print“Hagee’s Hebraic bond goes back to John Winthrop and the New England Puritans. Revivalism, evangelicalism, the faith of happy-clappers—this branch of Protestantism, and its beliefs, is also as American as apple pie. The First and Second Great Awakenings were epochal events in early America, instrumental in the Revolution. And later in Abolition. …
The particularism of Afrocentrism, Wright’s creed, is as American as Idi Amin was. Both alien and idiotic is Wright’s fealty to ‘Black values’ and the Dark Continent—where everywhere black bodies are stacked up like firewood, to paraphrase the talented Keith Richburg, a black American journalist.”
The complete column: “Wright As American As Idi Amin.” Comments are welcome.
Another excellent essay.
Just one point: Charles Sumner wasn’t murdered. South Carolina Rep. Preston Brooks severely beat Sumner with his cane on the floor of the U. S. Senate, leaving the abolitionist senator disabled, but still alive. (See
this.)
Sumner was one of the radical Republican reconstructionists after the Civil War.
[Thanks. Will correct that.–IM]
Sorry, I left off the reference in my post. Here is the Charles Sumner reference. [you left it off.–IM]
Wright damned America, not for what it intends, but for what it’s done. No one disputes him on the facts..just for being uppity enough to point them out, and to call a spade a spade. Obama may have “thrown him under a bus” for being inconvenient, but Wright speaks for America haters the world over–and at home–and I for one am happy to have a forum here to pile on.
Ilana,
You have a wonderful vocabulary. I don’t but am willing to learn new words. It would be great if we could just click on a word and get its definition.
Maybe I should address this to browser designers. Or perhaps there is a program that automatically inserts links to definitions for more rarely used words.
[Will try to do that in the future, time permitting. Didn’t think there were any bon mots in the last column.–IM]
Good as usual.
Phil is right. Sumner was crippled, but went on to serve again in the House. Interesting side note: Brooks actually recieved a gold-plated cane in the mail from a grateful constituent, not to mention a flood of congratulatory letters.
More of that Congressional “tradition of civility” we’re always hearing about!
One last word on your bon mots. They need not be in a different color if this would clutter the text too much or lest you insult someone with a good vocabulary.
It might be a good idea in the future if EVERY word was linked to a great dictionary/ thesaurus. The nation might become capable of good English again. Who knows what revival that might spark?