White Hating Cleric

Joel Canfield's letter to the editor, which was published in the Delaware County Times on 10/10/08, claimed: “If you are afraid of Obama’s lack of integrity and moral compass, the Libs would call you a racist, when in reality you are a patriot.” We’ve no knowledge of Canfield’s inner believe, so we’ll have to assume, that he’s not a racist, but he does appear illogical. I’d like to hear the criteria, which enabled Mr. Canfield to determined, that Obama lacks integrity and a moral compass and how expressing such fear makes anyone a patriot.

Canfield wrote: “His (Obama’s) association with a rogue gallery of American and “white-hating clerics.” Apparently, Canfield considers Rev. Jeremiah Wright a white - hating cleric. In fact, Jeremiah Wright is to be admired, because he gave up his student deferment, left college and joined the Marine Corps. In 1963, after two years of service, Wright transferred to the Navy and entered the Corpsman School at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, where he graduated as valedictorian. Having excelled in corpsman school, he was then trained as a cardiopulmonary technician at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland where he graduated as salutatorian. In 1966, Wright was assigned as part of the medical team charged with care of President Lyndon B. Johnson and in 1967, the White House awarded Wright three letters of commendation.

On national television, Rev. Wright pointed out: “Our congregation has sent dozens of boys and girls to fight in the Vietnam War, the first Gulf War, and the present two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. My goddaughter’s unit just arrived in Iraq this week, while those who call me unpatriotic have used their positions of privilege to avoid military service, while sending over 4,000 American boys and girls of every race to die over a lie.”

Wright continued: “Last year, I said to Barack Obama: If you get elected, on November the 5th, I’m coming after you, because you’ll be representing a government whose policies grind under people. It’s about policy, not the American people. And there is no excuse for the things that the government, not the American people, have done. That doesn’t make me not like America or unpatriotic. When Jesus says, ‘You’ll be brought down to Hell,’ that’s not bombastic, divisive speech. If so maybe we ought to take Jesus out of this Christian faith.”

Rev. Wright is following a tradition begun over a hundred and sixty years ago, by abolitionist Frederick Douglass. In a speech entitled: “Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country,” Douglass said: “I make no pretension to patriotism. So long as my voice can be heard on this or the other side of the Atlantic, I will hold up America to the lightning scorn of moral indignation. In doing this, I shall feel myself discharging the duty of a true patriot; for he is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins. It is righteousness that exalteth a nation while sin is a reproach to any people.”