YOU THINK "MEAN-SPIRITED" IS BAD? I'VE FOUND ANOTHER AMERICA-BASHING SPEECH!

The folks at Gateway Pundit and Ironic Surrealism have revealed a 1990 article from the Illinois Daily Herald in which then-Harvard law student Barack Obama said the following:

“Hopefully, more and more people will begin to feel their story is somehow part of this larger story of how we're going to reshape America in a way that is less mean-spirited and more generous,” Obama said.

Gateway Pundit posts this under the headline "Face It, He Hates You... Obama in 1990: We're Going to Reshape 'Mean-Spirited' and Selfish America."

But these bloggers have overlooked an equally appalling -- and very similar -- example of America-bashing from just about the same time.

It's from a 1988 speech. Can you believe the following was said in public? And in front of millions of people, no less? What kind of America-hater would say this?

... I hope to stand for a new harmony, a greater tolerance. We've come far, but I think we need a new harmony among the races in our country. And we're on a journey into a new century, and we've got to leave that tired old baggage of bigotry behind.

Some people who are enjoying our prosperity, are forgetting, have forgotten what it's for. But they diminish our triumph when they act as if wealth is an end in itself.

And there are those who have dropped their standards along the way, as if ethics were too heavy and slowed their rise to the top. There's graft in city hall, the greed on Wall Street; there's influence peddling in Washington, and the small corruptions of everyday ambition....

I wonder sometimes if we have forgotten who we are.

Recognize that? Are you as horrified as I am by the speaker's contempt for our great nation?

Know what speech this is? Here, I'll give you a hint by quoting one more line:

I want a kinder and gentler nation.

Yup -- George H.W. Bush's 1988 Republican convention speech included all that talk about how America had lost its way.

And now that I think about it, "a kinder and gentler nation" is pretty much the same thing as a nation that's "less mean-spirited and more generous," isn't it?