Around the web, there is growing sentiment that Barack Obama will not be the next president of the United States, even if he wins the Democratic Party nomination.
Several are making the case, but here's the latest from John Derbyshire at National Review Online's The Corner:
I repeat: Obama's toast. He may yet get the Democratic nomination, but tens of millions of Americans who are neither (a) black nor (b) guilty white liberals are simply appalled that Obama would revere a guy like Jeremiah Wright for 20 years, whatever the particularities of which services he did and didn't attend. It defies belief that Obama knew this man for all that time, intimately enough to have him supervise at the Obama wedding and the children's baptisms, yet did not know that Wright is a white-hating, America-hating crank. Who on earth believes this?
The MSM can't smother this, not in the age of the web, though they are trying mightily. (The Sunday New York Times "Week in Review" Section had nothing about Wright; neither did the main news section.) Americans are a fair-minded people, who find double standards obnoxious. A guy who says "nappy-headed ho's" in an irreverent radio show is dragged round the city walls behind a chariot to the delighted howls of a mob of self-righteous "anti-racists"; yet a man who uses the authority of the cloth to damn our country and curse white people, is praised as a "biblical scholar" by a candidate for the presidency? I don't think so. This won't stand. The man is toast.
I don't even think Gore can pick Obama as a running mate now.
I won't declare Obama toast just yet, but he is looking crispy. He's not fresh-baked-from-the-oven-hope-of-America anymore.
Now we know what all the vague, hopeful platitudes in Obama's speeches are about. They're covering over the hatred.
Obama figures that if you can't say anything nice about America, better not to say anything.
And that's his problem. Obama can't say anything nice about America. Not really, or not too much -- not after spending 20 years surrounded by the likes of Rev. Wright and Michelle Obama. In the circles in which Obama chooses to move and live, praise for America must usually be qualified, tamped down, offset by condemnation (or in Rev. Wright's case, outright damnation).
The whole idea is victimhood. If you admit that you live in a pretty good country after all -- a land of freedom and opportunity -- it weakens your victimhood. And in this compassionate age in America, victimhood is power. Victimhood gets results. Victimhood wins lawsuits. Victimhood gets laws enacted. Power.
So is Obama toast? I don't know. It depends on whether there are still enough Americans left who value the things that made America great more than they value victimhood.
Oh say does that star spangled banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the victims?Play ball!
The problem with victimhood is that eventually you get to the end of the line and realize that there is no all-powerful human protector to rescue you from your victimhood. There's just you. And to that degree, I agree with Obama's rhetoric that "We are the ones that we have been waiting for." Yes, we are. And if anybody's going to lift us up, it's us -- not Barack Obama, not Hillary Clinton, not John McCain, not Congress, not the federal government, not any governor of any state, not any prosecutor, not any judge, not any city council, not the world community. And there comes a time in life when, even if any of these could rescue you for a time, you begin to get tired of hearing your own whining. You get tired of having to ask, demand, cajole.
When you realize that nobody else can save you, then you have to look at yourself. Sorry, but at some point victims have to admit that they can stand up and walk.
Ah, but what freedom there is in walking! Humans are not made to be dependent. Yes, there times in life when all humans are helpless and dependent -- infancy, early childhood, old age, and times of serious illness come to mind -- but that dependency is not what makes humankind great. That is not our glory. A racehorse can stand unmoving in a stall, but that is not his glory. A bird can walk and hop, but that is not its glory. We are meant for more. Were made to produce Beethoven and make rockets to send the music deep into space.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. (Robert Heinlein)
Rev. Wright and his ilk want to endlessly hit the "replay" button -- see how they hurt us? See how we've suffered? See?
Well, yes, I do see, but what are you going to do about it? You have two arms and two legs. Get up and walk, man! You and your victimhood mentality are the anchor around Obama's neck, and he's going down.
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