Kerwick's Corner: A Message to the Right

**UPDATE**

Welcome to the first (and second) installment(s) of "Kerwick's Corner" a new, weekly column that will appear on Tuesdays and will feature commentary from Professor Jack Kerwick on the most up-to-the-minute stories important to US conservatives -- whether they're happening on the campaign trail or across the nation.

You can still tune in every day to find daily posts and enduring content from US Conservtives Guide, Justin Quinn, who will offer his own thoughts, as well as the enduring informational content you've come to expect from About.com.

Today in Kerwick's Corner, the philosophy professor examines and defends the volley of accusations leveled at Joe Biden and defends him from his conservative detractors. It's a bold statement, but one with lots of merit -- even if you don't agree with him.

From the column:

... Finally, the grounds on which those on the Right accuse Joe Biden, Robert Byrd, and other Democratic Congressmen who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 of “racism” are flimsy at best.

Joe Biden’s remarks about Obama may have been ill-worded, but they were well-intentioned and, from the Leftist perspective that Biden holds, true. His comment to the effect that Obama is “clean” had nothing to do with hygiene; he was referring to his record.

This week only ...
Kerwick offers a second column, this one examining racial stereotypes in the South. If ever there were a year for white Southerners to overcome their maligned caricature as racists, this is the year. Jack examines the role of race in the South and how white Southern voters can challenge both presidential candidates on their perceptions of the Southland.

From the The South's Last Stand:

Southern whites ought to ask our two candidates flat out: “Do you believe that we are the bunch of ‘racist,’ ‘Bible-thumping,’ ‘gun-toting’,’ ‘truck driving,’ ‘tobacco chewing,’ red-necks that the peddlers of cheap virtue have construed us as being?”

Neither [Barack] Obama nor [John] McCain will answer such a direct question in the affirmative. Yet when they deny that this is an image of the white Southerner that they endorse, Southerners should not rest: “What do you think of us, then, and why? Furthermore, what have you done, and/or what do you plan on doing, to dismantle this hideously unfair caricature of us?”