In the Spring 2008 issue of the Claremont Review of Books, Harry Jaffa provides us a timeless rejoinder to the now famous sermon of Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's pastor and "spiritual mentor" for twenty years. It is more than a response to a particular and poisonous sermon. It is a response to a general (and poisonous) mindset or worldview, with the context being an understanding of the founding of our country and the history of slavery in the United States. A portion of Jaffa's conclusion reads:
But if History or Progress or "change" is to be our guide, if the truth of relativism is to replace the truth of the Declaration, then the cause for which the nation fought at its birth, and in the Civil War, was meaningless, too. White power, black power, the Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, are as justifiable as Jefferson, Lincoln, or the doctrine of the equal natural rights of all human beings. We may understand how the Rev. Jeremiah Wright could so awfully misunderstand the American political tradition, inasmuch as it has been so very misunderstood for so long in circles from whom a better understanding could be expected. But this misunderstanding is a cancer which can in the end prove fatal, not only to a political campaign but to our country.
Read the rest and subscribe to the Claremont Review of Books.
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