I was all set to bury the hatchet with Barack Obama and give him a "more like this" nod.
C&L posted this excerpt from an e-mail Obama sent to a Christian Broadcasting Network correspondent:
For my friends on the right, I think it would be helpful to remember the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy but also our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn’t the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment…. It was the forbearers of Evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religious, because they didn’t want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it.
Whatever we once were, we’re no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of non-believers. We should acknowledge this and realize that when we’re formulating policies from the state house to the Senate floor to the White House, we’ve got to work to translate our reasoning into values that are accessible to every one of our citizens, not just members of our own faith community.
I might quibble with a few words of that, but heck, he's sticking up for the separation of church and state, and these comments won him an asinine rebuttal from CBN founder Pat Robertson. So, what's not to like? Well...
The full e-mail is peppered with Christianist
and centrist-accomodationist dog-whistle talk:
We've had too many years of bitter partisanship... I've just always been clear that my Christian faith has motivated me for 20 years and I'm not ashamed to talk about it, or the role that faith should play in our American life... My intention was to contrast the heated partisan rhetoric of a distinct minority of Christian leaders with the vast majority of Evangelical Christians... The real leaders are clergy and lay folks who are living out their faith every day in ways large and small, trying their best to determine how best to serve God and their fellow man.... For progressives, I think we should recognize the role that values and culture play in addressing some of our most urgent social problems... when a gang-banger shoots indiscriminately into a crowd because he feels somebody disrespected him, we've got a moral problem. There's a hole in that young man's heart - a hole that the government alone cannot fix. So solving these problems will require changes in government policy, but it will also require changes in hearts and a change in minds. I think progressives would do well to take this to heart...
Fer crissakes, conflating religion with values and morality!? Implying that progressives need to get religion if they're going to cure social ills!? Buying into the bullshit "bipartisanship" equivalation!? And generally kissing the ass of Evangelical Christians, as if they haven't delivered us into evil!?
Obama, baby, if you think church and state should be separate, here's a suggestion: when you're running to be head of state, stop talking so much about church.
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he does this all the time--it's so wrong
He sucks up to religious right all the time, and meanwhile he's distanced himself entirely from his regular preacher because that guy actually wants to feed the poor and stuff and talks about racism and inequality.
He's a loser.
obama
If he were to win the nomination, he would find out how much good will his consensus building and bridge building talk has won him in good will from the right:
Doodly squat. They'll pounce on him with their Barack Hussein Obama the Muslim talk for all they're worth.
With a total sense of irony
I say unto you: A-men That message is one ginormous dog whistle.
Who died and made Barack Obama the all-knowing progressive?
Ohdave, what are you talking about?
These are good, moral, nonpartisan people that centrists are accommodating, doncha know?
Don't you remember how Bill Clinton reached across the aisle and how the Republicans reciprocated by investing $79.3 million in the purity and essence of his natural fluids?
If Democrats stay off the shrill, they'll be greeted as equivocators.
i'm glad he's showing his true colors now
because if he's ever elevated to preznit he'll sell out a whole lot more progressives before he's thru. his heart is probably in the right place, but he's a Player, that much is clear.
Obama's blackness, however, is
the reason the GOP will never let him into the White House, while it's apparently insufficient for some Dems/pundits to consider legitimate.
The politics in this country is so screwed up, it's hard to keep track of all the different kinds of screwed up it really is.
Meanwhile, with that distraction creating internal turmoil for its opposition, the GOP just keeps right on rollin' along in its juggernaut path back to 1895. The religious, the right-wing, the white-supremacists, the anti-Semite, the rich and the Reichmongers have accomplished, since Ronald Reagan's first inaugration, a horrendous rollback of the civil rights that a generation marched and bled and died for.
Democrats who lacked Sam Rayburn's suavity, Lyndon Baines Johnson's all-out often crude effectiveness, and Sam Nunn's acuity have, for 27 years now, stood by wringing their hands begging for comity, whining for consensus, whimpering that they didn't want to be portrayed as wimps.
It's time the voters stood up and said, loudly, clearly, and over again, "WIMP! I renounce your WIMPINESS!"
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18
So, who are the Democrats that are properly pissed off?
From what I've seen, that includes Kucinich, Dodd, Feingold, Kerry, and Gore (plus maybe Edwards) -- though only Kucinich among them is a stalwart on impeachment. Who else?
With Kucinich and Dodd, maybe it's time we start noticing the size of the fight in the dog.
Perfect the enemy of the good?
It would be nice if you could perhaps focus on how immensely better off we would be with an Obama administration instead of a Bush (or Guiliani or Romney or McCain or Thompson) administration. I say this as an "evangelical" atheist of the Dawkins/Harris/PZ Myers sort who of course finds Obama's comments vexing -- but they are nothing compared to, say, Bush Sr. saying that he did not know whether atheists should be considered citizens or patriots.
Truth machine,
Try reading virtually any other post I've written, such as this one. Or this one. Or this one.
Then get back to me.