Various pieces worth reading on the Barack Obama speech on race. See Mickey Kaus on the various troublesome equivalences in Obama's presentation.
Rod Dreher considers the relationship between hate and sin and looks to the hate in his own heart. Loving one's enemies is one of the hardest of Christ's commandments. Meanwhile, Julie Lyons, aka Bible Girl, places Jeremiah Wright within a tradition of black churches and ministers and finds him sorely lacking. She also guides us to the troublesome task of loving those who oppress us. She concludes:
I do wonder who [Wright is] preaching to. It seems like he’s directing his inflammatory statements to whites, but in one of the widely viewed YouTube clips it’s clear that his congregation is almost entirely black. His words, then, do nothing to prick the consciences of the “rich white men” he rails against. So what is the point? To provoke a few amens, to get some of his members to slap him on the back with a hanky?
The Reverend Wright’s problem isn’t hate. He, like so many members of his Christian generation, black as well as white, suffers from something much more mundane: a failure to love.
Over at No Left Turns, David Tucker has largely positive things to say about Obama's speech. Lucas Morel also praises Obama but concludes with a warning:
As far as I can make out, the Democrats believe the American union is not the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, as Obama preaches in true e pluribus unum fashion, but merely a coalition of supplicant interests beholden to a national government. The notion of a common good that Democrats tout is less about the prosperity of a free, industrious, and self-governing people and more about a common condition of want, desperation, and disability. Does Obama recognize that the self-help gospel practiced by Obama and preached by the Rev. Wright would be undermined by the very policies he, as a Democrat, recommends?
This comment is on the heals of a reference to Lincoln and the notion that equality, as expressed and defined in the Declaration of Independence, is the "central idea" of the republic. As I stated yesterday, Obama differs from Lincoln in that Obama places "toward a more perfect union" as the central idea, making the Constitutional Convention the founding moment, not the Declaration.
This is in stark contrast to Lincoln. In Lincoln's famous "apple of gold" metaphor, the Constitution enhances the Declaration, but does not supplant the Declaration as the central document or equality as the central idea.
The assertion of that principle, at that time, was the word, "fitly spoken" which has proved an "apple of gold" to us. The Union, and the Constitution, are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it. The picture was made, not to conceal, or destroy the apple; but to adorn, and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple—not the apple for the picture.
Obama confuses the picture of silver for the apple of gold. I argue that he does so because he does not want to be limited by nature. We wants only legalistic limits on his project to renew America, and then he will reinterpret the law (i.e., the Constitution) to mean whatever he wants it to mean. Indeed, the Constitution itself must be read in light of the preamble's call for a "more perfect union." If a thing leads to a more perfect union, it should be adopted without any obstacles. Obama's nationalism would make Alexander Hamilton blush.
Recent Comments