Obama's Changing Moral Equivalence

by Charles Krauthammer - May 2nd, 2008 - Townhall.com

Guess it's time to disown Granny, if Obama's famous Philadelphia "race" speech is to be believed. Of course, the speech was not just believed. It was hailed, celebrated, canonized as the greatest pronouncement on race in America since Lincoln at Cooper Union. A New York Times columnist said it "should be required reading in classrooms across the country." College seniors and first-graders, suggested the excitable Chris Matthews.

Apparently there's been a curriculum change. On Tuesday, the good senator begged to extend and revise his previous remarks on race. Moral equivalence between Grandma and Wright is now, as the Nixon administration used to say, inoperative.

One of the more intriguing issues that has been getting press over the last few days has been the argument about whether Obama has been adequately identified as extreme. The North Carolina Republican Party felt it had sound justification and felt they could therefore call two NC Democrat politicians who endorsed Obama extreme also. The issue played out over whether calling Obama extreme was an issue of race or not.

My own reaction was that John McCain is still tone deaf. He looked at an ad about two NC politicians and could see nothing but the impact on his race for President. I guess that is in line with McCain's blindness about the issue of free speech. He saw stopping free speech as an issue about his right to run for office without other people interfering with his campaign message. He therefore came down on abandoning free speech in favor of his right to incumbency. On the issue of the NC ad he called the NC GOP racist. I guess he probably thinks Charles Krauthammer is a racist too. I think the Krauthammer article is a brilliant analysis of the evidence against Obama for his dishonesty on the issue.

What is interesting is that the issue of whether Obama is post racial or not has been festering out of the public eye for some time. Many non-mainstream newpapers covered it for more than a year before the Wright issue burst onto the main stream media stage. Now it is dominating coverage.

Another, far more damaging issue has been festering for some time now as well. Barack Obama calls Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn Ayers, "respectable members of the political mainstream." This is according to Barrack Obama's own campaign web site.

"The Friends of Barack Obama" is a blog posting on Powerline that delves into the issue of how radical is Obama? It is a great listing of current extreme statements, made in the last year or two, by the two unreprentant and still radical extremists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn Ayers. They are not just quotes, but actual recordings of the two radicals making anti-American statements that have been unearthed by a radio station that has been researching the issues. Bill and Bernadine Ayers have actively supported Obama his entire political career. Though Obama claims they have no "relationship" but are "friendly", the two radicals hosted the first campaign fund raiser ever held for Obama, at a time when he was just getting into politics.

These two are clearly radical. Bernadine Dohrn Ayers recently called America "the monster". She has praised the Manson murders. Bill Ayers as recently as 2001 insisted that he did not do enough and he should have bombed America more. Just last year he insisted the war against Islamo-fascism was an "empire resurrected . . war without end" for a "new kind of jingoistic patriotism." Fighting Al Qaeda is "jingoistic patriotism"?

These are the two people that Barack Obama insists are "mainstream" America. According to Powerline Obama's "relationship with Ayers and Dohrn, like his relationship with spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright, raises important questions about Obama's own political beliefs." I agree.

Obama's mild demeanor does not really denote some who is "mainstream" as he calls the radical America hating Ayers couple. The mild demeanor hides his true feelings. Obama hangs around with too many people who hate America to be a patriot. He thinks hating America is "mainstream"? I disagree. I call that extreme and I do not trust him.