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Streetcar Line

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Those boards also gave money to the church Obama attended for 20 years, a church whose pastor from the start told Obama (in Obama's own words in his autobiography) that life for a black man in America "probably never will be" safe and who spewed hatred from whites and America from his pulpit; and also to a radical American pro-Palestinian group.

Obama has praised the radical, hate-spewing Catholic priest Michael Pfleger. His wife has said she was never proud of America until her husband started winning presidential primaries. And they together have accepted what amounted to a real-estate gift from their state's most notorious convicted influence peddler.

What's worse is that Obama would impose his culture on the rest of us, through judges that go beyond the text of the Constitution to give legal status to their own expressions of "empathy." Empathy for the criminals, like the terrorist Bill Ayers, who go free on a technicality. Empathy for the people offended by a Christmas tree on the public square. Empathy for the 13-year-old who doesn't want to inform her mother about the abortion she is procuring, even though her mother would have to give approval for any other surgery for the daughter. Empathy for the student so offended by the presence of Army ROTC on campus that he demands that ROTC be banned. Empathy for the father offended that his child is exposed to the Pledge of Allegiance in school. Empathy for the horrible brute sentenced to death for the grisly rape of a little girl.

Oh, wait -- Obama says he himself did not approve of the decision outlawing the death penalty for child rapists. But that hardly exonerates him: Every one of the Supreme Court justices he says he admires, and who would be his models for future appointments, decided on their own authority that the death penalty, even for a grisly child rapist, violates their own standards of decency.

Finally, of course -- and this is an issue McCain's campaign should mention every hour of every day between now and the election -- Obama was the only member of the Illinois state senate so radically dismissive of human life that he spoke on the senate floor against a bill mandating care for babies who survived "botched" abortions. Obama's position was beyond despicable; it was monstrous. It puts him so far outside of the mainstream of American culture that he might as well be in his own moral desert.

EVERY ONE OF THESE issues is an indicator of culture. Every one of them is an indicator that Obama himself can't possibly empathize with most of us as we struggle with an economic crisis, because he not only misunderstands how we feel and how we see the world but also has contempt for our very point of view.

"Look," McCain could say. "My friends, we have tough times ahead. But we will survive because Americans know how to pull together and because we know the value of hard work and voluntary community spirit, and because we have a native toughness. We will pull together not because some orator with a smooth, deep voice cites some pie-in-the-sky economic theory, but because we know how to roll up our sleeves, trust each other, and get the job done. My opponent doesn't share our faith in ourselves and our common culture. My opponent thinks bureaucrats in Washington know best. But we know better. My friends, we know better. We know that we don't need Washington to serve as a national community organizer pushing newfangled theories and taxing us to do it; we know that our communities can organize on our own, if only we use our common values to rebuild the real economy of real goods and real services.

"And when we go to church for sustenance, we won't be blaming our country or clinging to our religions out of bitterness. We'll be going there because we know that 'perseverance produces character, and character, hope, and hope does not disappoint us.'

"Hope does not disappoint us, because of our faith -- and because we are Americans."

topics:
Education, John McCain, Barack Obama, Religion, Abortion, Constitution, Law, Supreme Court, Military