Bitter and Armed?

‘It’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns, or religion, or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment, as a way to explain their frustrations.’

Thus quoted Barack Obama in San Francisco before a liberal audience of fat cats.  What was Obama thinking?  Did he not think white Americans in rural and small town Pennsylvania would be offended?  Is he so out of touch with middle American that he didn’t know when he was making an offensive remark?  Political Night Train believes Obama’s statement goes to his core beliefs and values, those beliefs and values that were formed in his early adulthood, and for 20 years reinforced by Jeremiah Wright.  Just as all liberals think they know what is best for everyone, so too, the true liberal knows, without asking why the rest of us think and act as we do.  If these words were spoken by a Republican about inner city blacks, there would have been hell to pay with the MSM.  Here’s how it would sound:  “It’s not surprising then that they get angry, that they turn to rap music and guns, or black liberation theology, or hatred toward people who aren’t black, or anti-government sentiment, or anti-education, as a way to explain their frustrations.”  Like how that sounds.  Many of Barack Obama’s statements, those that are uttered before liberals in mostly closed door sessions, sound like somewhat watered down statements from Jeremiah Wright.  Can’t you just hear Wright in a Trinity United Church of Christ sermon saying those same words as Obama, just with more hatred and racism.  No, Obama is not an elitist.  He is an extreme liberal, with a good measure of socialism rolled in, and influenced by 20 years of Jeremiah Wright’s brand of activism.  Yes, he has a smooth wrapper, and a politician’s style, but inside, he is most likely burning with some of Wright’s own values and beliefs.

Jim Wooten of the Atlanta Constitution had this to say about Barack Obama’s patriotism:

As a Southerner accustomed to a culture of God, guns and patriotism expressed as easily and comfortably as one’s preference for Fords or Chevrolets, I’m jarred by Barack Obama’s every attempt to explain his patriotism.

I don’t deny his patriotism.

I just don’t recognize his definitions.

In Wednesday night’s debate, he was asked a videotaped question by Nash McCabe of Latrobe, Pa. “I want to know if you believe in the American flag,” she asked. “I am not questioning your patriotism, but all our servicemen, policemen and EMS wear the flag. I want to know why you don’t.”

“I revere the American flag and I would not be running for president if I did not revere this country,” he said. In no other country, he continued, would “my story” even be possible. And then this, which is where the words begin to jar:

“What I’ve tried to do is to show my patriotism by how I treat veterans when I’m working in the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee; by making sure that I’m speaking forcefully about how we need to bring this war in Iraq to a close because I think it is not serving our national security well and it’s not serving our military families and our troops well; talking about how we need to restore a sense of economic fairness to this country because that’s what this country has always been about, is providing upward mobility and ladders to opportunity for all Americans. That’s what I love about this country. And so I will continue to fight for those issues.”

This is not patriotism — or at least any form of it I recognize. Substitute any interest group — organized labor, trial lawyers, bartenders, Teamsters or insurance agents — after the phrase “I’ve tried to show my (compassion, support, patriotism) by how I treat (name the interest group) in the Senate. …”

Political Night Train agrees with Wooten.  Obama does have a way of explaining his patriotism that does not quite fit the definition the rest of us use.  This is in keeping with those liberation theology values and beliefs Obama shares with Jeremiah Wright and James Cone. 

Obama – Basis for His Values & Beliefs, Part 2

The following article by Gerald Furry, Editor of Trumpet.Com is very compelling and provides additional insight into the beliefs and values of Senator Obama.  Much of what Furry writes about Obama’s early life has not been reported on in the media. The Barack Obama Tragedy—It’s Much Bigger Than RaceMarch 24, 2008 | From theTrumpet.com I think most people who listen to Barack Obama believe he is sincere. But sincere people can make serious mistakes. Barack was deserted by his father at the age of 2, when the family lived in Hawaii. It was 1963 when Barack’s father left his wife and son to attend Harvard. His education was more important to him than his family. But it should not have been. It was a sad turn in Barack’s young life. Barack’s mother soon remarried. She and Barack followed her husband, Lolo Soetoro, to Indonesia. But the second marriage also failed. Barack’s mom “always felt that marriage was not particularly essential or important,” according to her close friend Nina Nayar. Marriage and family were “not particularly essential or important” to either of Barack’s biological parents—or to his stepfather. That is the curse of all curses in this world! How much must we suffer before we understand and correct the problem? Here is what Janny Scott wrote in the New York Times, March 14: By 1974, Ms. Soetoro was back in Honolulu, a graduate student and raising Barack and Maya, nine years younger. Barack was on scholarship at a prestigious prep school, Punahou. When Ms. Soetoro decided to return to Indonesia three years later for her field work, Barack chose not to go. Barack’s mom, an anthropologist, decided that she had to return to Indonesia as a part of her work. Barack chose to stay with his white grandparents in Hawaii during his four years of high school. His mom chose her work over Barack. So in essence he was deserted again. Any child would be scarred by such parental treatment. Barack chose to stay in the United States, the most blessed country on Earth. Barack and his wife have received outstanding educational opportunities in the U.S. and prospered extremely well. You have to admire their ambition. But why would they be “like family” to such a “hate America” pastor as Jeremiah Wright? Mr. Obama never had a strong father figure to look up to for any length of time. And his mother had a distorted view of marital and family love. So it was natural for Barack to seek out a strong father figure in Pastor Wright—whom Barack said was “like family.” Here is what Glenn Beck said on his cnn broadcast, March 19: In the talking points page of the Trinity Church’s website, Reverend Wright, in his own words, states that the foundation of his beliefs are in systemized black liberation theology and praises James Cone’s book, Black Power and Black Theology. This is what James Cone, the man who Obama’s senior spiritual adviser looks up to and whose ideas he preaches, states as black liberation theology. Listen carefully and please follow along.

Quote, “Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill gods who do not belong to the black community. Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in black power which is the power of black people to destroy their opinion pressers here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.” This is one of the most anti-God, anti-Bible statements I have ever read! The God of the Bible is not about loving black people and hating white people. Christ died for the sins of all humanity. Any Christian should know that. And all humanity is going to be a part of God’s Family, in God’s time frame. Of course, those people who reject that Family will be excluded forever. The foundational crisis in America and Britain today is broken families. That is because the Bible gospel, or good news, is about the coming Family of God. The human family is the most sacred institution there is to prepare us for that almost unfathomable honor. (Request our free book on The Missing Dimension in Sex. It’s a book every person on Earth should read.) Here is what we need to be deeply concerned about. Roughly 65 percent of blacks are born out of wedlock. (That is true of about 45 percent of Hispanics and 25 percent of whites.) These are tragic fruits. Broken families produce more broken families. Usually these parents were deserted as babies by at least one of their own parents. Add to that all of the broken families we see in our society today—the kind that helps produce the above statistics. Who is going to educate those young people? And what will that education be like? It is a ticking time bomb about ready to explode—especially in American race relations! Barack Obama has shown us that precious young people can be educated by the wrong people—they often are. What these young people need are strong families with a deep love for all humanity. Everything in the Bible revolves around God’s loving Family. That is what the God Family is all about. Over a hundred prophecies in your Bible say we are going to see that God Family ruling in less than a generation. But who believes God in this evil generation? It’s our only hope. And it is more real than all the racial hatred you see in this world. There is no question that America committed a great sin against the black race by breaking up the black family. But at least America also abolished slavery and has shown some repentance. What other nation has ever even come close to doing that? Much of God’s love is expressed in forgiveness. That is at the heart of the biblical message. If we’re not going to obey the Bible, we should at least stop acting like we’re Christians. Remember, a Christian is one who follows Christ. But this whole world is deceived (Revelation 12:9). A great fallen angel is the god of this world—that means this world worships him (2 Corinthians 4:4). We still have a lot to learn today, and sadly it will be through some horrendous suffering. To paraphrase a biblical expression, we have sown the wind and we’re going to reap the whirlwind!

http://www.thetrumpet.com/print.php?q=4965.3230.0.0

 

More On Obama’s Liberation Theology Values and Beliefs

The following article at RepublicanAmerican http://www.rep-am.com provides great insight into how black liberation theology shaped Senator Obama’s values and beliefs.

Obama’s church espouses controversial doctrines By Margaret Talev | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Jesus is black. Merging Marxism with Christian Gospel may show the way to a better tomorrow. The white church in America is the Antichrist because it supported slavery and segregation.Those are some of the more provocative doctrines that animate the theology at the core of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Barack Obama’s church. 

Read the full article at http://www.rep-am.com/news/elections/326205.txt#blogcomments

President Obama’s Neoliberal Theocracy – A Must Read!!

Political Night Train believes gaining insight into Senator Obama’s values and beliefs is essential to the 2008 election.  Lee Cary’s article below provides what is probably the most insightful article to date on how Obama would govern, if elected.  This is also the basis for the theology of many black churches.  If Obama has done nothing else related to religion, he has given white American’s a peek inside black churches.  Most white Americans view the black church based on those scenes of James Brown and the Triple Rock in the movie “Blues Brothers”.

March 16, 2008

A President Obama’s Neoliberal Theocracy

By Lee CaryBarack Obama’s first vocational choice was to help people in a poor African-American community. Later, he joined a church founded on black liberation theology. This combination could result in an Obama presidency that embodies something new in American history — a Neoliberal Theocracy.  When we in the West hear the word theocracy, we think of mullahs, fatwas, and human pronouncements issued with the presumptuous authority of divine edicts.  But not all theocracies are so dictatorially dogmatic. They range from the theocratic-lite nature of the United Kingdom’s monarch as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, to the industrial-strength theocracy of Iran where the two top offices, Supreme Leader and head of the Guardian Council, are reserved for Shiite clergy. A new, softer-and-gentler American theocracy may be in our future.   What does “Neoliberal Theocracy” mean? In a Neoliberal Theocracy the principles of political liberalism that guide decisions of statecraft are aligned with beliefs thought to constitute a moral theology. In other words, the federal government, particularly the Executive Branch, acts in accordance with a defined, theological belief system. Neoliberal is to liberal as neoconservative is to conservative.  It represents the evolution of thinking that occurs when a stable ideological platform (contemporary political liberalism) is applied to new circumstances (Barack Obama’s deeply held theological belief system).  The social gospel of an Obama presidency could be traced back to the race-based class dialectic of the black liberation theology movement. That movement emerged as the theological wing of the broader Black Power movement of the late 1960’s – early 1970’s. Among a constellation of groups and personalities representing Black Power were: the 1968 Olympic Black Power salute; the Black Panthers; Malcolm X; Bobby Seale; the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (“snick”), etc.  Far and away the most important expression of Black Power was Dr. Martin Luther King’s historic leadership in the Civil Rights Movement. Black liberation theology forms the core identity of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ (UCC) – Obama’s home church for two decades.  Today, that congregation espouses a Black Value System.  It reflects the movement’s class dialectic that remains unabashedly race-based. The black values concept was first introduced by one of the founders of the black liberation theology movement, Dr. James H. Cone, in Black Theology & Black Power (© 1969, Harper & Row, 1969, p.127).  “To carve out a Black Theology based on black oppression will of necessity mean the creation of new values independent of and alien to the values of white society…They will be alien because white American ‘Christian’ values are based on racism.” While the media didn’t hesitate to probe the religious beliefs of Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, reporters have been reluctant, until recently, to inquire into Obama’s religious principles. Perhaps political correctness has made them hyper-sensitive to giving the appearance of delving into racial issues. Their hesitancy persists, even though Obama has used biblical literary devices in his speeches.  He has copied several of King’s speech patterns and oratorical motifs.  And, he juxtaposes his interpretation of Christianity to those of the religious right who, he claims, have “hijacked” the faith.  It’s as though he has invited religion questions from a media too timid to ask. When addressing a faith-based audience, Obama, quoting largely from his book The Audacity of Hope (p.202), lent an existential spiritual tone to his campaign.   “They [Americans] want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives.  They’re looking to relieve a chronic loneliness, a feeling supported by a recent study that shows Americans have fewer close friends and confidants than ever before. And so they need an assurance that somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them – that they are not just destined to travel down that long highway towards nothingness.”    Message: Obama, the helper, cares for those who hurt. In that same speech, quoting again from of his book (p. 207), Obama said, “I believed and still believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change…Because of its past, the black church understands in an intimate way the Biblical call to feed the hungry and cloth the naked and challenge powers and principalities. And in its historical struggles for freedom and the rights of man, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world. As a source of hope.”   Message: The black church truly understands the social gospel. The channel of Christianity that Obama entered at Trinity UCC gave a theological motive to his preexistent passion to be a helper. There he found a social gospel that, today, undergirds his advocacy for an activist federal government more aggressively involved in social programs, both foreign and domestic.    How would this represent a theocracy of any kind? In this way: His presidential social activism would be based on an economic-based class dialectic that is theologically grounded. In language conveying near messianic overtones, the authors of his primary campaign document, The Blueprint For Change, wrote, “He will help the world’s weakest states to build healthy and educated communities, reduce poverty…”   How might a Neoliberal Theocracy influence U.S. foreign relations?   Tyrants test adversaries they perceive as weak. Khrushchev interpreted Kennedy’s failure to provide American air assets at the Bay of Pigs as weakness, and tested him with missiles in Cuba. The November 26, 1979 cover of TIME magazine displayed a small photo of an unsmiling Jimmy Carter against the full page backdrop of a scowling Ayatollah Khomeini. The caption read: THE TEST OF WILLS.  Khomeini and Ronald Reagan won that test.  Our adversaries would test a President Obama if they perceived him as weak.  How? Imagine these ways: 

• A company-sized, elite unit of North Korean commandos infiltrates across the 38^th parallel, decimates a platoon-sized American unit, then hurries back across the border, taking their own casualties and a few captured U.S. soldiers with them.  Democrats in Congress ask: Why are we still in Korea anyway?  The U.S. protests the incursion to the U.N. Security Council. Then, as a condition of our gradual withdrawal from the Korean peninsula, the N. Koreans blandly apologize and blame the incident on a maverick military commander. Tensions between the two Koreas are eased in favor of N. Korean dominance as a formal end to the Korean War is negotiated.  
• Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez denies any involvement when several hundred lightly-armed students, shouting anti-American slogans, spontaneously invade the U.S. Embassy in Caracas and hold the occupants captive.  Obama and Chavez meet face-to-face in Havana to ease tensions.  Subsequent discussions designed to resolve the crisis are assigned to a three-party Crisis Resolution Commission that includes the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), since they claim involvement in the embassy take-over. Eventually, the future of the Organization of American States is called into question as Nicaragua, Ecuador, and a reluctant Bolivia begin talks to form a new regional alliance.
• Late one morning, several of the new U.S. Consulates that the Obama Administration had recently opened in Africa, fulfilling a specific campaign pledge, are targets of suspected Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah terrorists, leaving hundreds dead.  A few African nations immediately ask the U.S. to downscale its diplomatic presence in order to lessen the danger to their citizens.  Kenya demands an increase in American aid to better fend off the threat from Islamic insurgents. 

 If you discount these as fanciful and impossible, remember: The last president to flirt with conducting foreign policy from a theological perspective was Jimmy Carter.   Here’s the hub of matter.  In his speech to the Democrat convention in 2004, then Candidate for the U.S. Senate Barack Obama said, “It is that fundamental belief — I am my brother’s keep, I am my sister’s keeper — that makes this country work.” That’s not so. While that may express Obama’s theological worldview, and is an ageless, altruistic principle behind countless good works, it is not what makes this country work.  What makes this country work is the fundamental belief that we are born with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The two beliefs – keepers of each other and inalienable rights – live independent lives.  And that’s why we should be very wary of a Neoliberal Theocracy, or any theocracy for that matter.  

Want To Know More About Black Liberation Theology?

 Want a peek inside the black church?  It’s not that scene from “Blues Brothers” where Jake and Elwood visit the Triple Rock where James Brown is the preacher.  What to know what black ministers are really preaching to their flock?  Look no further than Jeremiah Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ.  If nothing else, Senator Obama has raised the curtain and let us see what goes for religious services in many black churchs, many but not all.  The following articles help shed light on what is known as Black Liberation Theology.  Political Night Train believes you should know more about the basis for Senator Obama’s values and beliefs and why he aligned himself with Jeremiah Wright and Trinity Church 20 years ago. March 19, 2008

The Real Agenda of Black Liberation Theology

By Jeffrey Schmidt

 The sad truth is that neither the Reverend Wright nor black liberation theology is being misunderstood.  Both, thanks to the candidacy of Barack Obama, are being exposed.  God, in fact, works in mysterious ways.  And unless it’s the aforementioned liberals and Democrats who are trying to hush up Wright, Moss and others of their ilk, sensible Americans want to hear more, for knowledge is power, the power to combat hate.    And make no mistake, what Americans are hearing, they don’t like. In the Rasmussen poll, 73% of voters find Wright’s comments to be racially divisive.  That’s a broad cross section of voters, including 58% of black voters.     

Read more at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/03/the_real_agenda_of_black_liber.html

 What did Obama know, and when did he know it? Brian Fitzpatrick – Guest Columnist – 3/19/2008 7:45:00 AM 

As reported in the March 22 edition of World Magazine, before it was cleansed of some materials, the Trinity U.C.C. website listed this statement by Wright:
 
“The vision statement of Trinity United Church of Christ is based upon the systematized liberation theology that started in 1969 with the publication of Dr. James Cone’s book Black Power and Black Theology.”
 
World continues: “Cone argued in his 1970 work, A Black Theology of Liberation, that ‘the goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods.'”

 Associations with pastors are voluntary and normally reflect a consonance in worldview. You choose a pastor precisely because you agree with his theology and you want to learn from him. You don’t sit under his teaching for nearly two decades, have him officiate at your wedding, have him baptize your children, call him your “mentor,” sing his praises in your first book, name your second book after one of his sermons, and support his church with tens of thousands of dollars if you don’t generally see eye to eye with him. 

Read more at http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=72267

 Reverend Jeremy Wright’s Theology Exposed

In a set of “talking points” on the Trinity United Church of Christ web site, Wright proclaims himself an exponent of “black liberation theology.” He cites James Cone, a distinguished professor at New York’s Union Theological Seminary, whom he credits for having “systematized” this strain of Christianity.

 Here is a quote from Cone, explaining black liberation theology:

“Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community. … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.”

 

Read more at http://www.agoravox.com/article.php3?id_article=7886

   

Shedding Light On Barack Obama’s Values & Beliefs In Liberation Theology

The following article sheds much light on the basis of Barack Obama’s core values and beliefs, which Political Night Train now believes are rooted in “Liberation Theology” and the writings of James Cone, a person who greatly influenced Jeremiah Wright.  If elected and allowed to govern, Barack Obama would govern not just from the liberal left, but from the “neoliberal” left, with a heavy dose of liberation theology thrown in.  The last time we had a President who tried to govern from a set of theological beliefs, we had four years of Jimmy Carter.   The gospel according to Cone revolves around a single dimension of the Christian faith and necessarily interprets the very nature of “oppression” as solely material and of this world.  In effect, black liberation theology reduces the entire Gospel down to a Marxist people’s struggle and hijacks the Christ for political purpose. “What else can the crucifixion mean except that God, the Holy One of Israel, became identified with the victims of oppression?  What else can the resurrection mean except that God’s victory in Christ is the poor person’s victory over poverty?”  (Speaking the Truth; p. 6) This certainly puts an altogether different light on the crucifixion than any to which I’ve ever been exposed. According to this theology, we are not individually saved by grace.  God hasn’t anything at all to do with salvation or sanctification. “…sanctification is liberation.  To be sanctified is to be liberated – that is, politically engaged in the struggle of freedom.  When sanctification is defined as a commitment to the historical struggle for political liberation, then it is possible to connect it with socialism and Marxism the reconstruction of society on the basis of freedom and justice for all.”
(Speaking the Truth; p. 33; emphases mine) March 15, 2008The Great ObamaAmerica, and especially the America of our imagination, is the land of self-making and the self-made. Our presidential politics are far from the exclusive domain of the self-made, but our most interesting presidents (e.g., Johnson, Nixon, Clinton) tend to come from that category.Barack Obama is the quintessential self-made man. He hails from the periphery, not just of our society but of our geographic boundaries. Lacking any relevant connections, he created his own — with the Ivy League, with the legal elite, with community activists in a town where he was stranger, with black nationalists in that same town, and with rich backers there.In literature, the connections the self-made man creates always come back to haunt him, and so it may now be with Obama. When this happens the question becomes: what lies at the core of the self-made man? In literature, the answer often is, nothing other than the compulsion of self-making and the sum total of the connections and deals that this compulsion yielded. Who, at root, was Jay Gatsby?But Obama is not a fictional character, nor does he seem superficial. Most of his connections may say nothing specific about his core, and in theory this could even be true about his church affiliation and his spiritual adviser. However, Obama’s own writing suggests that his relationship with the Trinity Church and with Jeremiah Wright has been a deep one. He says he attended church regularly, except during specific periods such as after his first child was born. He says Rev. Wright had a significant influence on him and, in fact, played a major role in bringing him to Jesus. If we take Obama at his word, his relationship with Wright was not pure opportunism. Rather there was an affinity. What was the nature of that affinity?I think we should stipulate that it was not Wright’s most extreme racist and anti-American pronouncements. But it also seems clear that it was not traditional Christian belief either. Obama was not looking for that — indeed, he had rejected traditional Christianity before encountering Wright. As just noted, Wright brought him to Jesus. More precisely, Wright’s brand of Christianity accomplished this.What is that brand? According to Wright (for example, during his contentious interview with Sean Hannity last year), the brand is liberation theology. Liberation theology sees the Christian mission as bringing justice to oppressed people through political activism. In effect, it is a merger of Christianity with radical left-wing ideology. Black liberation theology, as articulated for example by James Cone who inspired Wright, emphasizes the racial aspect oppression. It’s easy to see why this brand of Christianity, and probably only this brand, could bring a left-wing political activist like Obama to Jesus.How would the statements of Wright that have recently come to light be viewed in the context of liberation theology? In particular, employing the various terms Obama has used to describe Wright’s statements, which ones would be “not particularly controversial,” which would be “controversial” or “provocative,” and which would be deplorable?Comments about crimes against Palestinians would, I submit, fall within the mainstream of liberation theology, just as they do for most hard-leftists who don’t put Christianity into the mix. Palestinians make the “A List” of oppressed victims of virtually every ideology that sees the world as divided into oppressors and the oppressed.Comments about the U.S. treating some of its citizens as less than human, or bringing 9/11 on itself, or inflicting AIDs on black people would, I take it, be controversial and provocative even within the world of black liberation theology. One can believe that oppression is rampant and that the U.S. is heavily implicated, without going as far as Wright did in these remarks. But Wright’s remarks seem no worse than controversial and provocative within this framework. An oppressor will go to great lengths to oppress, and it is an open question just how far that imperative extends. Wright offers one possible answer to that question: there are virtually no limits. If that answer were beyond the pale of the black liberation theology of his congregation, Wright would not have survived and prospered there. Moreover, certain comments of Michelle Obama are surely uncontroversial in the world of black liberation theology. It would, in fact, be most difficult to reconcile pride in America with that theology. The open question for its adherents is how low their estimation of America should be, and how low they think America would stoop. Pride in America would seem out of the question.In sum, Barack Obama’s close and longstanding affiliation with Wright and his church probably does tell us something important about the man. It doesn’t tell us that he agrees with Wright’s most extreme ravings, but it suggests that Obama is enough of a leftist to be attracted to, and comfortable at, a place where Wright’s most extreme views, though controversial and provocative, are not outrageous. Obama’s current attempts to escape that inference likely have more to do self-making than with historical fact.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/03/020045.php