We are dealing here with negative comments made by Obama's old but honest pastor who, God bless him, can see clean through the religious farce that we have become in the U.S. Ponnuru has the gall to ask the question "Should the candidate (Obama) be held accountable" for the pastor's "anti-American" comments (1)?

WTF? Why the frown? It is only because one can ask 'Where are these right-wing psychopaths supporting Mr. Kristol's neoconservatism coming from, and on whose behalf do they come?

Who in this country is held accountable for anything except the poor and the powerless on the bottom? By God, we hold those who cannot make their mortgage payments accountable. By God, we hold those who employ medicinal cannabis to alleviate pain accountable. We are a nation of laws that do not need to make sense, in accordance with the demands of right wing capitalism.

David Krieger has made marvelous effort to provide what amounts to a horrendous list of atrocities committed by the Cheney-Bush administration and the U.S., for which absolutely no one is being held accountable, least of all our chronic American liars, Mrs. Kristol, Bush and Cheney (4).

It takes one mighty sick mindset to let the entire Cheney-Bush administration off the accountability hook and then take out the need for accountability on some old pastor friend of Barack Obama's. It is mindless, is it not?

Likewise, it takes one mighty sick mindset to let the neocon world of Mr. Kristol off the accountability hook, given that Mr. Kristol's neocon world view is responsible for much of current reality.

Obama's pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jr., has suggested that the attacks of 9/11 were brought on, in part, by America, herself. This is only to acknowledge that American capitalists have invaded virtually every country on earth since WWII in search of cheap materials and cheap labor in the interest of profit margins. For over half a century, the U.S. has been involved in global exploitation in pursuit of a global economic hegemony.

It is clear that pastor Jeremiah Wright, Jr. has a decent handle on how much damage that right wing capitalism and the neocon Cheney-Bush regime has caused in the world. He also has keen awareness of how negatively America is now viewed by the world at large. To say "God damn America" instead of "God Bless America" is simply to occupy the position occupied by a majority of Europeans who see the U.S., not as a champion of human rights and democracy, but as a threat to human rights and democracy. This view is far more justifiable that those of Mr. Kristol.

A preemptive invasion of people who have done nothing to you, is immoral in every belief system on earth. Mr. Kristol's right wing America under the Cheney-Bush administration bears no relationship whatsoever to what our Founding Fathers had in mind. We have failed to honor human rights at home and we have mostly nourished greed-driven corrupt corporate capitalism around the world.

The blind self-righteousness of men like Mr. Kristol and all right wing Republican lackeys is precisely what will guarantee our failure as a nation and as a People. When will the People and the press be able to hold right wing Republicans to account for anything? It is long past due. The general inability of Americans to agree upon anything will certainly prove insurmountable.

Why Mr. Kristol continues to defend a failed neocon policy and a failed "crash-and-burn" presidency is beyond belief (5). But then, Mr. Kristol has to defend neoconservatism because so much of it is his baby and it has failed so utterly in the eyes of the world. Kristol has so much to lose that he, like Bush, must remain utterly blind to the reality seen by the good pastor Wright. Mr. Kristol really needs to be held accountable for all neoconservative sin. Ultimately, he will be.

Meanwhile, good Republicans are increasingly able to come to the correct conclusion that the neocon Cheney-Bush regime has even ruined the Republican party itself. There is nothing in this administration that is worthy of defense. It is, in fact, long overdue for impeachment.

"It's no mystery," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.). "You have a very unhappy electorate, which is no surprise, with oil at $108 a barrel, stocks down a few thousand points, a war in Iraq with no end in sight and a president who is still very, very unpopular. He's just killed the Republican brand" (6). In this, William Kristol's ignorance of the reality he has helped to create is simply stunning.

The right wing in America and the right wing press have no interest in anything resembling honest human truth, no longer even knowing what the terms mean. No one in America can deal with the subject of accountability because we are all so terribly guilty for what we have allowed ourselves to become under right wing capitalism and the Cheney-Bush administration. We are so divided as a People that all of our efforts go only into maintaining control over everything we believe to be important to safeguarding the corrupt crony capitalism that defines us as a nation, none of which has anything to do with human rights and democracy.

One cannot control that which one does not comprehend, that is why comprehension is so important. One can claim to comprehend that which one cannot control, e.g., Bush and the U.S. economy, but it is seldom true. Gail Collins described Bush's Friday address to the New York financial community as a joke on the people, and she concluded that "We’re really past expecting anything much (from Bush), but in times of crisis you would like to at least believe your leader has the capacity to pretend he’s in control. Really, if he can’t fix the economy, the least he could do is rehearse the speech. (7)"

Comprehension and control go hand in hand together ... which is to say that the human mind and the world we live in were made for each other. It shows in the world view of Newton and the comprehension and control that we humans have gained over material reality, e.g., Industrial Revolution. It shows even more in the world view of Einstein and the comprehension and control that we humans have gained over subatomic reality, e.g., Informational Revolution.

Comprehension and control show not at all in the world view of the Abrahamic religions and the right wing religious despotism that accompanies them where ever they go in the world, wherein our highest efforts go to controlling each other in the name of survival and in the full absence of comprehension. Mr. Kristol's neocon America is the antithesis of Jefferson's human rights-based democracy.

In a free world, one would always place one's loyalty to self dead last, and one's loyalty to the human truth first, because what is good for oneself is what is good for all of us as a People. Western religious systems and eastern ethical systems have little to contribute to any of this, mostly because neither have anything to do with human knowledge and human rights. By placing the People first, one places oneself first. Complex this is not. It is, however, a decided threat to Mr. Kristol's failed neocon world view.

One bottom line message in nascent Christian ethics is really as simple as "Live and let live". The People are inherently good, not bad. There is no need for bloodshed over mythologies and superstitions that nourish despotism and rule by the rich. Mythologies and superstition do not influence anything in the real world except through the minds of the mindless. Employment of mythologies in completing one's personal knowledge base and world view is an exercise in self-delusion.

That would be how terribly far from reality we, as a People, have been pulled away from that which is meaningful to people. We have been coerced by greed-driven corporate capitalism into believing essentially nothing outside of the corrupt corporate reality that defines us as citizens of the U.S.

The rich have convinced us that they are better people and more deserving to be in control than we, the People. They have convinced us that if we get out there and give "freedom" (i.e., a license for corruption) a try, we can be just like them, i.e., rich and desperate for the control required to stay rich.

With that control, the rich can become even richer, to achieve the ludicrous and the ridiculous at one and the same time, i.e, to have acquired more money than is humanly justifiable because it is more money than anyone needs. We end up living in a capitalistic fabrication of a superficial, meaningless world where no one gives a damn about anything outside of raw survival.

It is not Obama's pastor who is anti-American. One cannot get more anti-American than Mr. Kristol and the neocon right wing Cheney-Bush administration. God bless the NY Times for bringing this to light. The situation is worse than pathetic, it is laughable.

Even past champions of the right wing are abandoning the right wing. Frank Schaeffer spent several years making money by writing books promoting the Religious Right's world view. He has recently "fessed up":

"What I slowly realized was that the religious-right leaders we were helping to gain power were not 'conservatives' at all, in the old sense of the word. They were anti-American religious revolutionaries" (8).

This week, on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we are now provided an updated version. It begins with the Human Right to Peace on earth (9). One would hope that Mr. Kristol and right wing America would come to realize that this is what America is supposed to be all about. They ought also come to realize that it is all over for them.