Obama’s speech on race

Sen. Barack Obama's Tuesday speech on race might very well become the signature address of his presidential campaign.

The Illinois Democrat, running on a platform of change, hope, and unity, is the only candidate capable of addressing race without risking his own sacrifice at the altar of political correctness. But the Philadelphia speech wasn't given entirely on Sen. Obama's terms. Its primary purpose was to address the firestorm of criticism surrounding the race-focused, anti-American sermons of his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the senator's refusal to disassociate himself and his campaign from the man who married him and baptized his daughters.

In the process, Sen. Obama sought to return the attention of the media and voters to his broad, inspirational message, his public speaking skills, and his populism.

Sen. Obama again condemned the Rev. Wright's sermons of white oppression, black victimhood and America as evil aggressor, while defending the man's calls to help the sick and needy. The senator revisited his multiracial background and recounted blacks' history of racial injustice, from slavery to segregation. He correctly pointed out that whites harbor plenty of racial resentment, too, and urged Americans to not "retreat into our respective corners," but come together to solve shared challenges and "move beyond some of our old racial wounds."

That Sen. Obama apparently still values the counsel of the Rev. Wright, and whether that reflects poorly on the judgment of a man who aspires to the presidency, became almost an afterthought -- his speech made the issue less about their relationship and more about the future of all Americans.

So how best to end the country's ongoing race war? Apparently by inflaming the country's ongoing class war, in Sen. Obama's view.

He would create "ladders of opportunity" -- but not the kind where capitalists launch businesses and offer free-market jobs. Instead, he would lavish more tax funding on failing schools and promise lifetime security for unskilled workers -- all paid for by transferring even more wealth from corporations and the upper- and upper-middle classes to an expanding dependent class.

"This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job," Sen. Obama said Tuesday. "It's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit."

Sen. Obama ignores the extent to which that industry is being driven offshore by punitive taxes and regulation. In denouncing racism, Sen. Obama criticizes "profit," the driving force of the most prosperous economy in the world, the very reason that "in no other country on Earth is my story even possible."

Does Sen. Obama really believe that government-imposed, tax-funded "economic justice" can create the kind of harmony he intends to deliver? That the already bloated welfare state bears no responsibility for this country's racial divide?

Sen. Obama has proved himself a unifier on the issue of race. But on taxes and the economy, his ideas of equity are as divisive as they come.