The American Spectator

Political Hay

The Culture of Lincoln

By Jeffrey Lord on 4.8.08 @ 12:08AM

(Page 2 of 2)

SO WHAT IS the problem here? How does Democrat Wright the pastor get himself boxed into a corner where he is not only pilloried as a black racist, something Richard Nixon warned about decades ago, while Thurmond the white racist ends his career 180 degrees from where he began?

While there are may be other factors, surely the insistent demands of Republicans that their party function with "color-blindness" as not simply a goal but a functional governing reality has played a central role. It is curious indeed that the Democratic Party has been home to both white and black racial extremists. Only this one major political party in American history has been home to Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, Lester Maddox, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright.

Why is this?

Listen to liberals on the importance of culture. A "Culture of Corruption" is "choking our democracy to death," says no less than Bill Moyers, the far-left Democratic Party champion. Arianna Huffington has written an entire book hailed by Publishers Weekly as an assault on "the corporate culture of greed." As this is written Senator Obama is inveighing against "the culture in Washington."

All right then. Agreed. Culture, "tradition" and "a way of life" is important. Whether one is dealing with corruption, corporate greed, or Washington, the culture in which human beings swim is important. The bitter fact for Democrats -- not to mention the ironic fact given the presentation of the media -- is that if one swims in the "Culture of Lincoln" as a white racist and segregationist leader, one emerges from the experience as an integrationist, appointing and socializing with blacks. Sadly, as many people seem to see with Reverend Wright, the culture of race that has for almost two centuries been at the core of the Party of Race, some people who begin careers with the brightest of hopes and the best of intentions emerge pictured as racists themselves.

Has Reverend Wright been treated unfairly? His supporters insist so. Has he embraced a party with an undeniably racist history to find himself pictured as a racist himself? Indeed so.

Wright's supporters should take a very long look at where this man began -- and where he has ended up.

Not, most assuredly, in the Culture of Lincoln. And it shows.

Go ask Armstrong Williams.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Barack Obama, Mainstream Media, Religion, Law, Military, NATO, Africa