With Friends Like These ...

“With Friends like these: Obama’s Vision Of America” Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.
To hear the pundits tell it, the third and final presidential “debate,” like its predecessors and, for that matter, this entire presidential race, should have been essentially a matter of the candidates spelling out the differences between their respective visions for America.

While this is true, it is so only partially. Besides their visions for America, the public also needs to know the key differences between their visions of America.

To this end, John McCain must inform the electorate of Barack Obama’s long-standing relationships with two people in particular: Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers.

Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s “Spiritual Mentor”
Obama’s twenty-year (or so) membership in the church of the anti-white, anti-American Jeremiah Wright is arguably even more significant, more telling of his worldview, than his connection to Ayers. Recall, on more than one occasion, and in both of his own memoirs (the second of which was titled after one of Wright’s sermons!), Obama has testified to the pivotal role that his pastor has played in his spiritual formation. He referred to Wright as his “spiritual mentor,” the person who “brought” him to Christ.

That the national media thought only to ask him about whether he was present when Wright launched into his vitriolic diatribes is certainly a function of their infatuation with Obama. Yet it is also a reflection of how very little they know about the experience of religious faith. If those in the media knew anything at all about this phenomenon, they would know that no one could ever liken a “spiritual mentor” to “a crazy old uncle.” Outside of the Savior Himself, a Christian can’t but regard his spiritual mentor as the one person above all others to whom he is most indebted for the salvation of his own soul.

Furthermore, it is spiritually impossible that one can regard as one’s spiritual mentor a person with whom one fundamentally disagrees. In other words, it is impossible, spiritually, that Wright could have been Obama’s spiritual mentor unless the two were essentially of one mind.

The Wright Dilemma
Obama needs to be questioned further about all of this. If, as some have surmised, he doesn’t really agree with Wright, or that he sought out Wright and his church in order to gain “street credentials” in Chicago, then Obama is a liar, a cold, calculating, “Machiavellian” politician who will do or say anything to advance his own agenda. If, on the other hand, he really did regard Wright as his spiritual mentor or advisor, then he can’t but share his mentor’s worldview -- if not in every detail, at least in essence.

And let us not lose sight of the America of this worldview. The United States, from this perspective, is and always has been excessively self-centered. As Michelle Obama said, “we” are a “down right mean country.” It is also “racially oppressive,” an “imperialistic,” “white supremacist” juggernaut. Reverend Wright put it best, however, and Barack Obama seconded this sentiment, when the former said: “White folks’ greed runs a world in need.” The United States needs to be radically remade in the image of a neo-Marxian ideology like “Black Liberation theology” lest it incur God’s damnation (“…not God Bless America, God DAMN America!”).

Bill Ayers, “The Unrepentant Terrorist”
Bill Ayers is the University of Chicago professor of education, a radical whose bombings of the Pentagon and police stations resulted in the loss of lives, with whom Obama has had a close relationship for several years, or an “alliance” as Thomas Sowell describes it. As recently as September 11, 2001 (of all days), Ayers expressed regret that he, his wife, and his radical comrades in the domestic terrorist organization, “The Weather Underground,” didn’t wreak more destruction. Obama doesn’t deny that Ayers had engaged in acts that are “despicable,” but he has tried to marginalize his relationship with Ayers by noting that these acts were performed in another lifetime, before the terrorist became a “respected” and “distinguished” professor and when Obama was but 8-years-old.

Notice, Obama has never referred to Ayers as a “terrorist,” and he has never named his “despicable” acts for the acts of “terrorism” that they are. The one very simple, straightforward question that McCain should have posed to him Wednesday night, and which he can still raise?

“Is Bill Ayers a terrorist?”

The Ayers Dilemma
It is impossible for Obama to evade the issue if it is framed in these very simple terms, and his answer, regardless of what it is, Americans will find both unsatisfying and dangerous.

If Obama says, as he has already implied, that Ayers, being a respectable member of the community, is no longer a terrorist, then McCain can effortlessly expose Obama’s notion of terrorism for the foolishness that it is.

By Obama’s reasoning, neither Timothy McVeigh, Osama Bin Laden, or any other person who at one time killed innocents in terrorist attacks can be considered terrorists at a later time if by that time they are no longer involved in such activities. But we usually think that a person who rapes, even if it’s just one time, is thereby a rapist; likewise, a person who murders, for even one single instance, is a murderer. And what holds true in cases of murder and rape similarly holds true in cases of terrorism, or so it would seem. To suggest otherwise is to run the risk of marginalizing terrorism.

If, on the other hand, Obama concedes that Ayers is a terrorist, then McCain needs to defend his running mate’s charge that Obama “pals around with terrorists.” At the very least, he needs to point out that the man who would be the next president of the United States is not at all uncomfortable aligning himself with people who, by his own admission, are terrorists.