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Originally Posted by dalem
No, he can't. This is a voluntary and confirmed mentor-student relationship. A relationship of ideals and ideas, not of economics or policy or simple neighborly proximity.
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In what subjects? Religion or politics? What do we know?
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Obama has chosen to sit and absorb messages of hate, anti-Americanism, and racism, and from what I've read, have his family sit with him, for 20 years.
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Is that a fact? Haven't you heard such messages? What did you do when you heard them? How can you presume to say how another person receives them?
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Could I sit in a church or other recurring social gathering with a racist, anti-American leader and mentor for 20 years unless I approved of it in some way? Could you?
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Well, again you are assuming he is racist. If he's not, it is a moot point. YOU are defining him as racist. What is your definition of a racist and what did he say that was racist? How is God damn America racist? Isn't it a system of government. Whoever dominated the system for 170 years before Brown vs Bd. of Education is culpable. Who established Jim Crow laws? Who enforced segregation? Who created a system discrimanatory toward people of color--socially and economically? Someone accuses you and people of your white color and you cry racist? How is the truth racist? History accuses whites of racism, but when a black man does it, he is suddenly labeled a racist. We need to accept the truth and move on. Maybe you, dale, are clean of all racism, but all whites are not, even now, and you of all people know that is true. Don't take Wright's tantrums personally. He's right in terms of history and to what extent white racism still exists. I agree
it would have been better had he not added salt to the wound. But we need to get past this...we cannot afford to wallow in this indignation. A black man is among candidates for president; we must not create the appearance that we are setting a different standard for black candidate.
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I warned a guy in my old gaming group one night back in Michigan that he was going to get booted out of my apartment the next time he made racist remarks. And that was just one night, and it was just my apartment. And I had as little to do with him in public or private as our shared hobby permitted. I wasn't hugging the guy and lauding his influence over me for twenty years.
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Commendable, but you cannot require others to emulate your example. Some one else with your feeling might do it differently. The point is to repudiate, but bannishment is a highly personsal reaction.
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Bzzzzt! Insufficient defense. 
Obama has gone out of his way to emphasize the closeness of their relationship, and the influence that Wright has had over him. Same person? Of course not. But close enough.
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So what? I have a wealthy friend who supports Code Pink, but also gives heavily to hospitals, animal shelters, the Red Cross and dozens of ordinary charities. What I've learned from her is charity. We argue about Iraq all the time. She's hopelessly ill-informed, but what shall I do. Stomp out and never see her again? No, because no one thinks my continuing relationship with her means I support Code Pink.
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List three recent and similar examples in American politics then, for comparison.
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Take any three times a liberal democrat called Bush an idiot, a bloodthirsty warmonger, and what have you. Go back to 1800 and look at what the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Democrats said about each other. You can bet your boots that had they not all been white, one or the other would have been called a racist.
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Please. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with content. If McCain had spent months talking up his own priest/pastor/preacher/rabbi, whatever, and the influence he'd had on his life and ideals, and then the guy turns out to be some berobed KKK Grand Silverfish, McCain would be (properly) undergoing the same scrutiny.
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Obama was helped spiritually by his church. Bush was helped by his born again experience. They should not talk about it...come on.
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I do judge by words and actions. As I said above, Obama's words and actions have publically and joyfully embraced the long-term relationship and influence of a spittle-flecked anti-American racist.
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Again, as a pastor and member of a church, not as politically enjoined persons.
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Obama's words and actions are the problem. Like I said above and still maintain, he either agrees with Wright or doesn't. If he does, bad. If he doesn't and still thinks it's okay, socially or politically, to emphasize being influenced by him, then that's bad.
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That's a value judgement which you are entitled to have, so long as you accept that it comes from your standard of morality or ethics and is not required of others. I concede your right to it. I hope you will concede my right to disagree.
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It's just another type of symptom, not the core problem. The problem was proudly attending that church for 20 years in the first place. There is no way to quickly wash off twenty years of accumulated filth. Intelligent people would realize this.
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Filth is in the eye of the beholder.
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Now, true liberals won't see it that way because they don't see a problem - they are also convinced that America is a nation of AIDS-forging, hateful racists. So they see nothing to apologize for, no problem to address. Anyone other than a lefty, guilt-washed America-hater sees the problem, not so much as what Obama said, but as the reason he has to say it at all.
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-dale[/quote]
Well, I ain't a lefty, guilt washed America-hater by a long shot. But I know a specious argument when I see one.