First Reverend Wright, now Father Pfleger, and next - according to those following the story closely - will be Obama's new pastor at Trinity Congregational in Chicago, Reverend Moss. Despite the Left's whining that talk of the vile rhetoric spewed by these men has nothing to do with Obama, most of us know better. The company one keeps - and has reportedly kept in the case of the first two men for twenty years - is an absolute indication of one's character. We all tend to surround ourselves with those who possess character traits we admire, for better or worse. Barack Obama has called these men "mentors": this suggests something very fundamental about the quality of Obama's judgement and character, and it is very pertinent to the election of the next leader of the free world.

But the bigger issue is so far evading the press: or perhaps they are simply reluctant to challenge it. This nation needs to ask what the heck is going on in black churches. Astoundingly, pundit after pundit on cable television stations, when challenged to defend these nutcases, jumps to their defense, throwing about phrases like "white privilege" to justify hatred of one race for another. To justify the wish of one race to torture another, to make another pay for past sins, some real and some imagined, most exaggerated and pointless to today's discussion.

White supremists have had their catchphrases too. Over the years these have become too distasteful for repetition in civilized conversation. But they were as ludicrous, as injust, and as violence-inciting as that which is spewed from the pulpit of Trinity Church. The fact that this nonsense is spoken in God's house makes it not less ugly, but in fact moreso; and these hate-mongers seem to feel that the uniform of a "man of God" makes them immune to the consequence of their own sins; they seem to feel that hate is not only their real privilege but a sort of badge. And so it is their duty to teach it and to spread it and - if one is to judge by the lunatic rantings of Father Pfleger - to incite violence in its name.

But hate is just as ugly screamed from an alter as it is around the bonfire in that isolated grove of trees out of town; the frock can be as ugly as the hood and mask; a cross set burning in the grove is just as misrepresented as the one hanging on the wall of Trinity Church.

It isn't only the responsibility of the white race to end the increasingly vocal war between the races in America. It is increasingly apparent that the black community also must accept responsibility - and a lot of it - for the deplorable condition of things. Decades of blaming Whitey got old years ago. Whatever responsibility the institution of slavery bore for the condition of blacks in the US has been near negated by the refusal of the black community to pull itself up by the bootstraps and take control of its destiny. The persistent complaint of those who have no personal experience of the pre-civil rights America is laughable - and worse, it is a profound insult to those who truly suffered in those darker times.

People like Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger may find that a special place in Hell is reserved for them, for they cruelly preach not only hatred but helplessness. They sell the idea that anger and resentment are the answer to problems in the black community: if only we get angry enough, threatening enough, loud enough, things will magically change. But other minority groups who have made themselves more successful in America than have blacks, despite great discrimination, know that the real answer to discrimination lies in hard work, in policing the moral standards of one's community, and in refraining from community obsession over hardships or past wrongs. Consequently they have raised their people up, achieved an economic status, and gained the respect of White America to far greater extent than has Black America. People like Wright and Pfleger keep Black America down, because their rhetoric encourages it to keep itself down.

Maturity, whether in the individual or in the nation, often comes through necessary growing pains. The moral quality of the black community is on the verge of being put in the spotlight and revealed for what it is. The candidacy of Barack Obama has shed light on some of the more self-defeating, destructive attitudes in the black community - and of the frightening prevalence of those attitudes; for whether each individual African American buys into it or not, far too many do and far too many others turn their heads away and condone the hatred, telling themselves it is justified, that whites deserve hatred.

But alas, that is exactly what the Klan told themselves about the other race, isn't it?