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Obama HAS a faith. It is called “Liberation theology.” It serves as a guide for political action. Just as Santorum’s faith serves him, and Romney’s serves him, as a basis of political action, so, too Obama’s. Call it an ideology, in Obama’s case, if that makes you happy, but it is where Obama is coming from. It behooves us all to know about a candidate’s background. It enables us to predict his actions, at least to a certain degree. Each person’s faith is a private matter only to the extent that it does not affect public matters. Of course, you are right to say that a political campaign is not the place to debate theology. But where a man’s faith is so political in orientation, as the President’s is, where it becomes a kind of challenge to the old national consensus of what is right and just, where it aims to put aside the old “civic” religion,” and replace it with another, then we have to think about this and make it part of our private calculations as to what is good for the country. As Burke pointed out a long time ago, prejudice in itself is not wrong. The received wisdom is often right, often it is what has enabled society to survive and flourish. But it must ever defend itself, to see how far it can accommodate challengers and how far accommodate them. Survival requires flexibility, but the tree can bend only so far before it breaks.

You wrote: “Obama HAS a faith. It is called “Liberation theology.” It serves as a guide for political action. Just as Santorum’s faith serves him, and Romney’s serves him, as a basis of political action, so, too Obama’s. Call it an ideology, in Obama’s case, if that makes you happy, but it is where Obama is coming from. It behooves us all to know about a candidate’s background. It enables us to predict his actions, at least to a certain degree. Each person’s faith is a private matter only to the extent that it does not affect public matters....”

Exactly. bttt

Most every destructive [ECONOMIC] policy put into place by the left can be traced to some Christian virtue gone mad i.e., feed the hungry, so steal from “the rich” and call it “giving,” or defending abortion on the basis of the sanctity of “liberty,” or encouraging every manner of deviancy under the guise of “tolerance.” [snip] - Here: Life Amidst the Postmodern Ruins http://tinyurl.com/9zqgwb

Excerpts From Pacem In Terris: Peace on Earth Encyclical of Pope John XXIII,
On Establishing Universal Peace In Truth, Justice, Charity, And Liberty, April 11, 1963

“Man’s personal dignity requires besides that he enjoy freedom and be able to make up his own mind when he acts.

In his association with his fellows, therefore, there is every reason why his recognition of rights, observance of duties, and many-sided collaboration with other men, should be primarily a matter of his own personal decision.

Each man should act on his own initiative, conviction, and sense of responsibility, not under the constant pressure of external coercion or enticement.

There is nothing human about a society that is welded together by force.

Far from encouraging, as it should, the attainment of man’s progress and perfection, it is merely an obstacle to his freedom.”

“Hence, a regime which governs solely or mainly by means of threats and intimidation or promises of reward, provides men with no effective incentive to work for the common good.

And even if it did, it would certainly be offensive to the dignity of free and rational human beings.”

“Consequently, laws and decrees passed in contravention of the moral order, and hence of the divine will, can have no binding force in conscience, since ‘it is right to obey God rather than men.’”

Here’s Barack Obama [Youtube link below] musing about how best to redistribute wealth in America in a Chicago Public Radio interview in 2001.

Not whether, but how: Through the courts or through legislation?

A caller asks him to explain how he would do “reparative economic work.” Obama gives the legislative route two thumbs up as his preferred method of “breaking free of the constraints” placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution and then burbles about cobbling together the “actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.”

STACLU has transcribed the choice parts of the interview:

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendancy to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

The bottom line from Jeff Goldstein: http://michellemalkin.com/2008/10/26/obama-in-2001-how-to-bring-about-redistributive-change/

Thomas Jefferson: A Wise and Frugal Government
http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosophy/EM724.cfm

“To compel a man to furnish moneys for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is tyranny and a great sin.

“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it. Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816

“A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government. First Inaugural Address.