Lest there be any confusion, my post yesterday was written before Barack Obama's speech on race. I have now read the speech and now have comments to add. First, there is plenty of other commentary out there. I find Victor Davis Hanson, Ross Douthat, Jay Cost, and Rod Dreher the most insightful. All but Hanson are impressed by the speech and, whatever their disagreements, think it will be a political success. I also think it will prove a political success, although I find the content deeply troubling.
To the speech. Obama starts with a passage that is both historically inaccurate and theoretically disturbing:
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
It's unfortunate that a former Harvard professor of constitutional law doesn't know that the Constitutional Convention started in spring 1787 and ended in September, but that is a relatively small matter. More importantly and disturbingly Obama rejects the Declaration of Independence as the foundation of the American regime. Obama calls the Constitution the "real...declaration of independence." I have written previously about the central ideas of progressivism, and Obama exhibits two of them here. First he rejects the Declaration and, by implication, a foundation based in nature. Second, as the rest of the speech's text demonstrates, Obama identifies with a "living constitution," one that changes with the times and rejects any notion of limited government. Citing the Constitution, though, allows Obama to rhetorically couch his progressive policies in the founding even as he rejects the founding principles.
Obama's discussion of his long association with the racist church of Jeremiah Wright is clever, effective, powerful, and unconvincing. Again, while Obama goes to some lengths to explain (or explain away) Wright's hatred, he doesn't tell us why Obama, who purports to be the "post-racial" candidate, has chosen to associate himself with a church steeped in Marxism and racial identity. If we are to move beyond the divisiveness of Rev. Wright (and note how Obama suggests that being divisive is worse than being wrong), should we not avoid teaching our children hate and resentment wrapped in the authority of God? But this Barack Obama has chosen to do.
Obama engages in sleight of hand. He equates that which is not equal. He equates his grandmother's private anxiety over race and occasional use of racial slurs to Jeremiah Wright's long public career of encouraging his congregates to view the world in racial terms and stoking their racial animosities and resentments. He equates Geraldine Ferarro's recent comments about Obama with Jeremiah Wright's listing of white people as his enemies and preaching that we live in the "U.S. of KKKA." He equates Wright's theology of racism with white people's worries about crime and schools. Obama claims he is not excusing his pastor, but rhetorically he is by making Wright's racism just another racial anxiety people might understandably feel. Obama states, "We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro...." But there is a key difference: Reverend Wright is a crank and a demagogue while Geraldine Ferraro is not. But Obama would prefer you not notice that.
Obama chastises those who play upon our racial doubts and fears for political gain. He then concludes his address by playing upon people's class based doubts and fears for political gain. Obama's world is not that much different from the racial demagogue's, it's just that the "they" are not any specific race, they are greedy corporatists and the "special interests." He still appeals to resentments, worries, and anger, all directed at a diabolical and vague "they."
Barack Obama is, in Stanley Kurtz's phrase, the appealing face of American radicalism. One can not deny the impressive tapestry his words weave, casting a kind of a spell over the audience. Hidden in the text is a powerful critique of the American founding and effective appeals to class envy. But his phrases are so poetic that one hardly hears the radicalism behind it. I suggested the other day that Obama might get away with his radicalism and his close association with overt racists. If the reaction to his speech yesterday is any indication, he has.
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