Connecting the Dots on Comrade Obama

One of the tragedies of this election is that I cannot be an Obama supporter. It is not just that his supporters seem to have more fun, and get to be more stylish, and enjoy those Obama music videos on a deeper level than the rest of us do. It is above all that Barack Obama is an impressive man with an obvious potential for national leadership that can unify us in the way he boasts he will. The fact that I could at the same time vote for the first black president would just enhance the pleasure.

But I cannot support him because I am increasingly convinced that he is as radically left wing as I feared he might be. In his most public settings, like a national presidential debate for example, he is all moderation and centrism. He surrounds himself with establishment Democrats like former treasury secretary Robert Rubin and stock market tycoon Warren Buffett, and even some retired generals on occasion. But behind the election season facade is a threatening gang of communist (yes, I use the word advisedly) associates. Connecting the dots on Barack Obama's submerged radical political sentiments has become like viewing a pointillist painting. (Thus, my use, or in a sense misuse, of the December 2007 cover of The Atlantic.)

Amir Taheri ("The O Jesse Knows") quotes Jesse Jackson saying, "He is the continuation of our struggle for justice not only for the black people but also for all those who have been wronged." On its own, that testimony is just a dot. But I have noted before that while McCain says that government needs to be reformed, Obama sees America itself as the problem, i.e., our political, economic and social systems. Thus, Jackson foresees Obama bringing a "radical change of direction." His indictment is this:

We have lost confidence in our president, our Congress, our banking system, our Wall Street and our legal system to protect our individual freedoms. . . I don't see how we could regain confidence in all those institutions without a radical change of direction

Think of "radical" in the leftist political sense. Jesse Jackson says he is neither an advisor nor confident of Obama, but his son has been a close friend of Obama for years, and it would be naive to think that Jesse is not in the know.

Michael Barone, senior writer for US News & World Report and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, draws our attention to the record of intimidation and suppression of free speech among Obama operatives ("The Coming Liberal Thugocracy").

Obama supporters seem to find it entirely natural to suppress speech that they don't like and seem utterly oblivious to claims that this violates the letter and spirit of the First Amendment. In this campaign, we've seen the coming of a thugocracy, suppressing free speech, and we may see its flourishing in the four or eight years ahead.

Consider Jonah Goldberg's study of "liberal fascism." (Read Ron Pestritto's review in the Claremont Review of Books, "A Nicer Form of Tyranny.")

Obama the Chicago community organizer is closely tied to ACORN, infamous for their physical intimidation of elected officials, widespread voter fraud and abuse of public funds. Read Stanley Kurtz's extensively researched, "Inside Obama's Acorn," and "Obama and Acorn" from the Wall Street Journal. Kurtz also shares the story of ACORN's gestapo-style assault on Newt Gingrich's legislative attempts to limit their influence ("Spreading the Virus").

House Speaker Newt Gingrich was scheduled to address a meeting of county commissioners at the Washington Hilton. But, first, some 500 protesters from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) poured into the ballroom from both the kitchen and the main entrance. Hotel staffers who tried to block them were quickly overwhelmed by demonstrators chanting, "Nuke Newt!" and "We want Newt!" Jamming the aisles, carrying bullhorns and taunting the assembled county commissioners, demonstrators swiftly took over the head table and commandeered the microphone, sending two members of Congress scurrying. The demonstrators' target, Gingrich, hadn't yet arrived - and his speech was cancelled. When the cancellation was announced, ACORN's foot soldiers cheered.

He reports other frightening incidents of violence. These are Obama's associates, people he has defended and with whom he has worked closely. This is what community organizing means in Chicago. Obama's wife, Michelle, told us, "Barack is not a politician first and foremost. He's a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change."

The WSJ editorial ended with this:

The Obama campaign is now distancing itself from Acorn, claiming Mr. Obama never organized with it and has nothing to do with illegal voter registration. Yet it's disingenuous to channel cash into an operation with a history of fraud and then claim you're shocked to discover reports of fraud. As with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, Mr. Obama was happy to associate with Acorn when it suited his purposes. But now that he's on the brink of the Presidency, he wants to disavow his ties.

The great exposé, however, is Joshua Muravchik's article, "Obama's Leftism," in the recent Commentary. From the evidence he assembles, the reader can trace a pattern of communist (yes, I mean Marxist, communist) associations in Obama's personal and profession life.

His mentor in high school was poet Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Communist Party.

In college, Obama has written that "I chose my friends carefully. ... The Marxist professors and structural feminists...." That was not just a phase he went through in college.

Moving to Chicago and throwing himself into community activism, he joined himself to Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his politically charged Trinity United Methodist Church. "The first time Obama attended services at Trinity, Wright delivered a sermon (it was titled “the audacity of hope”) whose theme was: “white folks’ greed runs a world in need.”" Obama told us he was "shocked" to learn of these radical, America hating, Marxist (liberation theology) views. But they was as hard to miss as beer in a bar. "[N]ot only was he aware of Wright’s views, they were what had drawn him to Trinity church in the first place."

Community organizing in Chicago was invented by leftist radical Saul Alinsky. In those years, Obama was schooled in the art of professional radicalism and he schooled others in turn.

Obama's connection with the murderous, bomb-throwing 1960's domestic terrorist William Ayers is harder to pin down. Information on this connection has been suppressed. But the connection is sufficiently clear that a responsible press would dig for greater details. Muravchik uses the words "likely," "most likely," "apparently," "conceivable," "could only have been," and "these facts suggest" in reporting the relationship. But when you put it all together and in the context of all of Obama's radical associations, it is a compelling and, given his chance at the presidency, a disturbing case. On it's own, a snow flake is of no consequence. But the cumulative effect of many snow flakes in coincidence is a deadly storm.

Ayers became an English professor and community activist in the Saul Alinsky tradition. Remember Michelle Obama indiscreet words: “Barack is not a politician first and foremost. He’s a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change.”

Obama's political career started in the Illinois state senate when he took over the seat of Alice Palmer who chose him as her successor. Clearly, she expected him to carry on in her tradition. Palmer was a communist...literally.

Like others among his mentors or patrons, Palmer, too, was a radical, a member of the executive body of the U.S. Peace Council, the least disguised of Soviet front organizations. She had made multiple pilgrimages to the Soviet Union, and in 1986 attended the 27th Congress of the Soviet Communist party, telling the party paper on her return that the Soviets “plan to provide people with higher wages and better education, health and transportation, while we in our country are hearing that cutbacks are necessary in all of these areas.”

During that campaign, Obama received the endorsement of "the New Party (NP), a coalition of socialists, Communists, and other leftists," a favor for which he later thanked them in person.

It is generous to think that, if there is any truth to these indicators, Barack Obama will be moderated by the office and by some of the establishment Democrats around him. On the other hand, as Muravchik observes, there is nothing in his intellectual development nor in his career path--from his professional radicalism in Chicago to his almost monolithicly liberal voting record in the Senate--to suggest any hope of moderation in an Obama presidency.

Muravchik sums up,

"Obama comes to us from a background farther to the Left than any presidential nominee since George McGovern, or perhaps ever. This makes him an extremely unlikely leader to bridge the divides of party, ideology, or, for that matter, race. If he loses, it will be for that reason (though many will no doubt adduce different explanations, including of course white racism, to which every GOP victory since Nixon’s election in 1968 has been attributed)."

"And if he wins? Without a doubt, it will be a thrilling moment. But the enduring importance of that landmark event will depend on the subsequent effectiveness of his presidency. If his tenure—like that of, say, Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter—should end by inviting scorn, then it may open as many wounds as it heals. On the other hand, it is not unimaginable that he may rise to the challenge of the office and govern from the center, as he will have to do to succeed. This, however, would truly involve reinventing himself, a task for which his intellectual and ideological background furnishes few materials."

On this subject, there is also David Feddoso's book, The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate (Regnery, 2008).

Honestly, given John McCain's shortcomings, if Barack Obama were an ordinary, left of center Democrat, I might very well support him. My hope would be that it would be worth suffering the minimal harm he would do for the sake of the reconciliation he could bring the nation and for the benefit the Republicans would experience during their wilderness reflection. But given his consistent history of leftist and even radical politics, I foresee no reconciliation, huge growth of government at the expense of our economic and political liberties, and the emboldening of our enemies around the world.

Looking at Barack Obama soberly, I see nothing but a tragedy waiting to happen. He could have been great.


Postscript:

David Brooks anticipates one or the other of these two Obama presidencies based on his historical and psychological assessments:

And it is easy to sketch out a scenario in which he could be a great president. He would be untroubled by self-destructive demons or indiscipline. With that cool manner, he would see reality unfiltered. He could gather — already has gathered — some of the smartest minds in public policy, and, untroubled by intellectual insecurity, he could give them free rein. Though he is young, it is easy to imagine him at the cabinet table, leading a subtle discussion of some long-term problem.

Of course, it’s also easy to imagine a scenario in which he is not an island of rationality in a sea of tumult, but simply an island. New presidents are often amazed by how much they are disobeyed, by how often passive-aggressiveness frustrates their plans.

It could be that Obama will be an observer, not a leader. Rather than throwing himself passionately into his causes, he will stand back. Congressional leaders, put off by his supposed intellectual superiority, will just go their own way. Lost in his own nuance, he will be passive and ineffectual. Lack of passion will produce lack of courage. The Obama greatness will give way to the Obama anti-climax.

From "Thinking About Obama," New York Times, October 17, 2008)

Obama Still Pastored By Radicals

NRO has found that there is a connection between Barack Obama's fondness for his first pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and that pastor's radical political views. Jim Gerachty claims seems to have identified his second and third pastors and that they continue in the mold of the first.

Rev. James Meeks of the South Side Baptist Church is also an Illinois state senator: "We don't have slave masters, we got mayors! But they are still the same white people who are presiding over systems where black people are not able to be educated."

Michael Pfleger is a Catholic priest: "We're going to snuff out legislators that are voting against our gun laws."
Former Clinton White House official Lanny Davis keeps this issue alive in today's Wall Street Journal ("Obama's Minister Problem").

By the way, I found a video of Barack Obama withholding his hand from his heart during the playing of the national anthem at a political event. This footage goes with my previous post, "Obama's Speech and Deeds," that includes the video of this event and other disturbing confirmations of his America hating character.



Notice that all the other candidates are doing what patriotic, or just prudent, political leaders do in these circumstances.

Obama's Snapshot Boomerangs

I guess they just couldn't resist. The prudent thing would be to give your Philadelphia speech on Wright and race, receive the applause, drop the subject and walk quickly away. Instead, for the sake of counter-punching the Clinton campaign, the Obama people released this photograph of President Bill Clinton greeting Rev. Jeremiah Wright at a 1998 prayer breakfast. It was at this particular prayer breakfast that the President confessed, regarding his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, "I have sinned." By the way, if those three words had been the substance of Obama's Great Speech, the matter would be largely laid to rest by now.

The picture is entirely unremarkable and, even with the invitation and letter that Obama made available with the picture, proves nothing regarding the Clintons' relationship with the infamous religious leader. Two comments on the New York Times website summarize the matter well. The first one refers to the following thank you letter that Wright received from the President.

Dear Pastor Wright:

Thank you so much for your kind message.

I am touched by your prayers and by the many expressions of encouragement and support I have received from friends across our country.

You have my best wishes.

Sincerely,
Bill Clinton

"Michelle" writes:

It’s a nice form letter that obviously went to all the clerics in attendance….c’mon!

Obama dedicated his book…20 years of his church going life…and about 2,000$ a week to a hate spewing bigot….he calls “like a uncle to me”….

And I am supposed to be worried about Clinton's judgement?

NOBAMA 2008 Hypocrisy Tour. Featuring his #1 Hit, “Words Matter”

"Blah Blah …Hope (hate)…Blah Blah …Change ( same old thing)…Blah Blah ..Hope and Change ( just another politician)…Blah."

Also "Jay" said this:

Who cares? Obama knew Wright intimately as his minister for 22 years and listened to his tapes at Harvard before then. Wright spews racial hatred with utter and complete passion and his church is a cauldron of racial hatred. And Obama is his intimate friend. Obama lied that he didn’t know about such incendiary racist views and isn’t to be trusted. He is very attracted to this man’s views and is a racist. There is no way he’ll win a general election. No way.

(I didn't read far to get these. Time is precious.)

Jay is right. Just as Obama did not understand that his grandmother's indiscreet private comments and Geraldine Ferraro's overly candid musings in comparison to Jeremiah Wrights pulpiteering tirades were vastly disproportionate to one another, so here he does not see that his 2o year, pew sitting, CD buying, donation giving, soul forming relationship with Wright bears no resemblance to Bill Clinton inviting Wright, a prominent black church leader, to prayer breakfast.

Another interpretation of this photo release is that this issue is bigger than the Philadelphia speech canonizers imagined, and that it is getting bigger all the time. The speech itself raised more questions than it laid to rest. (By the way, that is the mark of a bad "crisis response" speech.) Thus, the Obama campaign is having to deflect attention and spread the blame, but in so doing they are directing further attention to this issue instead of to the candidate's divine glow where it has been up until now.

The New York Sun has come up with information on the closest thing Hillary Clinton has to pastors in "Hillary’s Pastor, in Interview, Sympathizes With Jeremiah Wright" (April 2, 2008). But these men are not radicals. They are just standard, left wing, mainline United Methodists. Furthermore, I see no evidence that HRC has been influenced by religion anywhere near as much as Barack Obama has been.

Obama Has Lost His Post-Racial Credibility

Am I being unfair to Barack Obama over the Philadelphia speech? He hasn't complained to me. Nonetheless, when I saw Bob Herbert's column in the New York Times, "With a Powerful Speech, Obama Offers a Challenge" (March 25, 2008), I saw a good opportunity for being corrected if I was being too crusty and partisan. Make me admire the speech and the man! I'm open to it. Really, I am.

Herbert sees the speech fundamentally as a call to stop the racial madness and move us toward, in Obama's words, "a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America." Obama stated the challenge this way: We have a choice. We can accept politics that breeds division and conflict and cynicism," or "we can come together and say, 'Not this time.' This time, we want to talk about..." and then he goes on to give the bleak picture of America that he always does. According to Herbert: "The great challenges this country continues to face...cannot be solved, Mr. Obama said, in an environment riven by divisiveness and hostility."

Well who can disagree with that? My problem is with the fellow speaking these words. He has no credibility with me. This is why.

What Herbert calls "an environment riven by divisiveness and hostility" is where Barack Obama has received his spiritual formation, which at Trinity United Church of Christ is indistinguishable from political training because their religion is a political religion and their gospel is a merely social gospel. Obama-skeptics continue to pick apart the speech, not out of racial animus, but out of suspicion that Obama is putting one over on us. He's a politician. There's a lot of power at stake. We've had bad experiences with politicians. Forgive me.

Herbert quotes from the 1968 speech Robert Kennedy gave from the back of a flatbed truck when he broke the news of Martin Luther King Jr's death to a largely black audience, and Herbert tries to use Kennedy's noble and stirring words to shame anyone who finds fault with Obama's speech instead of heeding the call to march with the candidate into a brave new post-racial world.

In this difficult time for the United Sates, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black ... you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization — black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

Yet, what Kennedy warns his audience against--bitterness, hatred, polarization--is precisely what Obama's pastor and his church are all about, and Obama has chosen to remain in association with them all these years. It was only when he became serious about a presidential run that Obama agreed with Wright that they would have to put some distance between themselves. ("A Candidate, His Minister and the Search for Faith," New York Times, April 30 2007.)

The issue is not Barack Obama's decision this month not to break with his beloved mentor. That is what he defended in his speech. The issue is his decision of the last 20 years, a decision he made 20 years ago and has been affirming ever since, to embrace Jeremiah Wright's teachings and worldview. No one so affiliated and so trained is in a position to lead us in bridging what he calls the "chasm of misunderstanding."

Trouble in Fairyland for Obama

There must be something going terribly wrong in the Obama campaign because even the New York Times has made the editorial choice of recognizing in print what other less smitten sources have seen for some time: the self-proclaimed post-partisan candidate, supposedly the Uniter of these United States is not himself post-partisan, but a hard-left liberal. ("Obama's Test: Can a Liberal Be a Unifier?" Mar. 25, 2008.)

At the core of Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign is a promise that he can transcend the starkly red-and-blue politics of the last 15 years, end the partisan and ideological wars and build a new governing majority. To achieve the change the country wants, he says, “we need a leader who can finally move beyond the divisive politics of Washington and bring Democrats, independents and Republicans together to get things done.” But this promise leads, inevitably, to a question: Can such a majority be built and led by Mr. Obama, whose voting record was, by one ranking, the most liberal in the Senate last year?

Yes, there's trouble in fairyland.

In addition, how Obama can sustain any credibility under the withering prose of Christopher Hitchens is astonishing ("Blind Faith" in Slate, March 24, 2008). Consider how he (quite properly) characterizes Obama's reprehensible use of Grandma Dunham in The Speech.

You often hear it said, of some political or other opportunist, that he would sell his own grandmother if it would suit his interests. But you seldom, if ever, see this notorious transaction actually being performed, which is why I am slightly surprised that Obama got away with it so easily. (Yet why do I say I am surprised? He still gets away with absolutely everything.)

Well, perhaps less and less so. Good hearted European Americans have been joining good hearted African Americans in heeding Obama's call for a post-racial United States of America. But we can expect Obama's offensive and indefensible equation of his dear old grandmother's occasional candid moments with Jeremiah Wright's decades of racist rantings to cool the warm affections of White voters, even Democratic ones. There is "an inchoate resentment among many white voters who are damned if they will be called bigots by a man who associates with Jeremiah Wright."

Of course, Ole Hitch sees all this as evidence that "religion poisons everything." But he has it backwards. It is people who poison everything. People like him, Jeremiah Wright, me and you. The prophet Isaiah told Israel what is true of us all: "all our righteous acts are like filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6). People poison religion, marriage, the life of the mind, little league baseball...everything. But Hitchens doesn't see this because, like the Chicago preacher whom he calls "wicked and stupid," he too is self-righteous. The remedy for the poison that flows from every human heart in one form or another is the grace of God in Jesus Christ who said, "In this world you will have tribulation. But take heart! I have overcome the world." In the face of a multi-thousand year human history of poisonous mutual destruction, what hope is there that either Christopher Hitchens or Barack Obama is going to "fix our souls" (to use Michelle Obama's words)? This requires a miracle. It requires an act of re-creation.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." - II Corinthians 5:17

John Perkins' Gospel Response to Racism

Barack Obama excused the racism and black separationism of his pastor and spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright, on the basis of what Wright had observed and suffered in an earlier, segregationist, and overtly oppressive age. But one cannot invoke this excuse without adopting the whole victim culture that is preventing the black community and the Democratic party from embracing social remedies that hold out greater hope for reconciliation, prosperity and all manner of liberty.

The tragedy for our nation is that a gifted man like Barack Obama fell in with a character like Jeremiah Wright instead of with a truly great Christian leader and black leader like John Perkins.

I heard John Perkins speak at a Reformation and Revival Conference in 2003. It was an honor just to be in the same room with him. No stewing in victimization. No recriminations. And, let me add because it is spiritually telling, no culturally excused vulgarity. What I heard in his testimony and what has been confirmed in his life was suffering and a gracious, Biblical, Christ-like response to suffering.

His brother died in his arms, shot by a deputy marshall. He was beaten and tortured by the sheriff and state police. But through it all he returned good for evil, love for hate, progress for prejudice and brought hope to black and white alike. The story of John Perkins is no ordinary story. Rather, it is a gripping portrayal of what happens when faith [i.e. Christ] thrusts a person into the midst of a struggle against racism, oppression and injustice. It is about the costs of discipleship the jailings, the floggings, the despair, the sacrifice. And it is about the transforming work of faith [i.e. Christ] that allowed John to respond to such overwhelming indignities with miraculous compassion, vision and hope [editorial additions mine]. (Amazon.com)

If you see all religion as at best just "religion" and at worst either self-delusion or mass deceit, mark this difference: In Jeremiah Wright, you see the religion of man. In John Perkins, you see the religion of the risen Christ. In Jeremiah Wright, you see the flesh. In John Perkins, you see the Spirit. In Jeremiah Wright, you see the religion that comes up from a sinful heart. In John Perkins, you see the religion that comes down from heaven and graciously transforms a sinful heart. In Jeremiah Wright you see a social gospel and a political religion. John Perkins's gospel is the gospel of the Biblical, risen Christ. It is the gospel of new birth to people hopelessly dead in sin. As such, it is profoundly more comprehensive and world transforming than a merely social gospel or political religion could ever hope to be.

The Acton Institute summarizes Perkins' 3-R approach to community development (relocation, reconciliation, redistribution [non-governmental]). These are the principles underlying the John M. Perkins Foundation for Reconciliation and Development.

He is best known for his book, Let Justice Roll Down, for Voice of Calvary Ministries, and for the Christian Community Development Association.

Obama's Old Whine in a New Whineskin

Many have remarked on the bizarre, even reprehensible equation Barack Obama drew in his Philadelphia speech between Jeremiah Wright on the one hand and both Geraldine Ferraro and Obama's grandmother on the other. Charles Krauthammer, for example.

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?

But there is another criticism that builds on previous observations that behind all this talk of bringing America together and getting beyond the old polarities is the same old big government, forget-liberty-and-collapse-in-my-big-strong-arms, nanny state liberalism.

Jonah Goldberg found the speech initially "thrilling," and listened with hope that, for a Democrat, Obama was going to set a new course. Then, "Sigh, Here we go again."

For all the wonderful rhetoric and tantalizing promise of Obama and his speech, there's not much that's new here. This was largely a restatement of Wright's indictment of America, delivered in University of Chicago parlance instead of South Side Chicago diatribe.

The old baggage has been replaced with shinier suitcases, but the contents are the same. Black America's problems can be solved by spending more money on the same old Great Society programs. Any talk about blacks' problems that takes the eyes off that prize is a "distraction." Yet again, white Americans can prove their commitment to racial justice by going along with more big government. My hope for something better proved too audacious in the end.

Krauthammer also touches on the new eloquence with which Obama packages the old complaints and the old destructive remedies. "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."

Krauthammer then declares our presumptive young emperor naked, and poses these devastating questions:

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?

We have not heard the end of this. In a war, it is usually with aerial bombing and artillery that you soften up the enemy before you send the troops in to topple what's left. In this political battle, Hillary Clinton and John McCain are just watching The Self-Declared-Moral-Future jump up and down on his own land mines.

Hillary has one eye on Obama's self-destruction, and another on polls like this one from Rasmussen. "Nationally, Barack Obama now holds a statistically insignificant one-point advantage over Hillary Clinton, 45% to 44%. Before the story broke about his former Pastor, Obama led Clinton by eight percentage points."

For his part, McCain is seeing what Rich Galen is seeing:

According to the Gallup poll track, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is sitting on a five percentage point lead over Obama 48-43. This is in contrast to the Gallup measure on March 16 (two days before The Speech) when Obama had a two point lead over Clinton – 47-45.

What do polls in March mean for the general election in November? Sure, but keep this in mind:

Given the state of the economy, the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, the lack of any positive news for Republicans at the US House or Senate level and the constant claim of the popular press that Democrats are so much more energized than Republicans, how can this be?

Hillary and Barack should be beating McCain by 20 points.

Jeremiah Wright should be beating McCain by 15.

At some point the national political press corps is going to come to the realization that the prospect of a Democrat being sworn in as President on January 20th next year is becoming increasingly dim.

I'm upbeat. This is why I have said that Barack Obama is quite beatable. But for that very reason (grumpy, brittle conservatives!), it is vital that we beat him!

Obama's Speech and Deeds

People are swooning over Barack Obama's Philadelphia speech on his association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Today, Nicholas Kristof calls it "the best political speech since John Kennedy talked about his Catholicism in Houston in 1960. ... It was not a sound bite, but a symphony." Better than any of Reagan's speeches? Better than MLK?

This Wright association is bringing into focus a number of issues that have been nagging at those of us who have been untouched by the fog of enthusiam that has overcome many others who have been observing Obama's political advent. Put it together:

His wife, Michelle, who is out campaigning for him separately as though she were his running mate, says that she has never in all her adult life been proud of her country. In her view, America is a miserable, oppressive place--something like Eastern Europe under Soviet domination or South Africa under apartheid.

Barack seems to hold the same opinion, though he covers it over with positive rhetoric. Though he affirms the country's goodness, we all know that people who seek the highest office in the land have been known to package themselves suitably for the election and tell people what they want to hear. This was the Republican suspicion of Mitt Romney, whether justified or not. Ronald Reagan had a long history of speeches and deeds, and so no one suspected him of just putting on a patriotic face.

In Obama's campaign speeches, he talks about the grimy, oppressive, hopeless America for which his candidacy is our only hope. Thus, Michelle's new found civic pride. In "Obama At The Top" (Wall Street Journal, Feb. 14, 2008), Daniel Henninger describes Obama's view of today's America as "unremitting bleakness." That is also Jeremiah Wright's view.

Consider also that during the Iowa campaign, he stopped wearing the American flag pin--what he called "that pin"--choosing instead to show his patriotism by proposing policies for helpful change. Can't you do both? The link is to the video of his 32 second statement on the matter to ABC News.

Here we footage of several candidates at an Iowa event hosted by Sen. Tom Harkin. The national anthem is playing and everyone has his hand over his heart, including Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. But only Barack Obama refuses to put his hand over his heart while the Star Spangled Banner plays.

Jeremiah Wright had a profound effect on Obama's developing worldview. Jodi Kantor describes this in her April 30 2007 article in the New York Times, "A Candidate, His Minister and the Search for Faith."

He had sampled various faiths but adopted none until he met Mr. Wright, a dynamic pastor who preached Afrocentric theology, dabbled in radical politics and delivered music-and-profanity-spiked sermons. ... It is hard to imagine, though, how Mr. Obama can truly distance himself from Mr. Wright. The Christianity that Mr. Obama adopted at Trinity has infused not only his life, but also his campaign....He titled his second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” after one of Mr. Wright’s sermons....Mr. Obama was entranced by Mr. Wright, whose sermons fused analysis of the Bible with outrage at what he saw as the racism of everything from daily life in Chicago to American foreign policy.

She quotes his spiritual mentor as saying, “If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen.”

Turning to the Philadelphia speech (the Obama website also has the text of the speech), first of all, I didn't think it was as good as people say. He was certainly no MLK in his delivery. The speech itself was too full of objectionable equivalences to to win over or placate any impartial observer. He equates the one remark by Geraldine Ferraro, a faithful liberal by any standard, with the decades of hateful, ranting paranoia by Jeremiah Wright. He even puts his dear grandmother, whom he tells the whole nation has been guilty of an occasional kitchen table stereotyping remark, on the same level as preacher Wright whose remarks have been loud, public, widely distributed, unrepentant and consistently voiced for decades. What's that? Hiding behind an old woman (his grandma, no less!) and letting her take the bullets? In addition, what he claims are isolated remarks ("views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike"), he continues to embrace the man himself who is inseparable from those views.

Michael Medved has a fine analysis of those odd equivalences in "Three Big Problems With Barack's Speech."

Shelby Steele, in "The Obama Bargain" (Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2008) questions just how post racial he can be with this church background. "How does one 'transcend' race in this church? The fact is that Barack Obama has fellow-traveled with a hate-filled, anti-American black nationalism all his adult life, failing to stand and challenge an ideology that would have no place for his own mother. And what portent of presidential judgment is it to have exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of anti-white vitriol?"

With almost five weeks before the Pennsylvania primary, lots of time for America to ruminate over these things and digest the implications, Hillary Clinton must be smiling quietly. John McCain must be taking notes.

What The Obamas Learned in Church

Michelle Obama stunned us with her bombshell statement in Wisconsin on February 19, though it was not the first time she expressed the sentiment.

What we have learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback. It is making a comeback. And let me tell you something -- for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment. I've seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic common issues, and it's made me proud.

We puzzled over how she could forget or dismiss all the good for which this country stands, the good that has happened in this country and happens every day, and that this country has brought to the nations of the world over that past 30 years, i.e. over the course of her "adult lifetime."

We have recently discovered the plausible source for these views, however: the America-hating, race-centered victimology-posing-as-theology that is the crowd pleasing demagoguery preached up at Obamas' church where they have been attending for twenty years--Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

Consider these fiery arrows let loose from the pulpit to a cheering and even back slapping congregation by the church's long time preacher, Jeremiah Wright. The video from which I draw these proclamations has itself drawn from sermons delivered on several different occasions. I offer these transcriptions largely without editorial comment, though I have arranged them thematically.

U.S. Imperialism and 9/11

• "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into out own front yard. America's chickens are comin' home to roost!"
• "We cannot see how what he are doing is the same thing as al-Qaeda is doing under a different colored flag, calling on the name of a different God to sanction and approve our murder..."

Race and 9/11

• "Yes, 9-11-01 happened to us. And so did slavery happen to us. Yes, the World Trade Center happened to us. And so did white supremacy happen to us. Yes, the Pentagon happened to us. And so did the Tuskegee Experiment happen to us. Yes, Shanklin Pennsylvania [he means Shanksville] happened to us. And so did the Sharpeville Massacre happen to us [actually to black South Africans in South Africa in 1960]. A government sponsored religiosity makes you suffer from amnesia."

Race

• "White America" he calls "US of KKKA."
• "We believe God sanctioned the rape and robbery of an entire continent. We believe God ordained African slavery. We believe God makes Europeans superior to Africans and superior to everybody else."
• "Black men turning on black men. That is fighting the wrong enemy. You both are the primary targets of an oppressive society that sees both of you as a dangerous threat."
• "Oh, I am so glad that I got a God who knows what it is to be a poor black man in a country and a culture that is controlled by and run by rich white people."
• "Barack Obama knows what it is like to be a black man living in a country controlled by rich white people."
• "...gives them drugs, build bigger prisons, passes a three strike law, and then wants us to sing "God Bless America?" No, no, no! Not God bless America...God damn America. That's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating her citizens as less than human. God damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is supreme."

He Doesn't See the Irony...

• "He taught me, Jesus did, how to love my enemies. Jesus taught me how to love the hell out of my enemies and not be reduced to their level of hatred and bigotry and small mindedness."

The Preacher Behind Obama’s "Change" and "Hope?"

• "We have got to change the way we have been doing things as an arrogant, racist, military superpower."
• "Hillary ain't never had her own people say she wadn't white enough! Jesus had his own people siding with the enemy! [Remember, Wright claims Jesus was black.] That's why I love Jesus, y'all. He never let their hatred dampen his hope." (Rich Lowry reports in "The Dishonesty of Hope" that the first sermon Barack Obama heard from Wright was entitled "The Audacity of Hope--later, the title of Obama's book--was a diatribe against "white folks' greed" and had a formative influence upon the young Obama.)

Notice that when describing America as "a country controlled by rich white people" he makes no distinction between rich white Republicans and rich white Democrats, between Republican and Democratic administrations or between Republican and Democratic controlled legislatures. Whether it's one or the other, it's all just the U S of KKKA.

In a separate video, Wright claims, in an especially vulgar reference to Monica Lewinsky, that President Bill Clinton betrayed the confidence of the black community. "Bill did us just like he did Monica Lewinsky." He then makes lewd gyrating motions and puffing sounds right there in the pulpit!

How many other black political leaders have been fed on this sort of rhetoric that passes for spiritual counsel? How many other black churches are preaching up this stuff? If we are concerned about the radical Muslim teachings at certain Mosques and madrassas, why should we not be concerned about this?

Obama's Religion and America

Barack Obama's understanding of Christianity has been fed for the last twenty years by a strange and controversial church. Perhaps you've seen videos of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the longtime preacher at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, spouting hatred for white people and for America. Sen. Obama claims that this happened so infrequently that he always missed it when he attended church.

But the church itself has a very strange theological foundation. It is a form of Marxism called "Black Liberation Theology." This is from the church's website, though the information there seems to change in response to media attention, as it did after Sean Hannity probed the issue on Fox's Hannity and Colmes. In his interview with Sean Hannity, Wright directly and explicitly associates his "black value system" with the "liberation theology movement" in Nicaragua "26, 28, 30 years ago," i.e. during the time of the Marxist revolution there.

The vision statement of Trinity United Church of Christ is based upon the systematized liberation theology that started in 1969 with the publication of Dr. James Cone’s book, Black Power and Black Theology. Black theology is one of the many theologies in the Americas that became popular during the liberation theology movement. They include Hispanic theology, Native American theology, Asian theology and Womanist theology. ... Black liberation theology defines Africans and African Americans as subjects – not the objects which colonizers and oppressors have consistently defined “others” as. ... To have a church whose theological perspective starts from the vantage point of Black liberation theology being its center, is not to say that African or African American people are superior to any one else [though in the second video clip linked above, Wright says they are]. ... African-centered thought, unlike Eurocentrism, does not assume superiority and look at everyone else as being inferior.

Wayne House, professor of theology at Faith Evangelical Seminary, in "An Investigation of Black Liberation Theology" (Bibliotheca Sacra, 139:554, April 1982), gives this summary of Black Liberation Theology:

The modern liberation movement often combines biblical liberation themes with Marxist ideology and methodology. Wolfhart Pannenberg (Lutheran), Jüren Moltmann (Reformed), and Johannes Metz (Roman Catholic) represent the theology of hope movement from which more radical political theologians such as Rubem A. Alves, James Cone (black theologian), and Camilo Torres (Roman Catholic), and Gustavo Gutiérrez have developed a theology of violent revolution. Pulling from Marxism more than from Scripture, they pursue a forceful overthrow of oppression and see this as God's method of working in the world today.

The Questions for Obama

It is harder for Obama to distance himself from this because, according to his pastor, it has been the clearly stated and operational theology of the church for the last 26 years. It would be like attending Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church for 20 years and being unaware of the church's emphasis on believer baptism and family values.

In light of this information, it is reasonable to ask: Behind all this "hope" rhetoric, is Barack Obama really a black separatist? Given the correspondence between Michelle Obama's evident hatred for America and that of the Obamas' preacher, Jeremiah Wright, does "hope" for "change" in Obama's rhetoric mean hope for America to go from presently despicable to something of Obama's making? Would that America be shaped more by the liberation theology of Gustavo Gutierrez than by the liberal constitutionalism of James Madison? What role does Black Liberation Theology play in his thinking?

Does Barack Obama believe, as his church apparently would, that James Madison and John Locke (the greatest theorists of the American political tradition), or Jonathan Edwards and John Calvin (the greatest theologians of the American religious tradition) were "Eurocentric" and thus racist? Is Barack Obama in a cult? (In addition to other troubling indicators, his church has honored Louis Farrakhan, a cult leader, with a lifetime achievement award.)

Of course, it would yield nothing simply to ask the likely Presidential candidate these questions. Answers must be culled from the record of his speeches and deeds. Get going, press corps!

Just below the surface of all the lovefest in the Obama campaign and all through Obama's record is a scary and bitter hard-left radicalism. His Sunday religious training explains a lot of it. The mainstream media didn't give any attention to Eliot Spitzer's demons until the crash came. They would do well to give serious attention to Obama's demons. Then if he wins, the people elected him with full knowledge of what they were getting.

Lastly, Mitt Romney came under a lot of scrutiny and criticism for his somewhat bizarre and cultish religion. But Mormonism is far more compatible with the best of the American political tradition that this stuff. If Mitt Romney got a hard time over his religion, Barack Obama should get at least double.