One of the brightest public thinkers around these days is columnist Charles Krauthammer. His recent article on the importance of the associations of Barak Obama is important to read. If you think it is merely a “guilt by association” piece, you are being misled, and should read his second paragraph:

But associations are important. They provide a significant insight into character. They are particularly relevant in relation to a potential president as new, unknown, opaque and self-contained as Obama. With the economy overshadowing everything, it may be too late politically to be raising this issue. But that does not make it, as conventional wisdom holds, in any way illegitimate.

And a little further into the article (after bemoaning the McCain campaign’s behavior) he writes this transition:

Why are these associations important? Do I think Obama is as corrupt as Rezko? Or shares Wright’s angry racism or Ayers’ unreconstructed 1960s radicalism?

No. But that does not make these associations irrelevant. They tell us two important things about Obama.

You will need to click above, or HERE to read the whole thing. Let’s be thinkers about current events and not merely spectators.

And as for our associates, may we hear and heed the truth of Psalm 1:

1:1 Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; 2 but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. 4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; 6 for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

pdb