Anthony King: 2008

The conservative reactions to Obama’s speech yesterday have really laid bare the blindness of extremism on all sides (not to mention an amazing amount of fear and anger). Rather than respond to the speech as a whole - which asks a lot of its audience - many commentators are choosing instead to continue the battles they’d rather fight than overcome.

From Michael Gerson’s op-ed from the Washington Post:

“Take an issue that Obama did not specifically confront yesterday. In a 2003 sermon, Wright claimed, “The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.”

“This accusation does not make Wright, as Obama would have it, an “occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy.” It makes Wright a dangerous man. He has casually accused America of one of the most monstrous crimes in history, perpetrated by a conspiracy of medical Mengeles. If Wright believes what he said, he should urge the overthrow of the U.S. government, which he views as guilty of unspeakable evil. If I believed Wright were correct, I would join him in that cause.”

While I don’t agree with Wright at all, his accusations of America conspiring to perpetrate a monstrous crime is precisely the accusation made by the Pro-Life constituency in America, many of whom believe the US government has sanctioned the murder of millions of children.

And some of those activists actually do believe in the overthrow of the US government because of it.

And yet, Republicans embrace these extreme views. They are not asked to distance themselves from the spiritual leaders who preach about the moral downfall of America in white churches, and use abortion and homosexuality as the lynchpins of their arguments.

Though I would argue that while the conspiracies are different, the paranoia, extremism, and anti-American sentiment at their core are identical - and equally harmful.

But I’d also argue they’re equally ancient.

Obama’s campaign (and his speech yesterday in particular) represents the first steps past the old battles of our parent’s and grandparent’s generations. Wright is wrong, but so is Gerson. It’s not Obama’s job to answer for his elders. It’s Obama’s job to learn from his elders’ mistakes and move past them. That’s the change he’s talking about.

Because words do matter. Both Obama’s words of hope and Wright’s words of hate. But why people speak the words they speak matters more. When we start to understand why, we can begin to speak to the core of who we are as a society. And only then can we actually begin to change.