’ve already been called hateful and semi-literate for some of what I’ve written on Barack Hussein Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright. For some reason, that I’ve yet to figure out, it is acceptable for a black person to say some of the things that I’ve been saying and not be considered hateful or semi-literate. Shelby Steele is a African-American and the analysis from the link above is superb.

I’ll be glad to hide behind Dr. Steele.

Famous Whoppers

“I am not a crook.”

Richard Milhouse Nixon

“There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.”

Gerald Rudolph Ford

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never. These allegations are false.”

William Jefferson Blythe Clinton

“In other words, he (Rev. Jeremiah Wright) has never been my political adviser; he’s been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.”

Senator Barack Hussein Obama

If anybody believes Barack Hussein Obama on this score they will believe anything. Remember Barack Hussein Obama has attended Wright’s Church since he was 26 years old. We are to supposed to believe that Obama never ever heard Wright speak the way that he has been caught speaking on countless occasions?

Please, Mr. & Mrs. American Electorate let’s not be stupid.

Revised & Updated FOS Changes

Apparently the committee that did the first work on giving reasoning for the wholesale change to the Christian Reformed Church’s Form of Subscription went back to the drawing board after some input and modified some of their work. I won’t spend a lot of time with this because the modifications are not that substantial.

From the new and improved committee work we read,

The variety of issues with signing the Form of Subscription that have come up, as well as ongoing attempts to change it, indicate that officebearers today seek to be guided by—not silenced by—the FOS in their understanding of the confessions.

OK… here is really where the issue becomes fuzzy. How could any officebearer claim to be being guided by the FOS if they were advocating something that heretofore would have found the FOS to have been silencing them? This whole ‘guided by – not silenced by’ language is just cutesy for, ‘What it says has made me to think but I disagree with it.’ Second, how can an officebearer claim to be guided by the Form of Subscription while at the same time rising up to speak against their guide? Why else would being ‘silenced by the FOS’ be threatening unless some officebearer determined that the guide was wrong? And if officebearers determine that the guide is wrong are they really be guided by the FOS? In this context, what does ‘guided by’ mean? (Everybody knows that ‘not silenced by’ means that it will be ok to rise up to speak against the confessions.)

Therefore, any regulatory instrument that is adopted by the church ought to be regarded as an invitation to the officebearers of the church to participate in this ongoing reflection rather than as a
document that precludes or hinders such reflection. To this end, we recommend, first, that the title of this document be A Doctrinal Covenant for Officebearers rather than Form of Subscription because it outlines the communal nature of the responsibilities and blessings of ordination and encourages participation as well as regulation.

First note that it is admitted that the FOS or Covenant of Ordination (COO) is intended to be a regulatory document. If something is regulatory it means that it is regulating (monitoring) behavior to insure conformity. And yet, this regulatory, ‘not silencing’instrument, is an invitation to ongoing reflection that presumptively can lead to change in the Confessions. So what does the regulatory instrument regulate since it no longer seems to be regulating adherence? Does it regulate the rate of change? Does it regulate the amount of loquaciousness of those who desire change? Does it regulate the communal nature of change? Does it regulate the rate of participation? What does this new document regulate?

Second, given this is a covenant of ordination and given that all covenants have sanctions for violations one wonders what will be considered a violation of this regulatory covenant and what will be the sanctions of the yet unknown violations?

To remain a truly confessional church, the confessions need to function significantly in our various callings, helping us to deepen our understanding of Scripture in our Reformed tradition.

The Confessions, ‘Functioning significantly’ is a great deal different then the Confessions ‘being adhered to.’ ‘Function significantly’ is also pretty subjective. Who gets to define if the Confessions are functioning significantly in Homer’s life but not Horatio’s and by what standard?

I still strenuously disagree with making the Contemporary Testimony a virtual Fourth form of unity and I likewise disagree with the slippery Covenant of ordination language.

People desiring to read the Committee’s revised work can go here,

Click to access FormofSubscriptionReport08.pdf

Why Can’t The Calvinists Be Calvinistic?

I just returned from a funeral where the deceased was a very young man who died in a particularly tragic fashion. During the committal service the (RCA) minister said,

“I am convinced that this death wasn’t God’s will.”

This came immediately after an injunction from him to the people that they shouldn’t ask the question ‘why’ and that the answer was buried inaccessible in the mind of God.

Now, if this wasn’t God’s will how could God have the answer buried in His mind let alone even know the answer?

If these kinds of things aren’t God’s will then why don’t we figure out whose will they are so we can pinch him a little incense and offer him a little worship?

The last time I heard something like this it came out of a Methodist ministers mouth.

I guess there really is no difference.