Letters to the Editor
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Global identity crisis, obscurantism, and Kennedy (and bless you, mmainsail)
Glenn is right to highlight this question, for another reason as well. It's not just in the US that religion plays an increasingly important role. Remember Tony Blair's "Christianity" leading him to crusade in Iraq and call for an extension of the Lebanon war. Look at Sarkozy flirting with the church, eulogizing its influence on European history, and totally forgetting that he himself is the representative not of the Vatican but of a secular Republic whose freedoms were largely born out of opposition to the church's power.
And look at how the identity crisis in Muslim countries led and leads their populations to embrace ever more ostentatious, and ultimately fundamentalist, Islam.
Obama is going down this path because the world is. But - and I totally agree with mmainsail on this - it's still the wrong path. Talking about the inspiration of religion leads to more obscurantism, not to more freedom. In fact it is ironic that Islamic obscurantism should indirectly lead a US presidential candidate to publicly embrace Christian obscurantism.
When Romney made his famous speech on religion, he was lambasted for not having had the courage of Kennedy. The courage to stand before a hostile audience and say, "my religion is none of your business. I'm a politician in a secular nation, not a pastor." Obama probably does have the courage - it took guts to oppose the Iraq war in the early days - so it can only be that he doesn't agree with Kennedy.
Of course he had to react to the Muslim rumors. But he could have sought inspiration in Kennedy's secularism rather than in religious identity.
By the way I followed the link to Obama's speech. To compare a genocide - because that is what Jericho was - with ML King's movement, that is exactly the kind of obscurantism that I see growing everywhere around me. Hate to see it in a candidate.
I like Obama, in fact I like all the Democratic candidates. But he lost a point here. (Not that that matters, since I'm not American and so can't give or refuse him my vote.)
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what a person has to do to get elected in America...
Over the past few decades, Rebublicans have succesfully appropriated words like "morality," "Christian," and, of course, "values" to describe their ideological mixture of greed, avarice, and bigotry. And it's worked for them, to the extent that millions of people have consistently voted against their own interests because they want to be with the party of "morality" and values." It's easy to blame the allegedly liberal media for going along with this (a headline in the New York Times yesterday, in fact, mentioned "values voters" in North Carolina, referring of course to anti-abortion and anti-gay voters), but equal blame should go to the idiocy of the democrats and progressives in being too damn postmodern and rational to fight fire with fire, no matter how badly they've gotten trounced for it. Much as I'd love to have a true separation of church and state, and a president who refuses to play the God card, it's simply not going to happen any time soon, and refusing to play the God game is going to continue to be a losing strategy. In this context, if Obama wants to evoke the progressive Christianity of Martin Luther King to counter the Christianity of Jerry Falwell and "Left Behind," all I can say is "it's about time!"
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Glenn is a phony empty vessel.. He thinks he is making a difference by posturing so-called tough questions..
give me a break....
Glenn really believes he is some noble white warrior daring to go against the herd by attacking Obama with so-called tough questions....
Lol, Lol, LOl, Glenn a tough guy ..yeah sure..
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Last time I checked...
Obama wasn't trying to change the constitution to suite his version of christianity. That alone makes him different then Huckabee. All politicians pander to religious groups (and they shouldn't, it's wrong regardless) but your question was is there a difference, the answer is yes simply given that they both want to do different things with their faith.
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If only
Glenn's questions had better posture.
We might be able to elect a black atheist as president. But first we have to deal with the broken stuff.
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@markg8
Get over it.
-- markg8
Never mind that Glenn has said over and over again that he doesn't think there's anything wrong with Obama's brochure.
He's only speaking to the consistency of the public/media's criticism of Huckabee's ad versus Obama's brochure. It's a really narrow point.
There's nothing to "get over."
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buzzdainer: a quick and perhaps out of context clarification
"It certainly hasn't been Ron Paul, whom Glenn very much admires."
I hate taking lines from letters out of context, but I felt a need to clarify this one statement.
Glenn never said he admired Ron Paul. He's written about certain elements of Paul's campaign and the rhetoric surrounding it, but he's been very explicit that he does not endorse any candidate. He's also been very clear about specific issues he has with Paul's campaign.
I know Glenn can clarify this point himself, but I thought I'd step in because the distinctions here are important.
If I read him correctly, Glenn is working to critique the rhetoric of political campaigns and the way we frame that rhetoric. Even today, he is not criticizing Obama; he's asking the left to look at what might be hypocrisy in its own discourse; he's also arguing that it's vital that we allow ourselves to objectively look at all candidates.
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One more post - This blew me away from The Ebenezer Sermon
For most of this country’s history, we in the African American community have been at the receiving end of man’s inhumanity to man. And all of us understand intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays – on the job, in the schools, in our health care system and in our criminal justice system.
And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community.
We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.
Every day, our politics fuels and exploits this kind of division across all races and regions; across gender and party. It is played out on television. It is sensationalized by the media. And last week, it even crept into the campaign for President, with charges and counter-charges that served to obscure the issues instead of illuminating the critical choices we face as a nation.
Copied from
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/01/the-ebenezer-se.html#more
Seriously does any other politician have this kind of courage. This is why the question of experience is moot. This isn't about great speeches or great style. It's about substance and depth of ideas.