Reiland notes that the media focus on Pfleger's rant against Hillary Clinton diverted public attention from the theme of his sermon.
Pfleger began his sermon by telling his adoring audience how to address someone who doesn't buy the idea of collective racial guilt, someone who says, "Well, don't hold me responsible for what my ancestors did."Reiland goes on to note that in 2004 Obama cited Pfleger as one of his three spiritual mentors, then ponders how what he calls Pfleger's "Gospel of Envy" might be influencing Barack Obama:
Pfleger's answer to that person of insufficient guilt and inadequate color, delivered in an increasingly breathless and crazed voice to an applauding congregation:
"But you have enjoyed the benefits of what your ancestors did and unless you are ready to give up the benefits, throw away your 401 fund, throw away your trust fund, throw away all the money you put into the company you walked into because yo' daddy and yo' granddaddy and yo' great-granddaddy, unless you're willing to give up the benefits, then you must be responsible for what was done in your generation, 'cause you are the beneficiary of this insurance policy!"
In other words, you're guilty unless you give up your money.
[...] Anger, or envy, about trust funds seems to be a big thing with the Trinity crowd. Michelle Obama, for instance, bellyached regularly during her stump speech in the primaries: "You're looking at a young couple that's just a few years out of debt. See, because we went to those good schools and we didn't have trust funds. I'm still waiting for Barack's trust fund. Especially after I heard that Dick Cheney was supposed to be a relative or something. Give us something here!"
Last Tuesday, Obama spelled out the outlines of his economic policy, a program that Rev. Pfleger might well call the first steps of a "faith-based" prescription to confiscate more of the money of the truly guilty.Reiland's analysis is good as far as it goes, but it overlooks that Pfleger's view is grounded in the politics of what Steve Diamond calls the New Authoritarian Left.
For starters, Obama promises to nearly double the tax on capital gains and dividends, from the current 15 percent to 28 percent, repeal the Bush tax cuts for upper-income households, maintain a 45 percent "death tax" on upper-level estates, increase taxes on the "windfall profits" of oil companies, raise taxes on businesses by "closing corporate tax loopholes," and increase the amount of income that will be subject to payroll taxes.
A hilarious summary of the NAL outlook is found in a fast-food chain's latest TV ad for their steak burger:
Lunchroom. Two men chowing down on their burgers. They're approached by a female yuppie sporting the I Will Not Wear Make-up Again Until Global Warming Has Been Reversed radical chic look.
She demands of one man, "What have you done to deserve that burger?"
The man replies, "I gave half my salary to charity."
She turns to the other man and repeats the question.
After pondering he replies guiltily, "I was hungry?"
In answer, she hauls off and slaps his face.
Of course -- of course -- all three actors are white. God forbid an American black should be portrayed on American TV as committing the monstrous act of not feeling guilty about the plight of the downtrodden.
There is something quaintly anachronistic about Pfleger's appeals to white American guilt and indeed the entire social justice philosophy, at least as it's preached by William Ayers and his crowd. They sound for all the world like 19th Century British noblemen exhorting their fellow peers to exert themselves to a greater sense of noblesse oblige.
Earth calling Pfleger, Obama, Ayers and their cadres: You're 50 years too late if you want noblesse oblige to be the American government's guiding domestic or international policy. Let me explain the facts of life to you here in the 21st century.
London has overtaken New York as the financial capital of the world. The European Union has beaten out the United States in terms of GDP. And American workers are in competition with millions of people who have clawed their way out of the most ghastly circumstances and starved themselves to acquire two or three PhDs, then proceeded to shove Americans out of high-paying jobs.
Many of these people are profoundly -- no, rabidly -- nationalistic. To argue that they were brainwashed by their education system into uncritically loving their country -- the argument has no relevance when facing rabidly nationalistic people on the battlefield of the global marketplace.
Translation: when they take your job away, when they arrive with suitcases full of cash to buy up your foreclosed house and the company that fired you, they couldn't care less if you shriek, "You can't do this to me! I'm the descendent of slaves!"
If you think the former-slave mentality is a match for the will of the rest of the world's people, wake up.
If the parishioners at Pfleger's church and Trinity United had a lick of sense, they would rise up and roar back at him, 'We helped build the greatest nation that has ever arisen, and we will not have that triumph taken away by your portrayal of us as descendents of slaves!'
You can't have it both ways. If you've been forced to do something, then you didn't help. Sold into slavery by African chiefs, yes. But the minute your enslaved ancestors got off the boats they became the engine of this nation's rise to greatness.
To forfeit that great triumph to the language of victimhood -- what kind of logic is that?
To those who wail, "You don't understand how we suffered!" -- Tell that to the people who survived the Great Leap Forward and Stalin's purges. Tell that to the survivors of Pol Pot's regime. Tell that the majority of the world's people, who for countless generations suffered under the most brutal regimes.
Go ahead, ask them what their suffering was like. They'll yell back over their shoulder that yes they suffered horribly, and that now they're determined to kick you and your suffering into the trash heap of history.
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This entry is cross-posted at RezkoWatch.
Steve Diamond's 6/15 discussion with John Batchelor about Bill Ayers's education policy, which is the same policy pitched by Obama's chief education advisor, is now available on podcast from KFI-640 AM Los Angeles radio.
See Steve's Global Labor blog for his latest writings on the racist "education debt" policy. (Scroll down past his Gone on Vacation notice.)
Also, I've just been notified by two of Canada's freedom of speech bloggers that a crisis has erupted, so I must return to that front for a few days.
If any other American bloggers want to pitch in, your help would be welcomed. Here is an outline of the crisis, from Blazing Catfur. Also, check with Binks at Free Mark Steyn! for updates on the latest skirmish.
Readers who have been closely following events should realize by now that if the NAL crowd takes the White House and more seats in Congress, the First Amendment has four years, tops, before it falls.
So Americans who have gotten used to the idea of free speech can learn a great deal by studying the machinations of Canada's thought police.
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