[quote]Big_Boss wrote:
This is politics? Thanks for the heads up. And what if they did know about him? Like you said…this is politics.
What you state above is true…but it still doesn’t allude to argument and FACTS of Rev.Wright being racist…and Obama being racist…as you are presenting them to be.[/quote]
Yes, this is politics. As such, the candidates are asking us to vote for them based on… what, exactly? I’d say the case for voting for or against any candidate comes down to how you’d expect him to govern - the policies he would support. And given you’re trusting a politician about his future actions, and given that the candidates have every incentive to tone down anything controversial in their belief systems in terms of how they present themselves to the voters.
For most presidential candidates, this means you look back at their positions over a relatively long political career and deduce how they’ve governed. However, Barack Obama has a meager record - and since (at least) late 2004, he has also been thinking in a mindset that he would be a presidential candidate (thus the incentive, again, to downplay anything controversial and put forth only poll-tested positions).
So, you look at his background and see what else you can find. You come to Jeremiah Wright, whom Obama has claimed as a mentor and an influence on his thinking on political and moral issues (and many moral issues are also political issues).
The fact is Jeremiah Wright is a self-proclaimed adherent of Black Liberation Theology. The fact is that Jeremiah Wright and his congregation lauded and celebrated Louis Farrakhan many times over. See my multiple-link post one page previously for further information on the underlying theology of both pastor and church.
And the fact is that Barack Obama, based on his own criteria that he hasn’t shared, chose this pastor and this church 20+ years ago, then chose to stay with the church and develop a mentee relationship with Rev. Wright, all the while further immersing himself in the church and its beliefs.
Then, you have the fact of Obama’s weaselly explanation of what he knew about Wright’s views when this first bubbled up with the ABC news clips. This is what Obama said:
[i]In his Friday night cable mea culpas on the incendiary comments made by his spiritual adviser Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., repeatedly said, “I wasn’t in church during the time that these statement were made. I did not hear such incendiary language myself, personally. Either in conversations with him or when I was in the pew, he always preached the social gospel. … If I had heard them repeated, I would have quit. … If I thought that was the repeated tenor of the church, then I wouldn’t feel comfortable there.”
Obama told CNN that he “didn’t know about all these statements. I knew about one or two of these statements that had been made. One or two statements would not lead me to distance myself from either my church or my pastor. … If I had thought that was the tenor or tone on an ongoing basis, then yes, I don’t think it would have been reflective of my values.”[/i]
Translation: I never heard them personally - no one can prove I was in church when they were made - but of course, I knew about them and they were hardly out of character.
Of course, it’s obvious Obama was concerned about Wright because he disinvited him from speaking - at the last minute - at the announcement of his campaign: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/03/just-what-did-o.html
Then you make the inductive argument about just what Wright’s sermons would tend to be like on a weekly basis, which I’ll post again, with a paranthetical addition:
I’m concerned with the content of what he’s teaching. The entire content of his 40+ years of teachings are not available for review. However, one can make a pretty good inductive case that the passages that were found are not aberrations but rather representative of his general beliefs and body of work. 1) ABC News unearthed the passages from the limited sample of sermons that the church put up for sale (which was likely a sample of his most recent work, when it was cheaper to record and reproduce). 2) The church was the organization that chose the sermons it did put up for sale - so whoever culled the sermons either thought they were Wrights best and most representative, or simply pulled a random sample over a time period. In either case, that is probabilistic evidence it’s representative of his overall body of work. 3) The reaction of the church congregation to the objectionable claims was cheering, exclamations of agreement and positive - what it was not was surprised, or head-shaking about that crazy old uncle up there (which is a poor analogy in any case - more like a crazy father, given he’s the leader of the congregation, not some tertiary guy on the side). 4) The objectionable sections are part and parcel with Black Liberation Theology, which is the background of Wright’s theology - that this wouldn’t be the basis for his overall body of work is highly improbable.
I’ll also repeat my point about likelihood and what that does to the burden of proof here: As for Wright, you’re in the position of having to argue against the obvious conclusion: the man is one of the major known adherents and proponents of Black Liberation Theology ( Black theology - Wikipedia ), in his interview with Sean Hannity he was citing its progenitors as authors Hannity should have read to have understood him and his outbursts ( Fox News - Breaking News Updates | Latest News Headlines | Photos & News Videos ) and you want everyone to believe he didn’t use it as the basis of his sermons and teachings?
That’s for both the racism and the Marxism - such a pleasant combination of influences for a Presidential candidate.
See this again, for emphasis: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=c19d4d91-618e-40d3-a5d9-c07d7a87a5ba
Again, Barack claimed Wright as a mentor, as an influence, and used his sermons and ideas as the bases for his own speeches. To me, that’s disturbing.
ADDENDUM: And this is excellent - it’s actually about Barack and Ayers, but the principle applies much better to Barack and Wright (its author’s opinion to the contrary notwithstanding): Obama's Favorite Terrorists