The Redhunter

March 22, 2008

"The Speech: A Brilliant Fraud"

Of all the editorials I've seen on Senator Barack Obama's recent speech, Charles Krauthammer's is the best. Writing on The Washington Post on Thursday:

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 HIV "as a means of genocide against people of color"? Wright's claim that America was morally responsible for Sept. 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's 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 he proceeds to do precisely that. 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?

Exactly right.

Posted by Tom at 9:08 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

March 18, 2008

Obama's Big Speech

So Senator Obama gave a speech today in an attempt to do some damage control. The Senator, you see, has a "pastor problem", and the situation is threatening to get out of hand.

A few months ago I could not have imagined this would have happened. I figured that he might get tripped up saying something stupid about foreign policy, or that Sen McCain would best him in a debate. At most there will be a few controversial people on his staff, and there would be the usual story of the week but that would be that. I did not imagine that it would be revealed that for 20 years he sat in the pews of a church listening to a pastor saying the types of things that we have heard his pastor say.

I used to like Barack Obama, and have said so several times on this blog. He seemed like a decent enough fellow, sincere if wrong. But with this incident I now see him in a different light, and it's not a good one.

I think at this point we've all seen or heard the good Rev. Jeremiah Wright, recently retired as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, in action. If not, you can start here and here.

Some months ago Mitt Romney gave a speech in which he addressed the issue of religion. Some will try and draw a comparison between Romney's speech and Obama's, but it's a false one. Romney's issue was akin to that of then-Senator John F Kennedy; there were and are people out there who didn't like him simply because he chose a religion different than there own. There was some "aren't Mormon's kind of weird?" stuff out there and he had to show otherwise.

But this was different. What Rev Wright said was downright hateful. The man spewed forth one nutty conspiracy theory after another. He went on and on and on. And the crowd loved it.

In his speech today Senator Obama somehow needed to convince us that 1) What Rev Wright said was a one-time thing, and/or that 2) he managed to attend this church for 20 years without knowing about Wright's true beliefs. Did he succeed?

I'm not going to go through his entire speech, but there are a few key parts that caught my attention.

First, though, what is notable is that Obama spent most of the speech not discussing the subject at hand; his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He goes on and on about the subject of race, slavery, the founders, poverty, economic opportunity or the lack thereof, the immigrant experience, and of course, "change". All in all, he spends very little time discussing Wright. I think what he tried to do is hide the issue of Wright in the midst of all a lot of rhetoric and hope that we forget about him.

As such, most of the speech was simply irrelevant. Apparently we're all supposed to be so impressed with his soaring rhetoric that we just won't worry about who he's been listening to for 20 years.

Cutting out all of the fluff here are some of the critical parts

...we've heard my former pastor, Rev. 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.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Rev. 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.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice.

Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country -- a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America, a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

He says he's condemned the views of Rev Wright. Ok, I accept that. I'll take him at his word here. And he's certainly right that the Rev Wright's views are "profoundly distorted".

The attempt at equivalence, though, "just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed." is absurd. We're not talking about how to fund social security, or your views on abortion, Senator Obama.

As such, Rev. Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive...

Ah "divisiveness". I've noticed that this is a favorite of liberals, to claim that people who disagree with them are "divisive". And in this sentence Obama seems to be saying that being "divisive" is worse than being wrong.

Why associate myself with Rev. Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?

Finally, the real question gets asked. Let's see what he has to say.

And I confess that if all that I knew of Rev. Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

That's where he lost me. I don't buy the notion that he sat in those pews for 20 years and never heard Wright say the things he has said in the videos in question.

And of course the videos are played a lot, Senator. If the left had equivalent video or audio about a Republican running for president, don't you think they'd play it over and over too?

Next we have the "but Mussolini makes the trains run on time" justification.

But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than 20 years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor.

He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine, who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth -- by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

It is invalid to justify what Wright said because he did good elsewhere. It doesn't work that way.

Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear.

Uh, that wasn't the issue, Obama. I think we all know that religious worship in most black churches is different than that in most white churches. We all accept cultural differences. But once again Obama is trying to hide. The issue is that the audience was cheering Wright on as he said awful things. What he said was no surprise to them, because they've heard it before.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman 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.

If he had disowned Wright he could have gotten at least a partial approval from me and others. But despite all of his soaring rhetoric, in the end he couldn't do it. And why not?

Shelby Steele, writing in the Wall Street Journal, has the best take, I think, on Obama and the issue of race. Be sure to read the whole thing, but here's a snippet

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?

What could he have been thinking? Of course he wasn't thinking. He was driven by insecurity, by a need to "be black" despite his biracial background. And so fellow-traveling with a little race hatred seemed a small price to pay for a more secure racial identity. And anyway, wasn't this hatred more rhetorical than real?

But now the floodlight of a presidential campaign has trained on this usually hidden corner of contemporary black life: a mindless indulgence in a rhetorical anti-Americanism as a way of bonding and of asserting one's blackness. Yet Jeremiah Wright, splashed across America's television screens, has shown us that there is no real difference between rhetorical hatred and real hatred.

The invaluable Victor Davis Hanson, writing at National Review, also, echoing my theme at top that Obama spent most of his time not talking about the issue at hand.

Obama chose not to review what Wright, now deemed the "occasionally fierce critic." said in detail, condemn it unequivocally, apologize, and then resign from such a Sunday venue of intolerance -- the now accustomed American remedy to racism in the public realm that we saw in the Imus and other recent controversies.

Instead, to Obama, the postmodernist, context is everything. We all have eccentric and flamboyant pastors like Wright with whom we disagree. And words, in his case, don't quite mean what we think; unspoken intent and angst, not voiced hatred, are what matters more.

Rather than account for his relationship with a hate-monger, Obama will enlighten you, as your teacher, why you are either confused or too ill-intended to ask him to disassociate himself from Wright.

Here's the bottom line

We are not talking about a few offhand comments that Rev Wright made during a sermon. Nor are we talking about a simple lament over the plight of black people in the United States. This man has gone off on a long-winded rants in which he espoused one crackpot left and right-wing conspiracy after another.

There is no way that for 20 years he preached the love of Jesus and then one fine day changed his tune and decided to talk about other matters.

Let's also be clear that we're not talking about a minister somewhere who happened to endorse Sen. Obama. We're not even talking about someone who's endorsement Obama went after, or about someone he had recently hired for his staff. All of this is forgivable. If Obama had recently hired Wright without vetting him, that may open him up to the charge of incompetence, but that's about it. You can't be held responsible for what all of your advisors and supporters say.

But the facts as I understand them are that Barack Obama went to this church for 20 years. Wright married him and Michelle. He baptized their children. Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, is taken from a Wright sermon. Wright is (or was, I'm not sure if he's resigned or not) Sen Obama's spiritual advisor for the campaign.

There is no way he was unaware all these years of Rev. Wright's views.

Therefore, most of his speech today was simply irrelevant. At this point I'm not interested in hearing from him about the history of race relations in this country or what he thinks we need to do to make them better. And no we can't simply "move on". I am interested in hearing how he went to a church for 20 years and did not know the views of the pastor.

He did not answer that question today, nor did he even seriously try. The reason he didn't is that he can't. He knew.

Let's also get this out of the way; two wrongs don't make a right. This affair is not what some white minister said somewhere, so let's not try and use that as an excuse. Obama has held himself up as a new type of politician. He's the one who put himself on the pedistal.

We'll end with Juan Williams lowering the boom on Obama.

Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 20, 2008

Book Review - Come On, People!

On the 17th of May, 2004, Bill Cosby delivered a speech to the NAACP on the 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education that rocked the Black community, and indeed the country at large. Known as the "Pound Cake speech", he pointed out negative social trends within the Black community, and said point blank that "we cannot blame white people."

In the speech, he focused on the high crime rate, lack of parenting, "50 percent drop out rate", bad English, focus on multimillionaire sports figures that "can’t write a paragraph", and other social pathologies that plague the black community. Cosby was later criticized for his remarks, but refused to back down.

Come On, People! On the Path from Victims to Victors is the book that resulted from this speech. To write it, Cosby teamed up with Dr Alvin Pousssaint, who is a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Cosby draws the readers, and my guess is that most of the writing was done by him. Dr. Pousssaint leads intellectual weight to the book, so that when they write "studies show that..." you can be sure they are not blowing smoke.

The book is written in a casual, easy-to-read style. It is unfootnoted (although there is an excellent bibliography at the end), as it is meant to be more a call to action than an academic treatise.

What Cosby and Poussaint do not do in the book is prove through a mass of statistics and academic data that the black community is in trouble. This is taken as a given. Nor do they spend their time relating the history of black people in America, and how we got to our current situation. Rather, this is more of a self-help book than anything.

Cosby and Poussaint do not deny that racism plays a role in America today. To do so would be unfactual, and they would lose all credibility. But neither do they dwell on it. Racism gets a few lines here and there, but their message is clear: Most of our ills are not the result of racism, and are things that we can and need to set right ourselves.

The intended audience for Come on, People! are the very people that they are trying to help; black people who are caught in a cycle of poverty and violence. They are also trying to reach black community leaders who can turn things around.

As such, much of the book consists of common-sense advice for black people. There are chapters on prenatal care, parenting, eating properly, managing your finances, how to get a good education and use it to seek gainful employment, and much more. Here is a small sample taken at random:

Go to a doctor early and often for prenatal care

Don't let your kids watch too much TV

Be a good role model for your children

Proper English is a must

Slow down on the fast food

If you're going to have children, get married and stay married

Stop charging anything you don't absolutely need

Whatever you do, graduate from high school

Community colleges have many great courses that can lead directly to a job

Walk away from a fight

Shield your kids from what's on the Internet

The best way to avoid diabetes is to keep your weight under control.

Intersperced throughout the book are "call outs"; most of which are brief stories of black people who faced overwhelming odds yet made it. Others are those of successful black professionals who have useful advice. All are valuable and interesting.

The overwhelming message is that values matter. Come On, People! reminds me as nothing so much as Laura Ingraham's Power to the People, in which she discussed various social ills that are the result of bad value values.

Cosby and Poussaint are all about advancement through education. Unlike too many elies, who obsess over how many CEOs or professional football coaches are black, they look to action that will help the average black person. High profile black success stories in sports and entertainment world are simply not meaningful to the average person, as the chances that he or she will achieve such fame and riches are slim. As such, their advice, as illustrated in the above list, is designed to move people toward obtaining basic degrees at average colleges (they especially stress community colleges) that lead to concrete careers.

I'm not quite sure how much Cosby's message has resonated within the black community, as surely he has faced much resistance from elites for refusing to blame everything on white racism. Yet he and co-author Poussiant are not alone in their quest. For example, NPR Senior Correspondent and Fox News contributor Juan Williams, a black man with impeccable liberal credentials, wrote Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure that are Undermining Black America, and What We can Do About It in 2006, and between the three of them perhaps they can turn the debate around.

Cosby, Poussiant, Williams, and for that matter Ingraham, have picked up on the fact that there is only so much the government can do. Ending blatant racism was good and a must, but clearly this isn't enough to truely liberate black people. Create all the enterprise zones you want, Jack Kemp, but until you change values and attitudes you're whistling dixie.

To me, the question is not whether Come On, People! is a useful book. It is. The question is how to get it into the hands of the people who need it the most. I suspect that many or even most of the people who buy it are people like me; white guys who live comfortably in the suburbs. I'd buy a hundred books and donate them to a black church uptown if I thought they'd hand them out, but such an act would be seen as condescending, I suppose.

Much of the solution, then, is going to have to come from within the black community itself. But there are things that we can do also, like stop buying "gansta rap" music, and cleaning up our own culture. Because ultimately we're all in this together.

Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 2, 2005

Racism is OK if You're a Maryland Democrat

This story from the Washington Times is just about unbelieveable. Liberals in Maryland have sunk to a new low:

Black Democratic leaders in Maryland say that racially tinged attacks against Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele in his bid for the U.S. Senate are fair because he is a conservative Republican.

Such attacks against the first black man to win a statewide election in Maryland include pelting him with Oreo cookies during a campaign appearance, calling him an "Uncle Tom" and depicting him as a black-faced minstrel on a liberal Web log.

Operatives for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) also obtained a copy of his credit report -- the only Republican candidate so targeted.

But black Democrats say there is nothing wrong with "pointing out the obvious."

"There is a difference between pointing out the obvious and calling someone names," said a campaign spokesman for Kweisi Mfume, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate and former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

State Sen. Lisa A. Gladden, a black Baltimore Democrat, said she does not expect her party to pull any punches, including racial jabs at Mr. Steele, in the race to replace retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes.

"Party trumps race, especially on the national level," she said. "If you are bold enough to run, you have to take whatever the voters are going to give you. It's democracy, perhaps at its worse, but it is democracy."

Delegate Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat, said Mr. Steele invites comparisons to a slave who loves his cruel master or a cookie that is black on the outside and white inside because his conservative political philosophy is, in her view, anti-black.

"Because he is a conservative, he is different than most public blacks, and he is different than most people in our community," she said. "His politics are not in the best interest of the masses of black people."

I don't think that any comment is really necessary.

Friday Update

Today's Washington Times reports that the Democrat candidate for governor, Benjamin L. Cardin, says that he will not personally use racial epithets against Republican Michael S. Steele in their race for governor, but he will not repudiate fellow Democrats who do.

However, other black Democrats in Maryland say that they will try to put a stop to such tactics.

"I have never in my entire life brought race into what I do in life, and it is not going to come in now, at this stage," said Mr. Cardin, a 10-term congressman who could face Mr. Steele in the contest to replace retiring Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes. "I don't think race has any place in this campaign."

Even as Mr. Cardin declined to criticize fellow Democrats, members of the Congressional Black Caucus said Baltimore lawmakers in the General Assembly should "cease and desist" from making racial comments about Mr. Steele -- the first black man to win a statewide election in Maryland.

"My plan is to meet with them and ask them to stop this at once," said U.S. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, Baltimore Democrat and former Black Caucus chairman.

Rep. Albert R. Wynn, a black Prince George's County Democrat, admonished Baltimore lawmakers and even described Mr. Steele as "a likable guy."

"I think the comments and the attacks were outrageous and reprehensible. It does a disservice to the African-American community, and it creates a herd mentality that whatever the Democrats say we should repeat," Mr. Wynn said.

My hat is off to Representatives Cummings and Wynn for doing the right thing.

Posted by Tom at 8:00 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

September 18, 2005

Race and Katrina

I think we've all seen the various statements made by liberals and assorted Democrats claiming that the delayed action by the Bush Administration during and immediatly after the Hurricane was due to racism, so I'm not going to republish them here. There are many news sites and various blogs and such which have posted them, so knock yourself out if you're in the mood for self-torture.

You know who we are talking about; people like Howard Dean, Jesse Jackson, Randall Robinson, Rep Elijah Cummings (head of the Congressional Black Caucus, no less), Rep. Diane Watson, Rep Cynthia McKinney, on and on. Others such as rapper Kayne West count also, since there are people who do listen to and believe rock stars and other entertainers.

Also, to me it is self-evident that the charge is absurd, so you won't find a "no Bush is not a racist" argument here.

Rather, I want to look at why we had such charges in the first place.

Yes, there is racism in America. But most of it is not white racism. It is black racism. It pains me greatly to type this, but there it is. Certainly most of the hate speech that I see on matter of race comes from the left in general, and liberal black leaders in particular. Former NAACP head Kwazi Mfume comes to mind in this regard.

The simple fact is that significant(hint; key word there) white racism is a thing of the past. If you don't believe me, look at how the left defines racism today; they claim it is "institutional" or "unconscious". In other words, we can't find any individual cases, in fact we can't prove anything at all, but we're going to claim it anyway.

It gets worse. It is bad enough that Al Sharpton is feted by mainstream Democrats, who have forgotten all about Freddies Fashion Mart, let along the Tawana Brawley affair. With the last election cycle we have seen that the Democrat party is so in bed with extremist groups like Moveon.org and America Coming Together, and individuals such as Michael Moore and George Soros, that they are utterly unable to sound reasonable on most issues at all (More on this when I review Byron York's latest book)

Back to the Hurricane.

What we saw in New Orleans, and the race-baiting that followed, is the result of forty years of liberal social programs.

It is absurd beyond reason to say that this country has not worked it's collective butt off to make life better for it's underclass from at least 1933 on. And it defied comprehension how anyone could say that we have not tried beyond trying to make the lives of black people in particular better since the mid-fifties, with the trend accelerating greating from 1964 on. Trillions of dollars, program after program, quota after quota(excuse me, "diversity").

So at this point we are entitled to ask a question:

If white racism is as big a problem as the left says it is, and they allege it runs all the way up to the president, then what does that say about all the liberal social programs to alleviate all this that we've followed?

I'll spare you the typing and answer the question myself; your policies have failed. The liberal welfare state, and the modern "diversity" and "multiculturalism" that have been forced on us, have not worked. Not nearly as much as their sponsors claim, at any rate.

The black citizens of New Orleans who were so impoverished that they didn't own cars, or have the money to get out, were not victims of racism. They were victims of the failed liberal welfare state.

And why do so many buy into the notion that federal government failures were the result of racism? I'll spare you the typing on this one too; because liberal leaders have done nothing but preach the gospel of victimhood to them.

We will no doubt hear that "both sides need to come together", that conservatives need to "reach out", blah blah blah. Sorry, but after listening to the insanities coming from the left on the issue of race after Katrina, I'm not in much mood for "coming together" with the likes of Al Sharpton, Howard Dean, most members of the Congressional Black Caucus, or, while we're at it, the NAACP. I have had it up to here with them.

Compassion? You bet. But it's going to be on the individual level, which for me means targeted donations and church mission/work trips. But these "leaders" have got to go.

P.S. I hated writing this post. This entire affair pains me greatly, and so wish things weren't as they were. But some things have to be said.

Update

Thank you to the Watchers of Weasels blog for considering this post worthy of inclusion in their weekly contest. I did not win, but that's ok. I urge everyone to visit their site and read the posts that were submitted, as they are all very good.

Posted by Tom at 8:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack