ParisTampaBlog

No, I don't think the Rev. Wright is a "lunatic."  Fanatic I'll let you have. Wright is not wandering about clueless. He's got his eye right on the ball. He obviously knows just what he wants, this being attention from the media, all he can get of it, and at the moment he's getting a lot.

And, unlike Obama, Wright seems to be enjoying himself through it all, first during the interview with his old friend, Bill Moyers, then at the NAACP dinner in Detroit, and Monday, at the National Press Club in Washington, before many of his liberation theology friends.

Wright says his purpose in speaking is to defend the black church, which was for hundreds of years invisible, but is now out in the open and under attack.

Clearly, however, what the Reverend is really doing is displaying his considerable biblical knowledge and quite striking rhetorical skills, all to further his own position and agenda, not those of the black church, nor of his own church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, nor of Trinity church member, Barack Obama.

I don't call into question the Reverend's intelligence. Furthermore, much of what he says is true, although hardly original, in particular when he recounts our shameful treatment of the native Americans and our several hundred year long oppression of black Americans, most of whose ancestors are more American, have been here longer, than most of us.

However, these and other equally unsavory "truths" of our history have probably blinded him to seeing the whole truth. And in his "blindness" he repeated his other much less defensible and long held positions.

Once again he defended his wholehearted attachment to Louis Farrakhan, even had Farrakhan people as body guards at the Press Club. And once again he refused to retract and repudiate his own conspiracy theory in regard to the origin of HIV.

These two "crazy" positions are probably the basis for your term, lunatic. And in fact these two positions alone make one wonder about Wright's judgment regarding everything else.

At the National Press Club event Wright clearly revealed his oratorical gifts and while listening to him you could easily understand how he could hold for so long the rapt attention of the members of his congregation.

Probably those who were not thoroughly persuaded by Wright's rhetoric did not remain in his congregation. Why Barack Obama remained so long is difficult to understand, and not just for you.

I would explain his remaining by his relative innocence and inexperience, that which, probably more than anything else, makes one question, as you do, Barack's readiness to be president.

But you in what you write, why do you continue to mention and fault Barack's contacts with the Weather Underground figure, Bill Ayers? You ought to get over that. Did you ever read the Stanley Fish piece I sent you? That should have made you realize (what I see as anyway) your error for faulting him for those contacts.

Finally, when Barack says, "I may not know Wright as well as I thought," I accept him at his word. How much do we know even those who are closest to us? And furthermore, haven't you ever been mistaken in your judgment about someone in your own life?

Barack probably needed a father when as a young man alone in Chicago he met Wright. His own father had abandoned him when he was 2 years old, and most likely the Rev. Wright became the missing father figure. Again, no reason to condemn Barack for that.

Ben, I read the Times article as you suggested. I found it terribly discouraging. There are always, it seems, good people (such as Peter Santos and Mayor Booker in the article) who want to help, but no program yet that seems to be effectively working for the majority of the returning ex-offenders, helping them to get back into life and work and stay there.

You’re right, the educational component is missing from the Newark program(s). And education may be, as you believe, the missing factor, although I sometimes think that there are problems that will always go beyond our ability to remedy, and this may, at the moment anyway, be one of them.

I guess I would agree with Ms. Giardi when she says: “A lot of these guys want the easy way out. We can give them everything — hold their hand, give them a job and a place to live — but something has to click in their head. I don’t think anyone has figured out what that magic switch is.”

What about you?

"Something has to click in their head." In fact one can probably say that about most everyone, ex-offenders certainly, but also kids in our inner city public schools, even our own children on occasion. The only effective change strategy has to come from within. I guess we know that and that from the outside we can’t make that "click" happen, try as we might.

Notes:

Ben Thompson is the CEO of STRIVE, the Boston, Massachusetts branch of STRIVE National. STRIVE under Ben’s leadership has decided to concentrate its re-training efforts on ex-offenders, first helping them to complete high school and at least two years of community college, before helping them to find a job.

For recidivism is considerably less for those ex-offenders who have gone back to school, and remained until graduation, than for those going directly from prison to job, most often one usually not paying a living wage.

The Times article makes clear the extent of the problem we are facing, one that neither Hillary or Barack is addressing.

First that in Newark alone, some 2,300 men and women pour into the city from prison each year, and that 65 percent are rearrested within five years, and also that one in six adult residents of the city has a criminal record.

And second that even with crime at historic lows, the number of people behind bars in the country is 2.3 million, its highest level ever, according to the Pew Center on the States; last year, there were 7 million people in jail or prison, on probation or on parole.

Now people are calling Obama a liberal, placing him with Michael Dukakis, and John Kerry, and before them, with Adlai Stevenson and George McGovern.

There is some question whether Obama will be able to successfully avoid the label now in the primary campaign, but most of all in the presidential campaign in the Fall, when the label alone may destroy his winning chances.

It is a fact that Democrats, during the 60 years since FDR, who gave the modern meaning to the term liberal and was himself immune to its subsequent electoral poison, have only won the presidency when they have backed a centrist candidate, starting with Truman, then Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and most recently Clinton.

In every election when they have put up a liberal or left of center candidate, first Stevenson, then Hunphrey, McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, and finally Kerry, they have lost, most often to Republican landslides.

It’s not clear to me that Obama fully understands this. That more important even than the Rev. Wright or "bitter" controversies is his being able to avoid the designation liberal.

In our country the term liberal, a most favored attribute in earlier times, has come to mean someone out of touch with ordinary people and out of touch with reality, someone for whom books and ideas are more important than "bread and circuses," than eating and drinking, Nascar and professional wrestling.

It also means someone who looks primarily to federal government programs in order to alleviate poverty or economic hardship, that which is still the main source of human suffering.

In today’s news we see pictures of hungry people, Haitians rummaging for food in the city dumps, Indians with hands outstretched grabbing at sacks of flour and sugar. The liberal would say we have the food, let’s distribute it more equitably.

The centrist wouldn’t be quick to take any action, but would look for non-governmental ways to prevent these situations from arising in the future, while not fighting government handouts in the present.

Most of all it’s not clear to me that Obama is as much concerned with wealth creation as he is with wealth distribution. This distinction alone does most to explain the liberal having fallen out of favor, for most people understand, at least in this country, perhaps no longer in Europe, that wealth creation has to come first.

We know from long experience that wealth creation doesn’t come from government action (the former USSR being the proof of this), but from the free, inventive, and imaginative actions of individuals who by their own efforts come up with things that are useful and pleasing to others and thereby represent new wealth.

What in Obama’s stump speeches on the campaign trail shows that he understands this? Not his protection of the jobs in the rust belt that had to go, not his rejection of NAFTA or the trade treaty between the U.S. and Columbia. Only his support of more enlightened (more "liberal") immigration policy suggests that he may understand that immigrants are and always have been probably the principal source of this country’s greatest economic strength, and resulting wealth.