National Catholic Register: "We’re Waiting, Barack"

The editors of National Catholic Register take Barack Obama to task on where they believe last week's speech on race in America fell short:

We were waiting through Barack Obama’s rousing speech on racial equality to hear the bedrock principle of human rights on which racial equality depends. We were waiting to hear the revolutionary words of equality that were incorporated after the Second World War by the United Nations in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

We never heard them. The Washington special interests to whom Barack Obama is beholden wouldn’t let him say them, even if he wanted to.

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As Obama, America’s orator of the moment, stood to speak about the equality and human rights of the races in our time, we were waiting for him to say that all Americans have the right to life, liberty and security of person. That we are all equal, regardless of any distinction: race, color, sex, language — or birth.

But he couldn’t say that.

We thought he was going to say it when he spoke about the “band of patriots” who gathered in Philadelphia. But he didn’t mention the Declaration of Independence, to which the U.N. document owes so much. We wanted to hear him quote these words:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

But he couldn’t quote those words. He is beholden to special interests that make a great deal of money by denying that people have the right to life. Obama couldn’t say those things ultimately because his official position is that some people are not created equal and do not have equal rights.

And we don’t just mean abortion — though Obama has helped keep abortion legal in all nine months of pregnancy.

In 2002, as an Illinois legislator, Obama went a step further when he voted against the Induced Infant Liability Act, which would have protected babies who were “accidentally” born alive during attempts to abort them.

In a recent debate, Obama said the vote he most regrets was his vote to save Terri Schiavo’s life. Her husband, Michael, wanted Terri dead, even though she was alert and responsive to nurses and family members. He had married again, had a new child with a new woman, and he wanted Terri dead. When a judge granted his request, Congress and President Bush attempted to intervene to save her life, and not just to save her life, but to stop the dangerous precedent. They failed. Now Obama says they shouldn’t have tried.

How quickly he has gone from opposing unwanted children’s right to life to opposing unwanted women’s right to life! History assures us it won’t stop there.

[Read the whole thing]

My Comments:
Good points, but, in fairness to the candidate, I think that they go beyond the scope of what Obama was attempting to accomplish with his speech.