Posted on 08/31/2011 10:28:28 AM PDT by Kaslin
A few not to be missed articles or blogs have appeared in the past few days. The first is by the conservative New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat. Most people, especially those who still buy the print edition, see his regular featured column. But fewer people read his blog, which appears only on the paper’s website, and for that, one usually has to search to find. Two days ago, Douthat wrote about the myth spread by many Democrats and liberals: that conservatives and Republicans want to institute a theocracy in America.
As Douthat points out,
[A] spate of recent articles have linked the Republican presidential candidates to scary-sounding political theologies like “Dominionism” and “Christian Reconstructionism,” and used these links to suggest that Christian extremism is once more on the march.
He wisely notes that
when candidates wear their religion on their sleeve, especially, the press has every right to ask how that faith relates to their political agenda.
But he goes on to caution the media that reporters and writers should not assume that
the most radical figure in a particular community is always the most important one, or the most extreme passage in a particular writer’s work always defines his real-world influence.
Because a column is limited in words, he did not present any examples, aside from referring to outgoing executive editor Bill Keller’s recent article in the paper’s magazine section, as well as the piece by Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker. But he was not able to cite and comment in detail on what in particular was wrong with either of their presentations. Addressing the usual double standard when journalists write about beloved figures on the Left, and how they write about those on the Right, he comments:
If you didn’t spend the Jeremiah Wright controversy searching works of black liberation theology for inflammatory evidence of what Obama “really” believed, you probably shouldn’t obsess over the supposed links between Rick Perry and R. J. Rushdoony, the Christian Reconstructionist guru.
Now, on his informal blog, Douthat expands at length in a way he could not in his column. In particular, he dissects Lizza’s highly influential article. One has to realize that the attitude Lizza expresses towards a strong, avowed Christian candidate like Michele Bachmann is going to be picked up and cited by scores of readers, as well as the MSM, as proof that Bachmann is beholden to truly dangerous religious zealots.
First, Douthat acknowledges that Lizza was correct to ask Bachmann to talk to him about influences on her that led to her current outlook and especially to her political beliefs. This is fair ground. After all, many of us did the same when we urged journalists not to ignore the influences on Barack Obama of liberation theology and his own pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Clearly, in Bachmann’s case, as Douthat writes, there is a connection “between her ideological perspective and the particular cluster of evangelical institutions where most of her political education took place.”
But, he adds, Lizza also spent a lot of space linking her — without real evidence — to Francis Schaeffer, a 1970s evangelical activist, theologian, and scholar. Lizza’s point was to create a link between Bachmann and what is called “Dominionism,” the new boogey-man of the Left, which is supposed to take over the nation if someone like Bachmann or Rick Perry become our president.
What Douthat does is tear apart the bulk of Lizza’s conspiracy theorizing, showing that he even gets Schaeffer entirely wrong. As he writes, those beliefs “are a long way from the claim that Christians ‘alone’ are ‘mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns.’ Likewise, it seems rather strange to depict a writer who goes out of his way to critique the Constantinian settlement as a supporter of Christian ‘dominion’ over public life.” Schaeffer was accused by Lizza, for example, of wanting to propose the “violent overthrow” of the U.S. government if the current abortion laws were not overturned . Douthat points out that Schaeffer actually “insisted that ‘the distinction between force and violence is crucial,’ warning Christians considering civil disobedience to remember ‘that overreaction can too easily become the ugly horror of sheer violence.’”
Unlike Lizza, Douthat’s blog gives his readers Schaeffer’s actual views to consider, not a parody of them. The man was closer in thought to Thoreau or Martin Luther King, Jr., than to any advocate of armed terrorism. He notes that most New Yorker readers take Lizza’s article at face value, and since they know nothing about evangelical thought, believe most of what he says. If Bachmann’s mentors are shown to be essentially nutty zealots, then she too must be the same.
He shows that Lizza incorrectly tied her and Schaeffer to a Christian Reconstructionist named R.J. Rushdoony, who really does favor a Christian theocracy, although even Schaeffer dismissed him as an advocate of “bad theology and bad politics alike.” Douthat concludes with this important piece of advice:
Schaeffer’s major contribution to American public life wasn’t any sort of sinister “dominionist” master plan, but rather a much more defensible blueprint for Christian political action: He argued that Christian values were under assault in contemporary American life, that the idea of secular “neutrality” was something of a sham, and that believers had an obligation to be 1) engaged with the culture rather than bunkered against it, and 2) engaged politically on issues (abortion, especially) where fundamental moral truths were at stake. One can dislike this blueprint and disagree with its premises, but its perspective on American politics is no more illiberal than the perspective of, say, the civil rights movement. And the fact that Schaeffer influenced a prominent evangelical politician like Bachmann isn’t nearly as surprising, strange or scary as Lizza’s piece often makes it sound.
The message, then, is simple: Beware of liberal journalists who exaggerate in order to paint candidates with whom they disapprove as religious zealots and moral imbeciles. Their goal is to assure Barack Obama’s re-election, and they will stop at nothing to achieve it.
The second article to which I want to call readers’ attention is that at The American Thinker by Jack Cashill, author of the much discussed thesis that Barack Obama did not write Dreams From My Father, but that the real author was really Bill Ayers.
Now, Cashill provides new evidence, in the form of a previously unseen letter sent by Barack Obama when he was editor of The Harvard Law Review, in response to a post in a local law school newspaper from Jim Chen, now dean at the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. Chen had opposed the Harvard Law School’s policy of affirmative action.
Cashill notes two major finds in the Obama letter. First, our current president admits that he was an affirmative action admission. One must ask: is this one of the reasons the public has not seen the president’s college records?
Second, Cashill proves by his discussion of the grammar used by Obama in the letter that at that time in his life, Obama did not know how to write. Cashill notes the following:
“Since the merits of the Law Review’s selection policy has been the subject of commentary for the last three issues,” wrote Obama, “I’d like to take the time to clarify exactly how our selection process works.”
If Obama were as smart as a fifth-grader, he would know, of course, that “merits … have.” Were there such a thing as a literary Darwin Award, Obama could have won it on this on one sentence alone. He had vindicated Chen in his first ten words.
Although the letter is fewer than a thousand words long, Obama repeats the subject-predicate error at least two more times. In one sentence, he seemingly cannot make up his mind as to which verb option is correct so he tries both: “Approximately half of this first batch is chosen … the other half are selected … “
He then goes on to reproduce one unintelligible paragraph:
Another distinctive Obama flaw is to allow a string of words to float in space. Please note the unanchored phrase in italics at the end of this sentence:
“No editors on the Review will ever know whether any given editor was selected on the basis of grades, writing competition, or affirmative action, and no editors who were selected with affirmative action in mind.” Huh?
The point is simple. Four years later, he completed his book, which has been widely proclaimed to be one of the most well-written presidential memoirs our country has ever seen. Clearly, Barack Obama had a ghost writer, or a great deal of unacknowledged help. Cashill has argued — with circumstantial evidence that will not substitute for many as direct proof — that Bill Ayers was the memoir’s real author. Others may argue in the future that someone else, not Ayers, worked with our current president on the book.
In any case, since Obama has taken full credit and many people voted for him because of the impression they had of Obama from the memoir, the question of authorship is a legitimate issue. Perhaps we will never find out the actual answer. At least, as the folks at Powerline point out, Obama’s letter “reflects a substantial gap between Obama’s office and his abilities.”
Both subjects of my blog today make it more than clear: we can no longer trust a great deal that appears in the mainstream media.
the media are the arm of the Dem party and if anyone thinks otherwise then is a fool.
Note how his illegal uncle was arrested, has a valid SS, he was done with DUI and where is this so called media.
NO WHERE
I started to distrust and be disgusted with the MSM way back in 1963 when my University was integrated. I saw and heard how these “reporters” asked leading questions of the students, how they put untruths in their mouths and how they lied on TV (Black and White) that same night on the news.
I also observed how the MSM was disappointed that there were no riots on campus and that the black graduate student was immediately accepted by the student body.
Did Perry attend their church for 20 years?? I doubt it. This is a false comparison even for a conservative to make.
Only two??...hell, we get that every hour of every day.
What Douthat does is tear apart the bulk of Lizza’s conspiracy theorizing, showing that he even gets Schaeffer entirely wrong. As he writes, those beliefs “are a long way from the claim that Christians ‘alone’ are ‘mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns.’ Likewise, it seems rather strange to depict a writer who goes out of his way to critique the Constantinian settlement as a supporter of Christian ‘dominion’ over public life.” Schaeffer was accused by Lizza, for example, of wanting to propose the “violent overthrow” of the U.S. government if the current abortion laws were not overturned. Douthat points out that Schaeffer actually “insisted that ‘the distinction between force and violence is crucial,’ warning Christians considering civil disobedience to remember ‘that overreaction can too easily become the ugly horror of sheer violence.’”
Unlike Lizza, Douthat’s blog gives his readers Schaeffer’s actual views to consider, not a parody of them. The man was closer in thought to Thoreau or Martin Luther King, Jr., than to any advocate of armed terrorism. He notes that most New Yorker readers take Lizza’s article at face value, and since they know nothing about evangelical thought, believe most of what he says. If Bachmann’s mentors are shown to be essentially nutty zealots, then she too must be the same.
He shows that Lizza incorrectly tied her and Schaeffer to a Christian Reconstructionist named R.J. Rushdoony, who really does favor a Christian theocracy, although even Schaeffer dismissed him as an advocate of “bad theology and bad politics alike.”
Ping for later. A couple of quick observations in the meantime:
1) While Douthat is right about Schaeffer, he makes the mistake of buying into the leftist assertion that Rushdoony advocated a violent overthrow. John Frame, of Westminster Seminary (Presbyterian), wrote an essay titled Machen's Warrior Children that contains this summary of the "Dominionist" position....
The publication in 1973 of Rousas J. Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical Law and in 1977 of Greg L. Bahnsen’s Theonomy in Christian Ethics created still another controversy. These books revived a position often held in Reformed history (but never unanimously) that present-day civil states should be governed by the Law of Moses. Specifically, the theonomists argued, the penalties for crimes in Old Covenant Israel should be applied to the same crimes today. So, now as then, adultery, homosexuality and blasphemy should be capital crimes. The theonomists were very militant in promoting their positions, and those in opposition were equally militant, if not more so. Churches and presbyteries were divided over this issue.2) I'd be more worried about Catholic voters who might be influenced by über-Catholic Michael Voris' video blogs that are posted regularly here on FR. Voris actually advocates the kind of anti-American "let's take away the vote from everyone but us" position that Lizza is afraid of:Opponents argued that God’s relationship to Old Testament Israel was unique and that the specific laws given to Israel were not intended to rule all other nations. A moderate position is that we must look at each of the laws God gave to Moses to determine the function of each in redemptive history and civil society, and thus to determine the precise relevance of each statute for our society.
The theonomists, also called Christian reconstructionists, sometimes seemed to be offering a political programme for immediate implementation. Opponents were rather horrified at the idea that someone could take over the government and immediately institute death penalties for any number of actions that had until that time been treated lightly in society. As the discussion proceeded, however, it became evident that the theonomic thesis was actually somewhat more moderate, because in their view, the Old Testament laws could not, and should not, be implemented in modern society until, through preaching of the gospel, those societies were dominated by regenerate people who loved God’s law. Since most reconstructionists were postmillennial, they believed that one day Christianity would dominate human culture, but that that might not happen until many centuries into the future. And they believed in a very limited state government, incapable of instituting anything like a reign of terror. In their view, the dominant government in society should be that of the family and the self-government of regenerate individuals.
My sense is that this controversy, like earlier ones, has wound down somewhat, though it continues to be much discussed in classrooms of Christian colleges and seminaries. More moderate positions, like that of Poythress referenced earlier, seem to be winning the day
"....the only way to prevent a democracy from committing suicide is to limit the vote to faithful Catholics. Only a true Catholic nation in fact will survive, can survive, because only truly Catholic people will be the ones looking at God & not staring in the mirror. When they cast their their votes, they cast them with an eye to what God desires, not fallen human nature. But as the body politic continues to be ravaged by the cancer of ignorant self-centered voters, it becomes more and more clear that a national euthanasia is occurring.
But in truth, this is really the way the whole idea of democracy is little less than an experiment doomed to failure from the outset. Eventually, the evil in the heart of man overtakes him, when he dismisses God. No, the only way to run a country is by benevolent dictatorship. A Catholic monarch...."
Anyone who has witnessed or participated in events, then later watched those events reported in the media, knows that the media lies and distorts. Anyone who gets their information from the TV and accepts uncritically what they see is a fool.
bfl
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