As we Fisk sections of the B. Hussein Obama speech keep in mind that this speech was made necessary by the racist statements of his pastor, spiritual mentor, friend, and adviser for twenty years.
The document (Constitution) they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Right out of the gate Sen. Barack Hussein Obama draws attention to the guilt of current living White people due to the sins of their fathers. The speech is supposed to be speaking to the Black racism of Rev. Jeremiah Wright but instead what we get is the beginning of what amounts to a subtle apologetic for the reason black racism exists. Rev. Wright is racist because white people have been racist first. It is a kind of ‘but johnny did it first’ argument.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.
The problem with this section is that the premise underneath it is that it is the State who will force people to be ‘more just, more equal, more free, and more caring.’ In the midst of all this race banter we must not forget that Obama is a flaming socialist. Solving the challenges of our time means solving them through the agency of the State. Because that is Obama’s means by which Obama will solve the challenges people who don’t believe that the State should be God don’t want to move in the same direction.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners — an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
Obama mentions again slavery. Over and over again throughout this speech the sub-theme is that everybody is racist, subtly implying that Rev. Wright’s behavior really isn’t so bad. We will see this again and again.
It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts — that out of many, we are truly one.
People need to understand some implications here. Obama has landed upon the idea that people who comprise a culture will be one. This means that they will be one culturally, one religiously, and one genetically. This means one thing when a nation is seeking to meld together mildly different expressions of European ethnicity, cultural formations, and Christian Theological systems into a whole. It means something substantially different when a nation is seeking to meld together radically different expressions of worldwide ethnicities, cultural formations and Theological systems belonging to every God one can imagine.
In short, we have to start discussing if it is possible for people of radically different ethnicities, cultures and faiths to be one people.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
Actually, what we have seen is how hungry liberal democratic American people are for what Obama is calling a message of unity.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either too black or not black enough. We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
Because it is only within the last couple weeks that it has come to light that you were intimately attached to a Church and a Pastor who hates America and hates White people.
On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
Here the moral equivalence argument comes out in spades. Obama is saying that what Rev. Wright has said is offset by what Geraldine Ferraro has said. Subtly implied is that Rev. Wright shouldn’t be seen as any worse then Geraldine Ferraro. Presto Magic — Wright’s words are justified.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy — Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church — Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views — Absolutely — just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
Moral equivalence again. What Rev. Wright has said is no worse then what lots of other (white) pastors, priests, or rabbis have said. Further, Rev. Wright’s racist words of hate have been changed into mere words from a fierce critic.
Also, Obama is revealing that he lied last weekend when this story first hit. Last Friday Obama said that he wasn’t aware of this kind of thing being said in the Church. Obama also said that if he had heard any of these words he would have left the Church. Now Obama is admitting that he did indeed hear these kinds of words but seeks to excuse his continued membership at the Church by suggesting that lots of (white) people of lots of Churches, and synagogues hear this kind of language and do not leave. Now the moral equivalence is between Barack staying at this church in the face of racist hate language and the fact that (white) people stay at their churches.
Of course what is not true is that lots of (white) people would stay in a Church where that kind of language was used by their minister, priest and rabbis and if they had they certainly wouldn’t be considered presidential timber.