Just words

Barack Obama's speech "A More Perfect Union" said Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy.

Actually they formed a republic, not a democracy.

Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean

Only eight of the 55 delegates were born elsewhere: four (Butler, Fitzsimons, McHenry, and Paterson) in Ireland, two (Davie and Robert Morris) in England, one (Wilson) in Scotland, and one (Hamilton) in

to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787

The United States Declaration of Independence is an act of the Second Continental Congress, adopted on July 4, 1776. The Constitutional Convention began May 25, 1787 and ended September 17, 1787 - though Barry Obama says it ended in the spring of 1787.

.... I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes.

A couple of days ago you claimed you had never heard any of these things. Now you admit you did. Can we ever trust anything you say, or are you just another politician.

Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

If I ever heard that many things I disagreed with, I would have found anther church. In fact I did hear my pastor saying some things that I did not believe were in the Bible, and I did some research and told my parents I planed to confront him with them next Sunday, and they told me I could not confront the pastor. As if he could not have handled a theological discussion with a teenager. I told them if I could not confront him, I was not going to go to church, but they said I had to go to some church, so I began attending the only other church in walking distance of my house, even though it was a different denomination.

... As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

And you did not confront him on it until the media began running clips of his sermons, at which time your campaign website began a series of changes to make him disappear, and the Trinity United Church of Christ website began a similar effort to remove the most objectionable things from its website.

... Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.

But I predict in a few more days of this bad publicity you will disown him.

I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.... We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.... Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

As far as I know, Jim Crow laws have been removed from the books, red-lining now longer takes place (and white as well as blacks have signed stupid Sub Prime loans with increasing interest and balloon payments without reading what they were signing)