Can you judge a President by his anti-Semitic associates?

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Note: Some of the posts on Jeff Dunetz’ site, The Lid, are picked up by the Breitbart family of web sites. He was not involved, nor did he have advanced knowledge of the release of the video of the President praising and hugging Derrick Bell, which appeared in the news last week.

The release of the Barack Obama/Derrick Bell Harvard video by the Breitbart site was insignificant by itself. Those who were looking for some major smoking gun were very disappointed. My friends at the site tell me, it was never intended to be a big anything but another example of the President’s long history of associating with radicals. They also inform me that there is more coming, not only of the President, but also of the eventual GOP nominee.

My interpretation of the video differs from my Breitbart friends. When the future President urged people to open up their hearts and minds to Bell it was one more case of him “cozying” up to an anti-Semite.  Understand we are not talking about people who are anti-Israel (although there is a huge crossover of the two) but people who regularly use anti-Semitic stereotypes or more direct derogatory comments about Jews.

Here are some examples:

Derrick Bell: Bell was a teacher of Critical Race Theory (CRT), which focuses on the intersection of race, law and power. Bell, a life-long friend of the President appears on the White House logs as visiting the President as late as 2010, just before Bell passed away.

In their book Beyond All Reason authors Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry explain that CRT believes:

that Jews and Asians enjoy an unfair share of wealth and status. Thus, the necessary normative implication of the radical theory is that steps should be taken to redress the balance more in favor of white gentiles. In addition, the radicals cannot easily explain Jewish and Asian success. Although benign explanations for this success are available, they are logically inconsistent with radical multiculturalism; consequently, the radicals would be forced to explain Jewish and Asian success by deploying theories that parallel historic forms of anti-Semitism.

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