Election 2008: Is Barack Obama's small-town America really a land of bitter gun-toting, Bible-thumping racists? Or are they just God-fearing American patriots? Maybe we should ask his "typical white" grandmother.
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Many pundits call it a gaffe, but we see Barack Obama's remarks to a bunch of San Francisco Democrats about small town people in Pennsylvania as a revelation. The remarks of our first "post-racial" presidential candidate go a long way towards explaining how he could listen to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright talk about the "United States of White America" for two decades.
Meeting privately with a group of donors in the Bay Area's super-liberal Marin County on April 6, the most eloquent presidential candidate perhaps of all time told them of "small towns in Pennsylvania" and in the Midwest beset by job losses in a changing economy. He told of how "they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment" to vent their frustrations.
On Saturday, talking to the bitter townspeople of Muncie, Ind., he admitted that despite his oratorical skills that many have called inspiring, he "didn't say it as well as I should have" even though the "underlying truth of what I said remains."
The underlying truth is that people "cling" to their guns and their faith because of a document called the Declaration of Independence, signed in Philadelphia, where church bells rang out on July 4, 1776.
They "cling" to them not because they aren't multimillionaires like Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, who only as a result of her husband's candidacy suddenly became proud of her country. They cling to them because they believe God gave them freedom and the right to protect it.
In the U.S. Constitution they are given the freedom of religion and the right to bear arms. Their faith, practiced in freedom earned and protected by people with guns, gives them a lasting hope that not even a gifted speaker running for president can provide. They proudly say and sing "God Bless America," not shout "God Damn America," as Obama's pastor of two decades has done.
They possess guns because the Constitution says they can. They use those guns not just to hunt, but to protect their homes and their families. Many believe, as the late Charlton Heston believed, that their guns will only be taken from their "cold dead hands."
Right now, the U.S. Supreme Court is debating their right to bear arms, and whether the District of Columbia can take them away. As we have noted, Barack Obama's record indicates he would support taking their guns away, something he would call a "common sense restriction" on their rights.
Perhaps Obama would like to explain his open border beliefs to the "embittered" people of Hazelton, Pa. Feeling the added burden of illegal immigration in terms of crime and economics, they decided to start removing the incentives for illegal immigration.
Under the leadership of Mayor Louis J. Barletta, Hazelton passed an ordinance penalizing landlords that rent to illegals and businesses that give them jobs. Barletta denies racism is the motive, saying, "What I'm doing here is protecting the legal taxpayer of any race." And American citizens of any race.
True, not many small-town Pennsylvanians or small-town Americans attended prep schools in Hawaii or live in million-dollar homes. But that does not make them bitter bigots. For a man who was supposed to make stereotyping a thing of the past, he advances a stereotype of his own making.