Posted by
toady on Monday, April 14, 2008 7:11:01 AM
Chasby,
First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.
Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.
Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans.
P. Buchanon
You know it is amazing. Buchanon looks at the history of Blacks in America and he doesn't see anything wrong. We took 600,000 blacks and turned them into 40 million freedom loving Christians. It's all good. Wright looks at America and sees nothing good… Stuck in 1955. Both are wrong. Obama said that explicitly. Wright is wrong to see America as not changing… that doesn't mean it's all good. America has not been the best country on earth for black folks… but that doesn't mean that America is essentially an immoral nation.
America once believed in a genocidal manifest destiny. We killed Indians as if they were so many buffalo. We went to war with Mexico because American blood was shed on American soil. Except that American soil was fifty miles south of the Mexican border. That doesn't mean that the creation of empire in north America was evil. We escalated a war in Vietnam because of a lie. We went to war in Iraq because of non-existent WMD. That doesn't mean that America is the root of all that is bad in the world.
History is what it is. America is what it is. My country love it or leave it is not true patriotism. My country right or wrong is not true patriotism. It is important to speak the truth.
Rev Wright preached a sermon every week for 20 years. Each sermon may have had 100 sentences. 52 weeks per year. 20 years. How many sentences has he preached and how many sentences have you heard. It doesn't count that you have heard the same sentence 50 times… like the Dean scream. You have heard maybe five sentences… over and over and over and over again until it sounds like all 20,000 sentences. But it isn't.
The sentences you have heard are evil, like the slavery was evil, like jim crow was evil, like calling a black man 2/3 human is evil. But like all of that it isn't the whole story or even the most important part of the story. Those five sentences may not be be truth, but truth is spoken in that church.
Certainly Wright is angry. He was born in the same year as Emmit Till. He saw the Freedom Riders. He saw the strange fruit. He saw innocent black men get convicted and executed while guilty white men laughed with the rigged juries. He is angry and that anger is sin. This is not an excuse, but a description. I don't offer excuses for him any more than you would offer excuses for Jimmy Swaggart who still preaches today. It is wrong for a sinner to be the head of a church, but of course he is not the only one. What has he done? Has he molested a child? Paid for prostitutes? Is he a homosexual who preaches hate for homosexuals from his pulpit. Used the churches money to live a luxurious life style? Taken drugs?
He has uttered a sentence: God damn America. He has called America The US of KKKA. He has raged against his country. And for republicans this is the ultimate sin… the ultimate stain… More serious than any of the sins of other preachers. This stain cannot be exaggerated, it cannot be cleaned. This sin cannot be forgiven. This sin is contagious. It spreads. These five sentences are all that you need to know about the man. A man who utters these sentences is evil. He is a racist. He hates. He hates whites. He hates America. Any charitable work shrinks in insignificance to this stain. This stain is on an entire church. The stain is on any person who hears the words and does not recoil. This stain is on anyone who feels affection for Rev Wright. This stain goes to the heart of all black churches, makes them similar to madrassas which teach and preach hatred. This stain… these five sentences are all that is needed to make a man and a candidate radioactive. Association with this stain makes a man unfit to hold public office.
The reaction of republicans is politics at its worst. The reaction of republicans is worse than the offense of Wright. Remember what Ruffini said on Hugh Hewitt's blog?
If they go further with this civility routine, they risk alienating conservatives in talk radio and the blogosphere who are doing the necessary work of defining Obama and rendering him just as radioactive with the base as Hillary…..
The challenge in modern Presidential campaign is not simply to paint your opponent as wrong on the issues, and to prevail in a civil debate. It is to render the opponent unacceptable to 48% of the electorate, and merely less preferable to 3%.
In this pursuit truth is irrelevant. Educating the public is irrelevant. Bringing the country together is undesired. Just get an extra 1% and the rest of the country be damned… oh that's what Wright said isn't it….
Well, I haven't said it all and I haven't said it well enough, but what I have read and what I have heard from the right is wrong and it is sin. They resurrect the past as if it is the present and fasely judge the whole by a part. The people who categorically condemn Wright and his church ironically make the EXACT same mistake that Wright made. They are guilty of EXACTLY the same sin.