Sunday, January 25, 2009

Vine & Fig Tree at the Inauguration

My sister has called my attention to the mention of "Vine & Fig Tree" in the benediction by the Rev. Joseph Lowery at Obama's inauguration. I didn't watch a single moment of the spectacle.

Lowery's concluding paragraphs:

We go now to walk together as children, pledging that we won’t get weary in the difficult days ahead. We know you will not leave us alone. With your hands of power and your heart of love, help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nations shall not lift up sword against nation; when tanks will be beaten into tractors; when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid; when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back; when brown can stick around; when yellow will be mellow; when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen.

Hours later, Obama bombed Pakistan. "Tanks into tractors" was just "a feel-good-factor even Christian anarchists may enjoy."

Reason Magazine's Nick Gillespie comments:

One of my unironic hopes for the Obama presidency is that it does close out 400 years and more of odious racial discourse in America and with it, a good chunk of political correctness. Then again, right on Inauguration Day, you get the minister Joseph Lowery praying about how he hopes that one day the U.S. will become anti-discriminatory: "Lord...we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right."

What the hell was that? An unpublished Nipsey Russell rhyme from a lost episode of The $100,000 Pyramid? Yellow will be mellow? When the Jew can drink Mountain Dew? The wop can be a cop? The kraut can give a shout?

I realize Lowery is an old man and I cut him some slack for all the crap that he and too many others like him had to deal with for far too long. But I think we've hit that day where black is not asked to go back. And Asians, those poor, sad-sack model minorities, don't have to be any more mellow than the fans at a Ted Nugent concert.

Not The $100,000 Pyramid, but an interpolation of Big Bill Broonzy's "Black, Brown and White."

Hopefully the next generation of blacks won't be as racist as the outgoing generation. That transformation is not likely to occur under Obama's leadership, however. Lowery fails to see that blacks today are more racist than whites. More blacks voted solely on the basis of skin color in 2008 than whites did, and most whites who voted based on skin color did so out of guilt for the alleged racism of their ancestors. As a liberal, Lowery doesn't really believe the Bible, which is why he hasn't been a force for true reconciliation.

It's a worldview issue.

The Bush-Obama Administration believes bombs can secure mideast oil. The Welfare State threatens violence against productive people who resist spreading their wealth to the unproductive. Both rich and poor, black and white, want something for nothing, and are willing to initiate force to get it. Our problems aren't caused by racists, but by liberals (who are not as truly liberal as conservatives) and others who are part of the cult of statism.

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