I am an immigrant. I received my status as a national only last year. I have lived here in the US for ten years. My wife has the same status as I do. I am from an English speaking nation and I can say that when I was in the swearing ceremony along with around eighty other people from all over the world, when we got to the part about foreswearing allegiance to other nations, everyone around me stopped talking. In short, no one near me was willing to utter that part of the oath, I confess to my own hesitancy. The fact is, if it came down to it, I'd likely support the country I just immigrated from. My family is there, my heritage is there, why would I swear to stand against it. Afterwards, a group of us discussed this very thing. No one was willing to say that they would stand for American against their home country.

So, I think it is absolutely reasonable for someone to say that if you were raised in another country or have an alternate history from that of the average "traditional" American, then yes you are not going to have the same loyalties (if you are honest about it). I am a very liberal person, but I also see that there is here in the US a liberal rhetoric that is in reality not very honest. Liberal Americans just have to believe there is no differences, but the plain truth is that there are. I even teach my children that my home country is superior to the US. And again, I come from an innocuous English speaking, Western country. Imagine what I would be doing if I came from a place of significant difference!

I personally know many immigrants from many countries, as well as many international students. All of them love the US, but all wish that their own countries were as far advanced as the US and would head back the moment they were. None of them would stand for America if the interests of the other country were at stake. All of them teach their children the glories of their own countries and as far as I know, their children grow up assuming that living in the US is an unfortunate necessity which they can enjoy, but deep down know that the superior country is the other country. As these children grow older, the effect is less, certainly. I also see that it is less in the children of immigrants who came here last generation. The children of this generation's immigrants are much different.

Indeed, I was quite shocked by the attitudes of those being sworn in with me. Some of them actually loathed the US and were not quiet about it. Funny enough, I do understand their disposition, I don't share it, but I sensed an affinity to it. So, America, you ought to wake up to the fact that many of us becoming Americans are not at all like those of you who are Americans. Our America is a very different place and being an American is for us a very different identity.

Some basics: black liberation theology is really just standard liberation theology applied to the American context.

Liberation theology began in South America among Catholic missionaries trying to find ways to express the spiritual freedom they preached in the face of social and political marginalization. But for my evangelical friends, this is not merely social gospel (a taboo in evangelicalism), it is the manifestation of the principles of the Kingdom of God. In short, if one is a member of God's Kingdom, then one attempts to promote those values in one's life: hence working against the abuse and marginalization of other humans. Liberation theology is that branch of theology which attends to those concerns, just like eschatology focusses on end times, and pneumatology focusses on the the Spirit, etc.

However, liberation theology, black or not, disconnects itself from Christian theology when it becomes about the politics alone. So preaching politics is "Christian" only when it is a realization of the Kingdom of God of which its adherents perceive themselves to be members or "citizens" as the Apostle Paul calls them. When it's not specifically connected to those beliefs in some way, then it's just politics and rhetoric and has nothing to do with Christianity.

The question, then, is whether Wright is preaching the Kingdom of God on earth with a view to living out the great commission (=Christian theology), or whether he's just frustrated by the social plight of some Black Americans (=socio-political rhetoric). I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt as say it's the former.

What's really amazing is the ability of Salon to continue to write the same article for four months straight and still have the "moxie" to pretend it's fresh journalistic perspective. I guess that wouldn't be so bad if the article were a decent one, but once more we're treated to an oversimplified thesis wrapped up in over worked rhetorical analysis: "This is one thing, but what if it's really THIS!" or "That is the case (did anyone say case?) but, maybe it's not, maybe, just maybe, it's THIS!."

But I have to comment at least on the ridiculous false choice set up between "those who get it" and "those who don't." What a first class piece of drivel and thinly veiled, catty attempt to lash out at people like me (under forty, PhD, Hillary supporter). Some of us just don't think that Obama is what you apparently blindly accept him to be. It's not that we don't hear the claims and appreciate their political potential; it's rather the case that we take in the whole story and understand that Obama is pretty much unicorns and pots of gold (albeit with some very ernest glares of outrage and sincerity amid his speeches). Hillary is not perfect but what Salon incessantly bitches about is just plain old political necessity.