The following in no wise should be construed as support for Sen. Barack Obama. I will not and could not vote for Sen. Obama. That being said I could not express more how inappropriate the indirect and specious attacks against Sen. Obama are by targeting people close to him and attributing their actions and their words to Sen. Obama.
I could say that this is a wrong approach for Conservatives to take but I’ve heard so much of this blatant fear mongering that I don’t think many Conservatives are being rational.
I have consistently said that Barack Obama can be beat on the basis of his own words and his own beliefs. The day that we let stand this kind of guilt by association is the today that we are all condemned.
There I’ve said it as concise as I know how, for those of you that get it you can stop reading here. For those of you who believe that attacking Obama’s faith and using his minister’s words against him is justified allow me to show you where this kind of attack leads us.Alaphiah
In human history religion has be associated with some of man’s greatest achievements and accounted for some of man’s most barbaric and inhumane acts against one another.
To the religious sublime to the depths of religious absurdity man has attempted to understand and connect with a reason why we exist if there be one.
History is replete with harrowing accounts of religious tyranny. That tyranny was obviously on the minds of the founding fathers when they created the birth certificate of American, the Declaration of Independence. To be sure protecting people from tyranny whether it is the tyranny of governments or the tyranny of religion is principle in the society in which we live, and in the document which defines our society the Constitution of the United States of America.
Nonetheless though we have a birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence and though we have a society defined by the Constitution, In spite of these things what we have witnessed befall Sen. Barack Obama in the last few days is nothing short of the tyranny that the founders attempted to arrest by the ideas contained in the documents that originally give America life.
Over the last several days I have heard Conservative pundits and the main stream media attempt to make Sen. Barack Obama accountable for the words of another man.
No where in History, in Christianity or in the U.S. Constitution can I find that one man can be held responsible for the words of another man yet the words of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Sen. Barack Obama have been played and vilified and linked to Sen. Obama as if Sen. Obama himself is responsible for the actions and the thoughts of another man.
Neither have I found such an occurrence in the annuals of secular or religious law where one man was brought before a tribunal to account for someone else’s words.
Even in the gospels when a mother and father were brought before a court of sorts to determine how a blind man, their son, had miraculously gained his sight they said, “Ask him he is of age.”
Martin Luther
Speaking of religion, brings me to Martin Luther considered a heretic for opposing the established Church authority of his time. In 1521, the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, demanded that Luther appear before the diet of the Holy Roman Empire at Worms to give an account of words that Luther had written. They were in fact and in deed Luther’s words, Luther’s ideas not someone else’s! Imagine if situations were like today Luther would have been tried for someone else’s words. But even in the Dark ages there was some standard of fairness.
To Christians Luther is revered as a modern day Church reformer. Luther single handedly initiated the Protestant movement in the Christian church, but did you know that Luther was a rabid anti-Semite who advocated the ideas that Jews' homes should be destroyed, their synagogues burned, money confiscated and Jewish liberty curtailed? And did you know that Luther’s ideas were revived and used in propaganda by the Nazis in 1933–45.
Martin Luther a revered Christian reformer and anti-Semite my question is can you find anything that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has said that even comes close to this? Louis Farrakhan on this worst day never said anything that compared with what Luther taught about Jews yet Sen. Obama was made to disavow and repudiate Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright. But have Christians disavowed Martin Luther or the whole Lutheran sect or Protestantism?
According to Wikipedia there are about 800 million Protestants worldwide, among approximately 1.9 billion Christians. These include 170 million in North America, 160 million in Africa, 120 million in Europe, 70 million in Latin America, 60 million in Asia, and 10 million in Oceania. Shouldn’t all of these Protestants be made to disavow and repudiate the anti-Semitic words of Martin Luther?
One can not attribute one violent act that occurred after a Farrakhan or Wright sermon not one. Yet based on the words of Luther Nazi’s killed 6 million Jews. Surely Christians should be made to disavow Luther, Lutherans and the Protestant movement that came from Martin Luther’s words. This is extreme but no more extreme than calling for Barack Obama to disavow his pastor and Farrakhan.
Thomas Jefferson
The man who is credited for authoring the Declaration of Independence if he were alive today no doubt he would not be able to be elected President of this Country today even though he was the third man to hear the words and wear the title of Mr. President. But today because of the de facto religion test that we have in America and ignorance of the principles in the Constitution this founding father would not be electable today.
Thomas Jefferson considered an atheist by some or deist, regardless, believed to be an American icon today by all said:
"Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to God alone. I inquire after no man's, and trouble none with mine." --Thomas Jefferson to Miles King, 1814. ME 14:198
"I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Dowse, 1803. ME 10:378
"Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle." --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Rush, 1813.
"From the dissensions among Sects themselves arise necessarily a right of choosing and necessity of deliberating to which we will conform. But if we choose for ourselves, we must allow others to choose also, and so reciprocally, this establishes religious liberty." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers 1:545
“…Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions…” -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1,1802
If some one would have attempted to attack Thomas Jefferson on his religious affiliation as what is being done to Barack Obama one would have been told in no uncertain terms that Jefferson’s religious affairs are none of your business and are of a private matter.
Jefferson himself would have told you that.
What Barack Obama believes and how he worships, according to the author of the Declaration of Independence and a founding father, are between him and God and no one has the right to meddle in his beliefs or violate his privacy on the matter according to Jefferson.
Article VI
In article VI of the Constitution of the United States of American it is clearly set out that there can not be any form of a religious test to prevent public service.
The "no religious test" clause of the United States Constitution is found in Article VI, section 3, and states that:
“ ...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. ”
In conclusion, Europe and Christianity had its Inquisitions in them the Church committed sins against humanity, early America had its witch hunts which Christians persecuted innocence people in the name of religion.
Today Conservatives use the words of one man to put another man on trial. It is an evil that even the evil of the dark ages with its Inquisitors pale against. Conservatives replay Jeremiah Wright’s words and link them to Sen. Barack Obama as if witches where being hunted once again.
Whether or not Jeremiah Wright is a racist, a black nationalist, or anti-American the fact that Conservatives would attempt to smear Sen. Barack Obama with religion and with word that are not his own is against everything that America has stood for from its very inception and will eventually come back to haunt Conservatives at the most inconvenient opportunity.
Sadly this tactic will do nothing to dissuade Obama supporters. Only those who would not vote for Sen. Obama any way will be affected in a negative way. What will happen is Liberals have another reason to think ill of Conservatives for using what seems to them to be a desperate attempt to derail their candidate.
Thomas Jefferson wrote his own version of the Bible where he repudiates the virgin birth, deletes all miracles and disregards the deity of Jesus yet he would tell you that his religious beliefs are his own and between him and his God only.
Martin Luther an avowed anti-Semite, whose words were used by Nazis as justification to murder 6 million Jews but Luther also initiated the Protestant movement which 1.9 billion Christians have never disavowed themselves from the horrific words of Luther.
Conservatives and the MSM have trotted out Barack Obama’s pastor’s sermons in an effort to smear Sen. Obama by association. If Conservatives continue down this road will they be ask to disavow Jefferson and Luther?
Should they?