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Race and Politics There is something both poignant and galling about the candidacy of Barack Obama.
Any American, regardless of party or race, has to find it heartening that the country has reached the point where a black candidate for President of the United States sweeps so many primaries in states where the overwhelming majority of the population is white.
We have all seen the crowds enthralled by Barack Obama's rhetoric and theatrical style.
Many of his supporters put their money where their mouths were, so that this recently arrived Senator received more millions of dollars in donations than candidates who have been far more visible on the national stage for far more years.
That's the good news. The bad news is that Barack Obama has been leading as much of a double life as Eliot Spitzer.
While talking about bringing us together and deploring "divisive" actions, Senator Obama has for 20 years been a member of a church whose minister, Jeremiah Wright, has said that "God Bless America" should be replaced by "God damn America" -- among many other wild and even obscene denunciations of American society, including blanket racist attacks on whites.
Nor was this an isolated example. Fox News Channel has played tapes of various sermons of Jeremiah Wright, and says that it has tapes with hours of more of the same.
Wright's actions matched his words. He went with Louis Farrakhan to Libya and Farrakhan received an award from his church.
Sean Hannity began reporting on Jeremiah Wright back in April of 2007. But the mainstream media saw no evil, heard no evil and spoke no evil. Now that the facts have come out in a number of places, and can no longer be suppressed, many in the media are trying to spin these facts out of existence. Spin number one is that Jeremiah Wright's words were "taken out of context." Like most people who use this escape hatch, those who say this do not explain what the words mean when taken in context.
In just what context does "God damn America" mean something different?
Spin number two is that Barack Obama says he didn't hear the particular things that Jeremiah Wright said that are now causing so much comment. It wasn't just an isolated remark. Nor were the enthusiastic responses of the churchgoers something which suggests that this anti-American attitude was news to them or something that they didn't agree with.
If Barack Obama was not in church that particular day, he belonged to that church for 20 years. He made a donation of more than $20,000 to that church.
In all that time, he never had a clue as to what kind of man Jeremiah Wright was? Give me a break!
You can't be with someone for 20 years, call him your mentor, and not know about his racist and anti-American views.
Neither Barack Obama nor his media spinmeisters can put this story behind him with some facile election year rhetoric. If Senator Obama wants to run with the rabbits and hunt with the hounds, then at least let the rabbits and the hounds know that.
The fact that Obama talks differently than Jeremiah Wright does not mean that his track record is different. Barack Obama's voting record in the Senate is perfectly consistent with the far left ideology and the grievance culture, just as his wife's statement that she was never proud of her country before is consistent with that ideology.
Senator Barack Obama's political success thus far has been a blow for equality. But equality has its down side.
Equality means that a black demagogue who has been exposed as a phony deserves exactly the same treatment as a white demagogue who has been exposed as a phony.
We don't need a President of the United States who got to the White House by talking one way, voting a very different way in the Senate, and who for 20 years followed a man whose words and deeds contradict Obama's carefully crafted election year image.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com. Obama's Speech By Thomas Sowell Did Senator Barack Obama's speech in The polls and the primaries will answer that question. The great unasked question for Senator Obama is the question that was asked about President Nixon during the Watergate scandal; what did he know and when did he know it? Although Senator Obama would now have us believe that he is shocked, shocked, at what Jeremiah Wright said, that he was not in the church when pastor Wright said those things from the pulpit, this still leaves the question of why he disinvited Wright from the event at which he announced his candidacy for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination a year ago. Either Barack Obama or his staff must have known then that Jeremiah Wright was not someone whom they wanted to expose to the media and to the media scrutiny to which that could lead. Why not, if it is only now that Senator Obama is learning for the first time, to his surprise, what kinds of things Jeremiah Wright has been saying and doing? No one had to be in church the day Wright made his inflammatory and obscene remarks to know about them. The cable news journalists who are playing the tapes of those sermons were not there. The tapes were on sale in the church itself. Obama knew that because he had bought one or more of those tapes. But even if there were no tapes, and even if Obama never heard from other members of the church what their pastor was saying, he spent 20 years in that church, not just as an ordinary member but also as someone who once donated $20,000 to the church. There was no way that he didn't know about Jeremiah Wright's anti-American and racist diatribes from the pulpit. Someone once said that a con man's job is not to convince skeptics but to enable people to continue to believe what they already want to believe. Accordingly, Obama's Like the Soviet show trials during their 1930s purges, Obama's speech was not supposed to convince critics but to reassure supporters and fellow-travelers, in order to keep the "useful idiots" useful. Best-selling author Shelby Steele's recent book on Barack Obama ("A Bound Man") has valuable insights into both the man and the circumstances facing many other blacks -- especially those who were never part of the black ghetto culture but who feel a need to identify with it for either personal, political or financial reasons. Like religious converts who become more Catholic than the Pope, such people often become blacker-than-thou. For whatever reason, Barack Obama chose a black extremist church decades ago -- even though there was no shortage of very different churches, both black and white -- in Some say that he was trying to earn credibility on the ghetto streets, to facilitate his work as a community activist or for his political career. We may never know why. But now that Barack Obama is running for a presidential nomination, he is doing so on a radically different basis, as a post-racial candidate uniquely prepared to bring us all together. Yet the past continues to follow him, despite his attempts to bury it and the mainstream media's attempts to ignore it or apologize for it. Shelby Steele depicts Barack Obama as a man without real convictions, "an iconic figure who neglected to become himself." Senator Obama has been at his best as an icon, able with his command of words to meet other people's psychic needs, including a need to dispel white guilt by supporting his candidacy. But President of the
It's Not Compassion -- It's Wright-Wing Racism Most of the media and their fellow liberals were positively giddy over Barack Obama's speech Tuesday, all but comparing it to the Sermon on the Mount. I won't deny it was a masterful piece of oratory -- the man can be spellbinding -- but when you stop to consider what Sen. Obama was really doing up there on the podium, invoking the specter of slavery and Jim Crow and the era of "whites only," it becomes clear that it was a con job designed to make the voters as giddy as he knew his worshippers in the submissive media would be. The speech was meant to be an explanation and expiation of his guilt for his years of remaining mute in the face of the outrageous anti-Americanism spewed by his pastor and bosom buddy, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Until Tuesday, Barack Obama (you can't use his middle name, which has now become the "H-word," allegedly a code word for anti-Muslim rhetoric) had steadfastly denied he ever heard his friend and pastor make his hateful remarks. In the speech, however, he just kind of mentioned that... well, yes ... he guesses he was aware of the Reverend Wright's offensive rhetoric after all. Mea Minima Culpa. He then launched into a defense of his friendship with the man he credited for bringing him to Christianity, and helping to form his social and political philosophy and set him on the path to a life of public service. Admirably, while denouncing Wright's extremism, he refused to denounce the man himself. Nobody expected him to declare Wright anathema and cast him into the outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and the gnashing of teeth -- one simply doesn't do to that sort of thing to a longtime friend, benefactor and mentor even if he has been shown to have slipped the rails time after time. What was not expected was Barack H. Obama's use of a litany of Nor was it true, as Obama charged, that the Reagan coalition was created out of white resentment for affirmative action or forced busing. He charged that "anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime... talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism." Poppycock! These are not only outright falsehoods, but echoes of what Obama learned at the feet of Jeremiah Wright and now preaches as his own beliefs. He learned his lessons well. When he suggested that my father's coalition was based on anger over affirmative action and welfare he was peddling a blatant falsehood as egregious in its falsity as Wright's charge that whites created AIDS to wipe out the black population. Everything Obama said was directed at suggesting that while Rev. Wright should not have used such inflammatory language, he was somehow justified because of Try as he might, Barack Obama cannot claim the innocence of a lamb in his long years of worshipful association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. He was either fully aware of the seething racial hatred that motivated Wright, or something of a blithering idiot who can't spot a racist hater when he spends years genuflecting at his feet. Barack Obama is not an idiot. He is a brilliant orator who exudes charm and arouses near-worship from his host of giddy, hypnotized supporters. He is also a committed socialist and a talented salesman for his brand of Marxist snake oil. Beware of camels bearing gifts, and politicians promising utopia. Mike Reagan, the elder son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is heard on more than 200 talk-radio stations nationally as part of the Radio America Network. Look for Mike's newest book, "Twice Adopted." E-mail comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com.
Say Goodbye to the Glowbama Mystique For all of his supposedly unique and transcendent understanding of race in For two decades, Obama tethered himself to a fire-breathing pastor peddling bitter Marxist "black liberation theology" in the name of God. Behind the "audacity of hope" was a grievance-mongering preacher animated by the voracity of hate. And understand this: The Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama were not merely passing "associates." They were mentor and mentee, guru and student, with fates and fortunes intertwined. For two decades, while using the church to build his Chicago power base and credibility in the black community, Obama turned a deaf ear to Wright's AIDS conspiracy theories, class warfare rants, anti-Israel, anti-white raves, and "God damn America" diatribes. These weren't occasional outbursts. They were the bread and butter of the Trinity United Church of Christ. Now, Obama blames "talk show hosts and conservative commentators" for exposing Wright's race-based rancor. Audacious, indeed. On Friday, Obama attempted to minimize the extent to which he had been exposed to Wright's poisonous politicking on the pulpit. "None of these statements were ones that I had heard myself personally in the pews," he told Major Garrett of Fox News. "The other statements were ones that I just heard about while we were -- when they started being run on FOX and some of the other stations. And so they weren't things that I was familiar with." Yesterday, Obama changed his tune: "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." The clever Sen. Obama has attempted to erect a firewall of protection from probing questions about which remarks he heard and tolerated and failed to object to while sitting in the pews. Dwelling on what he knew and where and when, he argued yesterday, would be "to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality." But it is Obama's pastor ("former" pastor, he is so quick to point out now, though he is a two-decade-long mentor) who holds a warped view of reality. And it is Obama who distorts the truth by likening this Ward Churchill of the United Church of Christ to an avuncular, yet lovable, family member who cannot easily be renounced: "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." Glad to know something made Obama cringe. Even as he denied that he was justifying and excusing Wright's demagoguery, Obama was doing just that by invoking slavery, Jim Crow, segregated schools, violence in the inner city and, yes, denial of access to FHA mortgages, to explain how we get to Wright spewing "God damn America" on Sunday morning. "These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love," Obama declared rather stiffly as he stood self-consciously in front of more American flags that he has ever been placed in front of this campaign season. Well, you can't pick your grandma, but you can pick your pastor. And Obama picked the wrong one if he aspires to be the president of all
The Speech That Revealed So Much Posted by Bobby Eberle http://www.gopusa.com/theloft/?p=676 It was touted as a "major" speech. Facing criticism over anti-American hate speech from his pastor of twenty years, Barack Obama was forced to the podium to address the comments of Jeremiah Wright. Obama has built his campaign around a message of "coming together" and "moving beyond race." However, his speech did nothing to show that he, the candidate of change, has done any moving at all. In fact, despite specific words in which he denounced some of Wright's comments, the overall message of his speech was that Wright's comments were OK and that we just need to "understand" why he made them. Sorry Barack... you had your chance to move "beyond race," and you blew it. On many occasions, I have written about race in Obama's pastor has taken to the pulpit on many occasions and delivered, not a Christian message of "love thy neighbor," but a militant political message of hate. By now, you have likely seen the videos or read the transcripts. Comments such as "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lies." and others such as "We nuked far more than the thousands in However, what did Obama say about them in Tuesday's "major" speech? First, he made the following comments regarding Rev. Wright, a person Obama now refers to as his "former pastor": 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. Obama then added, "I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy." Rather than strongly come out in his "major" speech and draw a clear line in the sand between himself and Rev. Wright, Obama draped his denunciation around the comments made by others in an attempt to make the Wright comments on par with other statements of race. Nice try, but you failed Senator. Someone's (Geraldine Ferraro) personal comments on whether race had anything to do with your rapid rise in politics is completely different than a pastor's anti-American, anti-white, anti-Jewish, non-Christian rants at the pulpit. Obama should have nothing to do with this person, but he is so political that he is not willing to risk his "ghetto" credentials to say what's right. Instead of saying that he will not be associated with a church or person who promotes such anti-American views, Obama spent most of the speech trying to defend Rev. Wright. He mentioned all the good things that Wright has done. He then went on to say: 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. Those are the comments that really made ME cringe. Those statements and others in his speech were not only offensive to me, but were so purely political. Time after time he tried to equate Wright to someone else or to someone else's actions to lessen the effect or to diminish the significance. Wright's comments needed to be addressed for what they are, but instead, Obama embraced Wright as a symbol of the "black community." In addition, equating Wright's comments delivered to a modern-day audience with those of his 86-year-old grandmother is insulting. His grandmother came from a different era and was not at the pulpit or on video delivering hate speech. Obama goes on to explain the historical injustices perpetrated against blacks. He then adds: This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. ... This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them. Obama then said, "In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community." He goes on to give examples, but this is where his failure is complete. Yes, each racial culture in What did Obama do regarding Wright? Well, Obama "can no more disown him" than he can "disown the black community." Wright may have grown up during racially charged times in Yet, we must "come together" and work for a color-blind society. We would be a better One final note... The really frustrating part of the speech, other than the words themselves, was some of the analysis that followed. All of the analysts on FOX News seemed to be like deer caught in the headlights of a "racial police" Hummer. They seemed afraid to say anything that could be perceived as offensive. HELLO!!!! The speech was so blatantly political and so easy to dissect and yet they let it pass. Obama made excuses for Wright and continued to play the race card. Yet he got a pass. That is pathetic.
Obama's By Brent Bozell III It's Damage Control Time for the liberal press. Count New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof as one in the media masses who have been outraged, just outraged, at the supposed conservative bigotry against Barack Obama. This "most monstrous bigotry" isn't just about race but also religion. Stating his middle name and whispering on the Internet that he's a Muslim "are the religious equivalent of racial slurs." Kristof concluded his March 9 column by quoting Martin Luther: "I'd rather be ruled by a wise Turk than a foolish Christian." Through months of outrage over Obama the Supposed Muslim, reporters have largely ignored the church Obama attends in Then there is Obama's minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who in 2007 offered the "Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award" to a man who "truly epitomized greatness," anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam. Is Nicholas Kristof wanting us to believe that offering awards to Farrakhan is simply the act of a "foolish Christian"? It gives an entirely new meaning to Kristof's headline, "Obama and the Bigots." Now some very disturbing Jeremiah Wright sermons are bubbling up, sermons where he screams until he's hoarse against Five days after 9/11, Rev. Wright was condemning Are we to believe that on the first Sunday after 9/11 -- when many Americans crowded into churches looking to mourn, looking for answers, looking for community -- that Barack Obama decided to skip church? ABC's Brian Ross found these words and then noted Obama has professed, "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial." He said Rev. Wright "is like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with," telling a Jewish group that everyone has someone like that in their family. How in the world can the same media that roundly condemned George W. Bush in 2000 because he "stood uncritically" at Once these statements hit the airwaves, Obama repudiated them but then suggested that those mean-spirited conservatives were at it again. "I noticed over the last several weeks that the forces of division have started to raise their ugly heads again," Obama declared. But the "forces of division" were right there within his campaign -- until Obama expelled his minister from his African American religious leadership team. Barack Obama looks phony either way. Either he missed all of these sermons, meaning his "devout Christian" talk on CBS doesn't match his church attendance record, or he sincerely thinks that hateful, race-baiting, America-bashing sermons are part of a pleasant Sunday worship experience. The press has an obligation to pursue this. If Obama really meant any of this rhetoric about healing racial divisions -- in any of his speeches over many months of campaigning -- he would have quit his hate-spewing minister and his
The Problem With Obama's -- Not Wright's -- Vision By Terence Jeffrey The greatest barrier to Barack Obama becoming a leader who truly advances the cause of justice is not found in the racially polarizing and unpatriotic comments of his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but in Obama's own vision of civil rights, which cannot be reconciled with the vision Martin Luther King Jr. used to achieve victory for the civil rights movement. King's vision was as simple as it was unifying: An unjust law is a law that is not consistent with the natural law and the law of God. The question King put to Americans was: Is racial discrimination consistent with the natural law and the law of God? The question had only one answer: No. The reason Americans answered correctly is perhaps best explained by Whether they like it or not, human beings know the basic rules of right and wrong. Great leaders -- like Martin Luther King Jr. -- achieve positive change by forcing people to confront injustice and appealing to what is already written in their hearts to remedy that injustice. Obama cannot unabashedly embrace this simple vision for a simple reason: He advocates policies that not only violate the natural law, but do so egregiously because they especially victimize children, who because of their vulnerability especially deserve society's protection. These policies are legalized abortion, which allows unborn children to be killed, and granting same-sex unions the same legal status as marriage, including the "right" to adopt children, which results in children being denied either a mother or a father by the deliberate policy of the state. Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision derived its political force from at least three factors: It was rooted in a moral tradition that transcends denominational divisions, it was exactly the same vision articulated in the Declaration of Independence, and it was true. King, an African American Baptist clergyman, explained his vision in the Letter from Birmingham Jail, where he referenced not only the Declaration of Independence, which was drafted by a Deist, but also the writings of two Catholic saints, one of whom died in 430, the other in 1274. "I would agree with This is precisely what the Founding Fathers were saying when they cited "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" and insisted that all men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." Before the sayings of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright created a national controversy last week, Obama had tipped his hand on where he stood relevant to the Founders' and King's vision of justice. At a Sunday morning event in He implicitly conceded there is something wrong with abortion, which he said has "a real moral element." But, he concluded, "in the end I think women, in consultation with their pastors, and their doctors, and their family, are in a better position to make these decisions than some bureaucrat in That is like saying segregation had a "real moral element" but in end should have been left up to states, local communities and businesses. On Feb. 28, Obama released an open letter to the "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender" community. "I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act," he said. That would mean states would not be protected from having to recognize same-sex marriages codified in "As your president," he said, "I will use the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws." The people who would be bullied by this policy are children who would be thrown -- by edict of the government -- into same-sex unions in which nature itself would never have placed them. No matter how persistently Obama invokes the rhetoric of national unity and reconciliation, the heart of the country will rebel against the very real consequence that his policies will harm the most vulnerable Americans of all.
Guilting By Kathleen Parker Barack Obama is a magician. He could tell me it's raining on a sunny day, and I'd grab an umbrella. He could tell me the moon is the sun, and I'd reach for my shades. He could even tell me that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's rants god-damning Obama's speech Tuesday from In a flourish of brilliance, Obama framed his Rev. Wright problem in the context of Which isn't completely false, of course, but not completely true, either. Ever conscious of his pledge to unity, Obama acknowledged as much, saying that Wright wasn't wrong to talk about racism -- even if it was one-sided. He was wrong to speak "as if our society was static: as if no progress has been made." But what he didn't acknowledge is that Wright is completely off-the-wall, even if the snippets we've seen are only a fraction of his life's work. Give Wright credit for helping the unfortunate and for leading Obama to his faith. But those accomplishments don't quite neutralize the anti-white message of the man Obama selected as his spiritual mentor. Like the best politicians, Obama senses our restlessness. One of his many gifts is his ability to lull people with flawless logic and uplifting rhetoric. Of course he disagrees with some of Wright's controversial statements -- just as most people disagree with some of what their pastors and rabbis say. We're yum-yumming that idea, thinking "Yeah, that's right," when our inner reality-checker kicks in and kills the buzz. Then we remember that advancing lies and conspiracy theories that pit black against white is not, in fact, defensible. And that what many find offensive in Wright's statements is not comparable to the minor differences they likely have with their own pastors and rabbis. The question still remains: Why did Obama, future author of racial harmony, stay with a preacher whose black nationalist leanings were no secret? Obama said he could no more denounce Wright, who is "like family," than he could denounce the black community -- or his white grandmother. Instead, he praised Wright's larger presence and purpose in the black community as outweighing the YouTube replays of a profane man on the verge of paranoiac hysteria. Moreover, the minister whom Obama first got to know 20 years ago spoke of "our obligations to love one another." But given Wright's racist eruptions, white Americans are justified in wondering whether those charitable thoughts also apply to them. Finally, Obama suggested that if Wright is occasionally angry, he has a right to be, as does the community he serves. And if white Americans are startled to witness that anger, they haven't been paying attention. That was a risky message, but one that counted on a reliable well of white guilt. Then Obama took another pre-emptive gamble and implored Americans to look at Wright's anger, rather than avert their gaze, and to embrace that anger as a prompt to change. In other words, he artfully shifted focus from his still-perplexing relationship with Wright to our own dark hearts. The choice is ours, he said: We can focus on one ol' crazy uncle who sometimes gets a little carried away -- and in so doing, destroy the audacity of hope -- or, we can keep our nation's date with destiny, fulfill the dream imagined 221 years ago to form a more perfect union -- and elect Barack Obama. Anyone who fails to embrace the only appealing option -- eschewing cheap spectacle for a dance with destiny to the tune of hope -- begins to feel a little woozy and, oddly, un-American. Abracadabra.
The Barack Obama Double Standard Imagine in 1999, that a videotape had come to light showing the pastor of Texas Gov. George W. Bush's church making vicious, hateful comments about Suppose this preacher had given a lifetime achievement award to former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and had traveled to Now try to envision that the candidate's family had attended this church for more than twenty years, that George and Laura Bush had been married there, by this pastor, and that the Bush daughters had been baptized by him. Picture George Bush titling his autobiography after a phrase in one of this minister's sermons, writing that the man was his mentor, and then putting him on the presidential campaign staff as a trusted advisor and confidant. Say it came to light that for several years George W. Bush had been friends with Eric Rudolph, the notorious Olympic Park bomber and anti-abortion terrorist. Furthermore, let's suppose that Bush had remained friends with Rudolph over the years and still considered him a colleague today. Now imagine Laura Bush, on the campaign trail for her husband, telling supporters and the national media that Is there a doubt that Republican officeholders would have run from the Bush campaign like rats from a burning barn, that he would have become the political leper of the 2000 campaign? And what about the media? They virtually crucified candidate Bush that year for daring to give a speech at And yet excuses are made for Barack Obama, who now finds himself in exactly this situation. Obama's pastor of more than two decades - the man who married Barack and Michelle Obama, who christened their daughters, who inspired the title of the candidate's book, "The Audacity of Hope," - is now at the center of a storm that would have destroyed the candidacy of any Republican the day the story broke. Rev. Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for the last 36 years, has been caught on tape denouncing the United States and the white race in terms that should shock and disgust every thinking American. Wright and the church swear allegiance to the "mother country" - Rather than trying to infuse his congregation with hope and encouragement, Wright poisons them with vitriol about how the "Don't say God bless Wright, representing the church, bestowed a lifetime achievement award on Louis Farrakhan, the racist leader of the Nation of Islam. In the 1980s, Wright traveled to If Barack Obama has not been paying attention in church, it is apparent that his wife, Michelle, has. Campaigning for her husband recently, she said that for the first time in her adult life, she is finally proud of her country. In a separate speech, she said Obama is friends with William Ayers, an admitted domestic terrorist with the Weather Underground, which declared war on the Now a tenured professor at the We are judged not just by our words, but by the company we keep. The litmus test should not be whether or not everyone a candidate knows is ideal. That is an impossible standard. The true measure of a man is in his ability to choose friends with which he can be proud to stand shoulder to shoulder, not those about whom he must equivocate and for whom he must apologize. Obama's Communist By Cliff Kincaid In his biography of Barack Obama, David Mendell writes about Obama's life as a "secret smoker" and how he "went to great lengths to conceal the habit" -- but what about Obama's secret political life? It turns out that Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a communist. In his books, Obama admits attending "socialist conferences" and coming into contact with Marxist literature. But he ridicules the charge of being a "hard-core academic Marxist," which was made by his colorful and outspoken 2004 U.S. Senate opponent, Republican Alan Keyes. However, through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in The reason is apparent: Trevor Loudon, (web site) a New Zealand-based libertarian activist, researcher and blogger, noted evidence that "Frank" was Frank Marshall Davis in a posting (web site) in March of 2007.
Obama's communist connection adds to mounting public concern about a candidate who has come out of virtually nowhere, with a brief U.S. Senate legislative record, to become the Democratic Party frontrunner for the
AIM recently disclosed (web site) that Obama has well-documented socialist connections, which help explain why he sponsored a "Global Poverty Act" (web site) designed to send hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. foreign aid to the rest of the world, in order to meet U.N. demands. The bill has passed the House and a Senate committee, and awaits full Senate action.
But the Communist Party connection through You won't find any of this discussed in the David Mendell book, Obama: From Promise to Power. It is typical of the superficial biographies of Obama now on the market. Secret smoking seems to be Obama's most controversial activity. At best, Mendell and the liberal media describe Obama as "left-leaning." But you will find it briefly discussed, sort of, in Obama's own book, Dreams From My Father. He writes about "a poet named Frank," who visited them in This "Frank" is none other than Frank Marshall Davis, the black communist writer now considered by some to be in the same category of prominence as Maya Angelou and Alice Walker. In the summer/fall 2003 issue (web site) of African American Review, James A. Miller of George Washington University reviews a book by John Edgar Tidwell, a professor at the University of Kansas, about Davis's career, and notes, "In Davis's case, his political commitments led him to join the American Communist Party during the middle of World War II - even though he never publicly admitted his Party membership." Tidwell is an expert on the life and writings of Is it possible that Obama did not know who The communists knew who "Frank" was, and they know who Obama is. In fact, one academic who travels in communist circles understands the significance of the Davis-Obama relationship.
Professor Gerald Horne, a contributing editor of the Communist Party journal Political Affairs, talked about it during a speech last March at the reception of the Communist Party USA archives at the Tamiment Library at
Horne, a history professor at the As Horne describes it, It was in Chicago that Obama became a "community organizer" and came into contact with more far-left political forces, including the Democratic Socialists of America, which maintains close ties to European socialist groups and parties through the Socialist International (SI), and two former members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), William Ayers and Carl Davidson. The SDS laid siege to college campuses across Both communism and socialism trace their roots to Karl Marx, co-author of the Communist Manifesto, who endorsed the first meeting of the Socialist International, then called the "First International." According to Pierre Mauroy, president of the SI from 1992-1996, "It was he [Marx] who formally launched it, gave the inaugural address and devised its structure..."
Apparently unaware that
In addition to Tidwell's book, Black Moods: Collected Poems of Frank Marshall Davis, confirming Davis's Communist Party membership, another book, The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946, names Davis as one of several black poets who continued to publish in CPUSA-supported publications after the 1939 Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact. The author, James Edward Smethurst, associate professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, says that Davis, however, would later claim that he was "deeply troubled" by the pact. While blacks such as Richard Wright left the CPUSA, it is not clear if or when However, Obama writes in Dreams from My Father that he saw "Frank" only a few days before he left For his part, Horne says that Obama's giving of credit to Dr. Kathryn Takara, a professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at the In an analysis (web site) posted online, she notes that Davis, who was a columnist for the Honolulu Record, brought "an acute sense of race relations and class struggle throughout America and the world" and that he openly discussed subjects such as American imperialism, colonialism and exploitation. She described him as a "socialist realist" who attacked the work of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Takara says that Is "coalition politics" at work in Obama's rise to power? Trevor Loudon, the New Zealand-based blogger who has been analyzing the political forces behind Obama and specializes in studying the impact of Marxist and leftist political organizations, notes that Frank Chapman, a CPUSA supporter, has written a letter to the party newspaper hailing the Illinois senator's victory in the Iowa caucuses. "Obama's victory was more than a progressive move; it was a dialectical leap ushering in a qualitatively new era of struggle," Chapman wrote. (web site) "Marx once compared revolutionary struggle with the work of the mole, who sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves no trace of his movement on the surface. This is the old revolutionary 'mole,' not only showing his traces on the surface but also breaking through." Let's challenge the liberal media to report on this. Will they have the honesty and integrity to do so?
For more information, see: Marxism, Fascism, Nazism explained and compared http://www.cesj.org/thirdway/comparison3rdway.htm http://www.cesj.org/thirdway/almostcapitalist.htm http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27/075.html http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/Slouch_Alternatives12.html The difference between a Democracy and a Republic http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Barracks/1646/demvsrep.html Republic? Democracy? What's the Difference? http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3388 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1276845/posts http://www.devvy.com/pdf/larosa/larosa_democracy_or_republic.pdf A Republic, Not a Democracy http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2000/tst121200.htm Sorry, Mr. Franklin, “We’re All Democrats Now” http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2003/cr012903.htm Democracy Is Not Freedom http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul233.html http://www.ronpaul2008.com/articles/161/what-does-freedom-really-mean/ http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_jefferson.html If We Subsidize Them... The Coming Econmic Collapse of by Ron Paul For decades we have welcomed new immigrants to our American "melting pot". We respect those who come here peacefully to pursue their American Dream. But Americans have noticed lately that modern problems associated with illegal immigration are at a crisis point. Taxpayers are now suffering the consequences. Costs of social services for the estimated 21 million illegal immigrants in this country are approaching $400 billion. We educate 4.2 million children of illegals at a cost of $13.8 billion. There have been almost 2 million anchor babies born in this country since 2002, with labor and delivery costs of between $3 and 6 billion. There are currently 360,000 illegals in our prisons and we have spent $1.4 billion to incarcerate them since 2001. In One thing is certain: If we subsidize them, they will come. We have rolled out the social services red carpet, so it is no surprise that many from other countries are eager to come take advantage of our very generous system. We must return to the American principle of personal responsibility. We must expect those who come here to take care of themselves and respect our laws. Not only is this the right thing to do for our overtaxed citizens, but we simply have no choice. We can't afford these policies anymore. Since we are $60 trillion in debt, there should be no taxpayer-paid benefits for non-citizens. My bill, the Social Security for American Citizens Only Act, stops non-citizens from collecting Social Security Benefits. This bill, by the way, picked up three new cosponsors this week and is gaining momentum. Also, we should not be awarding automatic citizenship to children born here minutes after their mothers illegally cross the border. It just doesn't make sense. The practice of birthright citizenship is an aberration of the original intent of the 14th amendment, the purpose of which was never to allow lawbreakers to bleed taxpayers of welfare benefits. I have introduced HJ Res 46 to address this loophole. Other Western countries such as Illegal immigration is draining and frustrating the American taxpayer. I will continue to work for a solution that does not reward those who break our laws. Michelle Obama's By Michelle Malkin Like Michelle Obama, I am a "woman of color." Like Michelle Obama, I am a working mother of two young children. Like Michelle Obama, I am a member of the 13th generation of Americans born since the founding of our great nation. Unlike Michelle Obama, I can't keep track of the number of times I've been proud -- really proud -- of my country since I was born and privileged to live in it. At a speech in Mrs. Obama's statement was met with warm applause from other Barack supporters who have apparently also been devoid of pride in their country for their adult lifetimes. Or maybe it was just a Pavlovian response to the word "change." What a sad, empty, narcissistic, ungrateful, unthinking lot. I'm just seven years younger than Mrs. Obama. We've grown up and lived in the same era. And yet, her self-absorbed attitude is completely foreign to me. What planet is she living on? Since when was now the only time the American people have ever been "hungry for change"? Michelle, ma belle, Barack is not the center of the universe. Newsflash: The Obamas did not invent "change" any more than Hillary invented "leadership" or John McCain invented "straight talk." We were both adults when the Berlin Wall fell, Michelle. That was earth-shattering change. We've lived through two decades' worth of peaceful, if contentious election cycles under the rule of law, which have brought about "change" and upheaval, both good and bad. We were adults through several launches of the space shuttle, in case you were snoozing. And as adults, we've witnessed and benefited from dizzyingly rapid advances in technology, communications, science and medicine pioneered by American entrepreneurs who yearned to change the world and succeeded. You want "change"? Go ask the patients whose lives have been improved and extended by American pharmaceutical companies that have flourished under the best economic system in the world. If American ingenuity, a robust constitutional republic and the fall of communism don't do it for you, hon, then how about American heroism and sacrifice? How about every Memorial Day? Every Veterans Day? Every Independence Day? Every Medal of Honor ceremony? Has she never attended a welcome home ceremony for the troops? For me, there's the thrill of the Blue Angels roaring over cloudless skies. And the somber awe felt amid the hallowed waters that surround the sunken U.S.S. Arizona at the Every naturalization ceremony I've att |