1 Dec 2009
Someone once said, “Truth without Spirit is more dangerous than error.” At first, such a statement seems absurd, but after thoughtful contemplation one is forced to conclude that it is profound. Error can be recognized as error and subsequently corrected with the truth. Truth without Spirit, however, has no real transforming value. Thus, it leaves us nodding our heads to it, but unchanged by it. Consequently, we are led in the end to the erroneous, but inevitable conclusion that truth doesn’t matter, since it makes no difference.
I fear that this is a perfect picture of the tragic day and time in which we live. Truth has been delegated to total insignificance. Few believe that truth matters; most believe that it makes no difference. As a result, everyone is free to make up whatever they want to believe and to live within the comfort zone of their own pandering imaginations.
Take for example our country’s illusionary praise of itself for electing our first African American president. The truth is; Barack Obama is not an African American, but biracial. Granted, his father was a black man from Kenya, but his mother was a white woman from Kansas. Furthermore, his father abandoned Barack and his mother when Barack was only two years old. Afterward, Barack’s mother married a black Indonesian, who moved his new family to live in Indonesian, the island nation with our world’s largest Muslim population.
At the age of ten, Barack returned to the United States and finished his formative years under the guardianship of his white grandparents in Hawaii. He never lived in an African American home. In fact, he had no ties whatsoever to the African American community until he became a community organizer with Acorn, an organization currently unraveling before the public eye due to its scandalous behavior.
To show just how unfamiliar Barack Obama was with the African American community, Chicago’s black clergymen had to explain to the young Obama the importance of the church to African Americans. They counseled him to join one of Chicago’s African American churches, lest he never have any credibility with the African American people in the neighborhoods he was attempting to organize. Mr. Obama’s joining of Trinity United Church of Christ—the church pastored by the controversial Jeremiah Wright—was in direct correlation to the counsel he received from Chicago’s black clergy.
Now, there is nothing detrimental to our president or to the African American community in these facts. They are simply the facts of the matter. Yet, all that I can hope to accomplish by presenting them in today’s America is to bring myself under suspicion of harboring sinister, ulterior motives. I’ll probably be roundly condemned as a white racist lashing out against our first black president. This, despite the fact that Barack Obama is as much white as he is black.
The truth is; whites have as much of a racial claim on this president as blacks do. Why, then, does present-day America turn a blind eye to our president’s white ancestry and pretend that he is exclusively African American. Is it because it makes us feel better to believe the fanciful rather than the facts? As we all know, the truth is often painful. Thus, we often deny the truth to avoid the pain and make up our own “facts” to mollycoddle ourselves.
Although disavowing the truth in order to accommodate our exalted opinions of ourselves and our positive-spin on today’s world is certainly one reason why today’s America is painting our new president with black hues only, I’m afraid that there is a darker reason for doing so as well. By claiming that Barack Obama is an African American, liberals are able to surround him with their “black bumper guard”; that is, they are able to reflect all criticism from him by labeling all of his critics as racists. Take for an example former President Jimmy Carter’s recent assertion that the “overwhelming portion” of our current president’s critics are racists. According to Carter, most white opposition to President Obama has nothing to do with his policies, but everything to do with his skin pigmentation.
When a country can no longer debate issues without one side being dismissed as racists the moment they open their mouths, what hope is their of coming together and forging real solutions to our country’s problems? When elected officials can no longer be disagreed with or criticized because of the color of their skin, what hope is there of the continuation of a government for the people and by the people? And when truth no longer matters to the vast portion of a nation’s populace, what hope is there of the truth winning out and of that country’s continuing longevity? Truly, a bright future for such a nation is a mere figment of its inhabitants’ imagination!
Don Walton
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