I have clips from the speech below. Only a few more will follow. This was a speech that answered the racist and outrageous remarks with the worst kind of high school moral relativism I have heard to date. Much the way children argue, "Well the other kids did it", so Barack tried to explain away the Reverend Wright and the place the Rev and his church play in his life. It left me cold and spoke volumes about who this man is.
Tonight we will hear much about the courage it took to stand by his friend Wright. I, on the other hand think it would have taken far greater courage to walk away from the kind of hate mongering that hardly unites and instead divides. Were he my minister, or even my friend, I would have stood by him, no question, but I would not have remained in his church until the tenor had changed. Instead Barack chose to play to African Americans who believe this kind of talk ... while asking white America to understand by ... invoking race.
Sure what the Reverend said was bad ... but my Grandma was bad too. Sure the Trinity Church is angry ... but you white folk are angry too.
Rather than condemn and distance, he is asking us to understand at best, excuse at worst, not just deplorable language but an entire belief system that seems hate centered, because of the Reverend's unique black experience.
The danger here is that this kind of moral relativism will be used in the future to excuse racism by all. All we need to is invoke our backgroud, or our personal experiences, or better yet, the experiences of generations we never knew. This was a chance for Barack Obama to make a stand for a new America: One that will not excuse this kind of hate mongering from anyone. Instead, it was a return to the same old same old.
