Posted on 08/26/2009 4:04:56 AM PDT by Kaslin
The fight over health care took the most interesting turn last week. President Obama briefly switched from wonkish frippery about bending cost curves to speaking of faith. Reaching out to progressive faith leaders in two massive conference calls, Obama insisted that God was on his side. Expanding health care fulfills a "core moral and ethical obligation that we look out for one another ... that I am my brother's keeper, my sister's keeper."
This would be an easy opportunity to call attention, once again, to the double standards applied to Obama. When President George W. Bush invoked God as his inspiration, many liberals saw our theocrat-in-chief taking a sledgehammer to the wall between church and state. When Obama does likewise, it's inspiring, spiritual leadership.
But, frankly, I find it refreshing.
Of all the silly arguments that have been passed off as deeply profound in American politics, the notion that politicians can't "impose" their personal morality on others tops the list.
We have abortion politics in general, and former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo in particular, to thank for that. In 1984, Cuomo gave his famous address at Notre Dame in which he laid out the notion that a politician can be "personally opposed" to abortion but should refuse to translate that conviction into public policy. As political rhetoric, the speech was compelling. As a serious philosophical, theological or moral argument, it was a mess. For instance, Cuomo found inspiration in the Catholic Church's relative silence on American slavery as justification for keeping religion out of the abortion debate. Never mind that abolition was the most religious of political movements.
"It is a mark of contemporary liberalism's commitment to abortion," Ramesh Ponnuru writes in "The Party of Death," "that one of its leading lights should have been willing to support temporizing on slavery in order to defend it."
The main problem with Cuomo's sophistry is that, once watered down into political talking points, it's simply ludicrous.
In 2004, another Catholic Democrat captured the inherent contradictions of Cuomo-ism nicely in a presidential debate. John Kerry insisted that his faith was "why I fight against poverty. That's why I fight to clean up the environment and protect this Earth. That's why I fight for equality and justice. All of those things come out of that fundamental teaching and belief of faith."
But he also said that, when it came to abortion, "What is an article of faith for me is not something that I can legislate on somebody who doesn't share that article of faith."
The statements cannot be reconciled. By Kerry's own admission, he seeks to legislate his articles of faith on people on nearly every issue under the sun -- except abortion. Suddenly, on that issue alone, he is an adamantine secularist.
But in recent years, Democratic rhetoric has been changing, for several reasons. One, many voters are put off by such double-talk. Another reason is that many smart liberals have noticed that some religious Americans are more activist on economic and environmental issues but are turned off by what they perceive as pugnacious secularism.
During the last presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton was comfortable speaking the language of the social gospel movement, historically the religious wing of American progressivism. But Obama was even better. Speaking during the campaign at an evangelical church in South Carolina, he said, "I am confident that we can create a kingdom right here on Earth." He supported Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and kept the agency when he took over, albeit with a slight name change. He courted evangelical pastor Rick Warren. His social agenda, went a constant refrain, was deeply informed by the injunction that we "are our brother's keeper, our sister's keeper."
Leaving aside the fact that the Bible nowhere says we should be our brother's keeper (the phrase appears once -- when Cain is trying to dodge a murder rap from God) or my own view that the government should never see itself as a keeper of anyone but incarcerated criminals (my dictionary says keepers are prison guards and zoo wardens), I think Obama's approach is a welcome change of pace.
Politics has always been a contest of values, and religion remains the chief source of those values. Our political discourse has long been cheapened by the canard that only conservatives try to use the state to impose a religiously informed moral vision, while liberals are guided by science, reason and logic as well as some secular conception of decency and compassion. No party has a monopoly on such resources, and it's about time we all recognized that.
I have faith that history will record that Obama was a wavering reed in the winds of change. That he did not keep his promises. That he publicly embarrassed America. That he insulted America’s friends. That he prosecuted America’s defenders and heroes. What a guy!
I am certain that it will
0bama and the “progressive”, i.e. communist, clergy apparently avoid the words of the Apostle Paul in 2nd Corinthians 9:7.
“Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.”
Looks like the Apostle left out the part where the almighty collectivist state, acting in the place of the God whom they declare is “dead”, takes the moneys by threat of force, keeps about 90% for “administrative” costs, and gives the rest to their sycophants among the peasantry.
O might remember the arrogance of the designers of the Titanic.
God himself could not sink this boat.
That just goes to show how much you know about God, Obama. That does not mean ROB your brother and sister to pay for someone elses health care.
And why is it when Bush mentions God, the media and entire left ridicules him, but when Obama mentions God, especially when his and Rev Wrights God hates America and whitey, Media has nothing but "Amens"??
How stupid does media think the general public is that they can't see this blatant bias day after day after day as Obama stumbles around like a bull in a china shop screwing up everything in this country, his every blunder excused away by his worshipping media?
Disgusting.
Excellent questions
God himself could not sink this boat."
You'd think Democrats would have learned not to issue direct challenges to the all mighty.
Ted is being asked right now, Ted, where art though they sister Mary?... Finally, judgement day has arrived for Ted, and it surely will for OBozo as well.
does anyone know where the “brothers keeper” concept originated?
from Cain, being flippant answering God, after Cain had killed Abel.
Gen 4:9
I strongly disagree w/ Jonah here.
To understand Obama's faith one needs to go back to Rev Wright at whose knee Obama sat for 20 years. Wright was no Christian. Let me repeat that;
Rev. Wright is not a Christian, he does not teach the Gospel of redemption but rather an ersatz concoction of retribution and that is what informs Obama's "faith".
But, but, America isn’t a Christian nation. How dare obama invoke God in his anti-American presidency. God wouldn’t and doesn’t bless those who kill innocent babies. Hear that, obama? God isn’t on your side!
Lovely little sermonette by Mr. Goldberg. Unfortunately, his argument is reduced to inanity by virtue of using Obama as the example.
This passage on Goldberg's "Liiberal Facism" blog at NRO yesterday is more to the point.
Indeed, our own messianic president, who insists that we can create a Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, also apparently believes that “we are God's partners in matters of life and death” and that religious organizations that are true to their calling should rally behind a united front to expand the scope and role of government. When the head of state says such things, it is hard not to be reminded of the Progressive concept of the God State, a major theme of Liberal Fascism. The “State is the actually existing, realized moral life . . . The divine idea as it exists on earth,” Hegel declared in The Philosophy of History. The State, according to Hegel, was the “march of God on earth.” The progressives agreed. Richard Ely, the founding father of progressive economics, proclaimed “God works through the State in carrying out His purposes more universally than through any other institution.”
The American public is weary of clever wordsmithing. I wish Goldberg would stay focused on the target in this most critical of all times in our nation's history, and not go wandering off as an intellectual scold of the right, finding a "refreshing" "change of pace" in the cynical use of religion as a political tool.
Obama and faith? Simple. It's another trick card in his deck. Means nothing else to him. Look at his face. Look at him pretending to pray at the Wailing Wall, and leaking his "prayer" to the press. Look at how he imposes his authority on God's ("we're partners with God in life and death").
Obama wants you to think both you and he have faith. That way, he can manipulate you.
Most dangerous kind of human, this one.
"insisted that God was on his side"
Doubtful.
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