Perhaps I am a contrarian, but I cannot get too fired up about the rants of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Barry Obama's pastor.  Maybe it's because I suspect that similar inflammatory remarks are made every Sunday in the pulpits of many other black churches across the land.   Maybe it's because I would not expect someone to get up and walk out on a sermon just because you disagreed with the message or it made you uncomfortable.   Where I come from, walking out of church in the middle of a sermon is considered rude in the extreme.   If you can't stomach what the pastor preaches, you don't return and you move your membership.  

   I also have some sympathy for Barry.   I don't think it's really fair to imput to Barry the views of Reverend Wright, even if Barry has stayed a member of the good Reverend's church while Brother Wright delivered himself of his Bill of Particulars about the evils of the United States of America.  The Lord knows that all too many folks have been members of churches for longer than Barry and ten minutes after a sermon ended couldn't tell you anything their pastor said!   Barry has said he doesn't share Reverend Wright's views, and I take him at his word.

   But, don't believe for a second that I think that Senator Obama should be elected president of the United States.   If Barry becomes the Democrat Party's nominee, he will be by far the most liberal candidate ever put forth for the office by a major party.   His policy prescriptions, if implemented, would be a disaster for America.    It is His views, more than the rants of his former pastor, that concern me.  

   Make no mistake, I don't agree with any of the particulars of  Reverend Wright's indictment of America society and foreign policy either.   However, America and Americans do have a lot to answer for to God for how we have allowed our government and society to stray from His principles, not to mention the intentions of the founders of the country. 

   I believe Americans have to answer for allowing the Federal Judiciary to impose a judicial dictatorship over their government.   I believe Americans have to answer for the consequences of this black robed tyranny:  the state sanction of the mass murder of infants in their mothers' womb; the legitimatization of homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle, both contended to be "liberty" protected by the 14th Amendment; the perversion of mass media by pornography under the guise of "free speech" protected by the First Amendment;  an attack on traditional values and the Christian faith via misapplication of the "establishment clause" of the First Amendment;  the gutting of the constitutional order of federalism, designed to defuse power among many sovereigns as opposed to the one;  limiting the right of the people to engage in political speech, which is the core of the First Amendment,  under the guise of campaign finance "reform."   I could go on but the point has been made.  Americans have allowed their government to morph into a judicial oligarchy, and are paying the price.

   I believe Americans have to answer for tolerating their president committing the American military to war and then refusing to allow our men and women the freedom to fight to win.    For reasons I simply cannot fathom,  it seems that American administrations don't want to obtain decisive victory anymore in the conflicts they send our men and women to fight.    The American people should never again permit or suffer the United States government sending American troops in harm's way unless the objective is total victory.

   I believe Americans have to answer for a foreign policy which confuses wishful thinking with reality.  By now only a screaming idiot of the highest order can believe that Palestinians want to make peace with Israelis on any terms other than the Israelis committing mass suicide.  Yet our glorious secretary of state, Madam Rice, appears to be such an idiot.  Memo to Ms. Rice: people who teach their children to strap bombs to their bodies so as to blow up their perceived enemies are not interested in peace.   Such people are not to be negotiated with, appeased, or otherwise treated as anything other than the evil barbarians they are, who must be stopped by whatever means necessary.   Doing otherwise simply sentences innocent people to death.

   I believe Americans have to answer for permitting their government to demonstrate contempt for the laws of the land which manifest that the United States is in fact a nation and not some spot on the map.  The refusal of the Bush administration to secure the nation's borders and enforce the immigration laws cannot be condemned strongly enough.   If this president has done anything to deserve impeachment, it is his abdication of his duty to protect America from the foreign invasion coming across our border with Mexico.

   I could go on and on: wasteful, profligate spending; confiscatory taxation; the worship of celebrity; the collapse of moral constraints and standards; corruption and debauchery in public officials.  

   So, I agree with the Reverend Wright that American has a lot answer for to God.  However, unlike the Reverend, I love my country.  With all our faults, we are still the best nation on earth, relative to the alternatives.  We are still a land with many good and brave people capable of reversing the tides which carry us to destruction, if only they will stir themselves and reclaim the rights of a free people to govern themselves according to their own traditions, faith and morals.   I must admit though, that sometimes I think that the only reason we have not yet experienced the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah is only because  there still remains "more than ten righteous men" (see Genesis 18:20-33) to be found in our country.  

   Changing topics, was there something in the water of Albany, New York, that affected the minds of Eliot Spitzer and David Patterson, the once and current governors of New York, who shared the inability to remain true to their spouses?    Patterson, not being a millionaire many times over like Spitzer, apparently didn't have to pay his liasons,  though he apparently charged the hotel rooms where he hooked up with his lovers to the New York taxpayer as  "professional expenses."    Spitzer shelled out $ 4,500 PER HOUR(!) for his female company.   Until the blue dress bearing his DNA was uncovered, Bill Clinton professed to be "mentoring" Monica;  such chuzpah and imagination appear beyond Misters Spitzer or Patterson, who as  yet have failed to concoct so prosaic an explanation.