Over at MyDD there is some fretting about Barack Obama identifying himself as a Christian family man in a radio ad in South Carolina. In an ad in South Carolina. Targeted to black radio stations. Hello?
I don’t want to believe stereotypes but sometimes they are true, and you get the sense that more than a few white liberals don’t know a thing about black Americans beyond the sort of "racial justice" happy talk. As I’ve noted before here, one of the most diehard religious votes in this country are black voters. If a Democrat wants to win a South Carolina primary, he needs the help of the black vote. One way one usually gets people to vote for you is by identifying an important cultural thing that you both share. For Barack Obama this happens to be the fact that he’s a Christian.
So is every other leading contender for the Democratic nomination! As the top three (Obama, Clinton, Edwards) have all pointed out in the public record, they do not view their religion as something to be imposed on the nation like President Bush does, but on the flip side it’s part of who they are. I know there are some especially on the left who would like Democratic pols to declare their atheism and rally people to their nonreligious arms, but that is a bad read of the mostly religious base of the Democratic party and America in general.
The poster also makes this statement:
A "Christian family man" — that’s a new theme for a Democratic Presidential candidate.
Really? Somebody tell Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton as well as Al Gore, the last three Democratic presidential candidates to win the most votes - as well as John Kerry, who while not as up front about his religion as Carter, Clinton and to a lesser extent Gore, is also a Christian man.
As an agnostic, I hate people imposing their beliefs on others, but I similarly hate reactionary rhetoric when someone - especially someone like Sen. Obama - simply discusses their religious beliefs.
Never forget that the most important progressive leader America has ever had was a black clergyman.
When someone like Obama says I’m a Christian he’s saying I believe in love thy fellow man, turn the other cheek and blessed are the peacemakers.
When the average Republican says that he means I espouse the faux sort of Christianity that bigots, scolds, warmongers, bandits and bullys have been hiding behind for the last several decades.
So yeah, I’m not bothered by it at all. For too long now the label ‘Christian’ has been usurped by the very kind of people that Christ himself would have kicked out of the temple.
yeah, double freakin’ standard. Democrats can ballyhoo religion right and left and ain’t that all homey and American pie, but let a Republican do it and by God the inquisitional Theocracy is just around the corner. I bet the MSM will be all over Obama’s religious pandering. Right.
There’s also a lot of misinformation about Obama’s faith out there. Of course, we’ve heard the Muslim slur, but I’ve also heard people say that he is an atheist.
Dugger - The Republican candidates who espouse their political views don’t do it with the level of subtlety and personalization that these Dems have done. With the Republican Christ-mongers, it’s all about proselytizing and superiority.
But let me guess, you’re making a plea for poor misunderstood Sam Brownback.
Religion and Faith are a series of personal beliefs that inform who you are and how you think. Religion and Faith aren’t just something you do on Sunday morning.
I find it odd that Democratics (in general) claim that Faith “won’t influence their political positions”. If Faith is so un-influential, then what use is your Faith other than Fire Insurance? A deeply held Religious conviction SHOULD have some influence on who you are and how you approach issues, no?
Dugger,
Do you think the Administration’s current opposition to the renewal of the SCHIP Program to fund healthcare for low-income children is taken from a moral (i.e. Christian) stance, or an ideological one?
Note that this bill has bipartisan support in Congress, is favored my a majority of Governors, and by most economists’ accounts, a hugely successful and efficient program.
Talk to us about double standards when your party starts to show some moral consistency with their rhetoric.
Wilbur, give me a break. Liberals, just as much as conservatives cherry-pick with regard to Jesus and the Bible. Liberals boast all the time about how charitable they are (with the money of others) completely ignoring what Jesus talked about in Matthew 6. So spare all of us with the “turn the other cheek” nonsense.
As for the temple, you’ve got things mixed up. The kind of people he was kicking out where the kind who make outlandish promises if only people would ’sacrifice’ a little more (money). How many times are we told that if we only sacrifice just “a little more” of the money we earn in taxes, how wonderful things would be. Kind of like a Presidential candidate who claims he’ll eradicate poverty in the next 30 years.
As for me, I’m glad Obama is doing this. I get tired of people being ashamed of their faith or putting in disclaimers about it because some pseudo-intellectuals may get their panties in a bunch about it.
yeah, double freakin’ standard
Dugger (and Jay, while I’m at it), you’re right that there is a double standard, but it’s a double standard with an rational basis: Democrats don’t have a history of trying to ram their sectarian “morality” down other people’s throats through legislation. Republicans do. That, and for Republicans “morality” is often of the “do-as-I-say-and-not-as-I do” variety.
So when Obama says he’s a Christian we know he means peace and love and caring for the poor and judging not lest ye be judged - and we get a warm and fuzzy feeling.
When Sam Brownback or George Bush say it we get the uh-oh feeling.
When folks like Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson say it we just laugh our asses off.
How many times are we told that if we only sacrifice just “a little more” of the money we earn in taxes, how wonderful things would be.
See, we’re told that same story of blind hope by both sides though, if we replace “the money we earn in taxes” with “our military resources and servicemen’s lives,” would you not agree?
Ah, but I’m veering toward off-topicsylvania, and Infuriated Infidel that I am, I’m probably not actually allowed to talk about religion at all here, by decree of the great and powerful O-dub. Carry on.
Locus, Bush’s stance (such as it is) against SCHIPS IS a moral one. Yeah, economists are raving about the program now. But Congress’s recent proposal was to triple spending the program, not merely continue it.
I love it when Democratics spout that Jesus was all about helping the poor. He was. But he directed that message to the PEOPLE, not the GOVERNMENT. When the government takes over (and forces your “giving” through tax collection), it totally negates the spiritual benefit of helping others when you out of the goodness of your heart and not because the ruling class was coming around to take your stuff.
Jesus talked a lot about tax collecters too. Funny how Democratics tend to skip over those verses…
Jesus lived in the Roman empire, where the taxes were imposed arbitrarily by the emperor and his agents. Here in America, unless you live in DC, we don’t have taxation without representation. If you want to abolish taxes, go ahead and vote for representatives who will do so. Fortunately, most of us -apart from blinkered anti-tax wackoes - have learned from thousands of years of civilized history that private charity alone, together with private spending on infrastructure and public services, does not a stable and healthy society make. So we groans and grumbles and we pays our taxes.
Democracy sucks for you guys, don’t it?
locus, Where do you see Bush opposed SCHIP? He disagrees with how much to spend on it. It is true that te increase Bush proposes, per CBO, would not maintain the program at old levels, but what he vetoed was a huge increase in the program. Get your facts straight and try again.
Spider, you guessed way wrong.
wilbur
“Democrats don’t have a history of trying to ram their sectarian “morality”
Yeah. Get rid of ’sectarian’ and thats not true. No one, no one! is more pious than a doctrinaire lefty. Its just not Christain piety. And you do understand that its not at all illegal or immoral to propose legislation based on Christain (or islamic) values right?
Nice use of straw there Wilbur, but where did you get “abolish taxes” from? Certainly not from the Good Book (“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s…”)
You are right about one thing though: being opposed to the whims and desires of tax collectors and how they spent their ill-gotten gains. I think you’ve just proved that Jesus was against earmarks!
Democrats don’t have a history of trying to ram their sectarian “morality” down other people’s throats through legislation.
Sure they do. They just don’t it in the name of any religion. The problem is, Democrats propose all kinds of goofy legislation aimed at all kinds of interest groups and to be opposed to exactly what they want is to be opposed to the idea in general. IE, if you think Head Start is a completely wasteful program and oppose increasing funding, then you’re automatically accused of “not wanting to help poor preschool children.”
Such accusations come from the ridiculous mindset that unless the federal government gets its nose into something, then the world will fall apart.
And what bothers me more is that it would be easier to find a needle in a haystack than it would be to find some Democrats who admit that so many of their ’solutions’ turned out to be nothing but tax dollar gobbling boondoggle failures.
“IE, if you think Head Start is a completely wasteful program and oppose increasing funding, then you’re automatically accused of “not wanting to help poor preschool children.”
Or, if you’re opposed to stem cell research that may or may not yield tangible results, you’re opposed to life.
Dugger,
I guess you’re right, Bush doesn’t exactly oppose SCHIP, but is concerned about funding levels. I’m happy to see that you’ve got your facts correct that his budget proposal would not maintain the program at current levels.
However, you’ve failed to include all the facts in your response. The Admin’s proposal (per the CBO estimates) doesn’t cover inflationary increases in the true cost to run the program. At the Administration’s proposed level, the program technically has more money than last year. However, increases in the cost to provide medicne mean that SCHIP will cover fewer needy children than prior years. Thus, the President is cutting the program.
I remind you that everyone agrees that this program is pretty successful at what it does (provide healthcare insurance for poor kids), yet Bush wants to roll it back. I naturally assumed that he opposed the program. I guess the veto threat means that some children will have to be sick.
locus,
we covered the SCHIP “controversy” earlier. Basically, Bush & Congress are in the midst of a haggle to set the spending level at or near the rate need to keep up with inflation.
locus
“I guess you’re right, Bush doesn’t exactly oppose SCHIP, but is concerned about funding levels. I’m happy to see that you’ve got your facts correct that his budget proposal would not maintain the program at current levels.”
I had some help from Quaker. But I did mention here that the Bush spending request, though technically an increase, per CBO, would not maintain the program at current levels. And I think SaveFarris has been right about this from day one. Congress came in way high. Bush low. They will meet some place in between.
And you know, just becasue a program does some good, does not mean it should be funded. There are many more ‘good’ programs than there are dollars to fund them. And the government doesn’t fund them. It seizes money from the American people to fund them.
It seizes money from the American people to fund them.
It’s called taxation. It’s sort of the fundamental element of the operation of the greatest democracy the world has ever seen. Why do you hate America?
And you know, just because a program does some good, does not mean it should be funded
There’s that compassionate conservatism again.
I swear, Libertarians should be monitored or something.
“It’s called taxation.”
Thanks for that scintillating contribution. Do you deny the government will eventually come after you with force if you don’t pay your taxes? Does the government have to tax? Yes, but that realization, that it is money seized by force from citizens, should never be forgotten. Its not the government’s money. There is no gold mine under the Capitol dome. It is taken from people who worked hard to earn it.
Do you deny the government will eventually come after you with force if you don’t pay your taxes? Does the government have to tax? Yes, but that realization, that it is money seized by force from citizens, should never be forgotten.
What utter insanity.
Do you deny that the government will eventually come after you with force if you don’t pay your American Express bill?
If you don’t pay for the crap you buy with your American Express card, you deserve to have the government come after you with force.
If you take advantage of the security and infrastructure provided by tax-funded expenditures and don’t pay your share, then you deserve to have the government come after you with force.
Don’t like it? Build yourself an igloo in antarctica and live off penguin droppings. And stop using your American Express card.
There’s a giant gaping hole in your analogy: enrollment in American Express isn’t mandatory.
Wilbur, re Amex. You should say something smarter if you are going to term somebody else’s argument insanity. Orrrrr - I’ve got some really bad news for you about taxes. See, they aren’t an elective.
Taxes aren’t elective? Sure they are. We elect to impose them on ourselves via our elected representatives.
I know you geniuses wish that there there were an adversarial relationship between “us” and the “government”, but there simply ain’t. “Us” are the “government”.
See, that’s what all that stuff they tried to teach you in grade school was all about - that Boston Tea Party thingy and the American Revolution. It wasn’t taxes per se the colonists objected to. It was taxation without representation
Now if you think taxes are too high, or too low, or that they’re spent on the wrong things (as I do, for instance, in the case of the Iraq fiasco). You are free to say so and to attempt to persuade your fellow citizens to agree. But taxes = stealing? Only if you’re a blinkered, solipsistic wingnut.
Oh, wait….
Now back to Jesus: Where he lived taxes were imposed arbitrarily by an adversarial authoritarian government, collected by notoriously corrupt contractors and spent on things that the taxpayers had no say in determining. See over here, that’s an apple. Over there? that’s a hand grenade.
“I know you geniuses wish that there there were an adversarial relationship between “us” and the “government”, but there simply ain’t. “Us” are the “government”.
Well, you got the ‘genius’ portion right. Everything else is wrong. We fully recognize that the government has to have enforcement powers to function. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t power and that it, taxation, isn’t the forcible seizure of citizen sweat equity. That power ultimately is based on the application of physical force. I don’t have to have a credit card, even if every neighbor in my subdivision has one or in my state. But no matter how I voted, I have to pay taxes and obey the government. They aren’t elective. So when we talk about government funding some program somebody thinks is worthwhile, lets be sure we consider that the ‘good’ of that program is balanced against the ‘bad’ - that we are, by force, going make American tax payers pay for itout of their hides. If you acknowledge that, then suddenly you understand that those out there constantly harping on the morality of funding some program or another are full of crap if they don’t also address the morality of seizing money from citizens to pay for it.
As a citizen, you choose to live in America. You choose to vote and who to vote for and those people affect tax policy. You join the entirety of the American people in doing so, and that tax money goes, by and large, back to the American people in various ways, such as funding the police and fire department, schools, roads, etc.
You can choose to phrase it in the language of theivery all you care to (and ignore that you yourself are complicit in this “crime” against yourself) but the harshest thing you can actually say is that “The people take the people’s money and spend it on the people in such a way that the people have decided to.” Which, I gotta tell you, doesn’t sound quite as outright evil as you’re making it sound. But hey, you dont like it? You can get the hell out. Whatta Country, eh?
“As a citizen, you choose to live in America. You choose to vote and who to vote for and those people affect tax policy. You join the entirety of the American people in doing so, and that tax money goes, by and large, back to the American people in various ways, such as funding the police and fire department, schools, roads, etc.”
All true.
The rest is muddled. Said neither thievery or evil. In fact, I (we) said enforcement powers are required by the government. The point remains that the pious condemnations (He hates the CHILDREN!”) of Bush or whoever suggests not fully funding a program is a crock. There are two opposing dynamics involved and both wind up causing pain. And to dwell only on the pain of those not getting a government program benefit as opposed to those who either have to work harder or reduce their standard of living to pay for that program, is wrong.
I know you geniuses wish that there there were an adversarial relationship between “us” and the “government”, but there simply ain’t.
Hohoho, there most certainly is, big boy. Up there in dugger’s compound.
It’s kind of funny how he hates the government but loves him some Bush (heh).
Funny and sad.
” And to dwell only on the pain of those not getting a government program benefit as opposed to those who either have to work harder or reduce their standard of living to pay for that program, is wrong.”
Speaking of government program benefits Dugger, did your government military pension check arrive today, on time? The one that was funded with money taken from us at gunpoint?
Obama is what this country needs. We need someone with Morals, Class, a willingness to be diplomatic with our enemies. We need someone who cares about the middle class or low income. We need someone who will push for better education in schools. Someone who will work with states who has lost jobs to outsourcing.
No one, no one! is more pious than a doctrinaire lefty. Its just not Christain piety.
Then how come the only people here that place an arbitrary standard on the definition of “religion” are the conservative trolls?
“Speaking of government program benefits Dugger, did your government military pension check arrive today, on time? The one that was funded with money taken from us at gunpoint?”
You mean my military retirement check? No - not today. But yes I get one. And it doesn’t affect my point - which you would understand if you possessed even rudimentary reading comprehension. The fact that taxes are compulsory should lead us to understand the issue of modern governance is nor merely deciding if a program is good, but how will we pay for it and is it worth seizing more money from working men and women. There are two sides to the equation. Perspective!
Then how come the only people here that place an arbitrary standard on the definition of “religion” are the conservative trolls?
Z,
If I understood what you were asking, I would answer it. But those damn conservative trolls annoy me too. That dawgoned Jay and SaveFarris. Power to the people!
I was refering to Haruhi-ism, which Frankie and his ilk bashed as a “fake religion”.
modern governance is nor merely deciding if a program is good, but how will we pay for it and is it worth seizing more money from working men and women
Correct, and this is precisely why I usually vote for the democrats: the party of fiscal and social responsibility.
As opposed to the Republicans, who would allow every bridge in the nation to collapse if it meant bigger tax breaks to their pals when they buy their Hummers.
Frankie, huh. Another one of those damned CTs.
Another one of those damned Connecticuts?
Conservative trolls
Uh…Duggs, I think you missed my point. You said that liberals were the most arrogant kind of people. I brought up the point that when it comes to religion, the conservatives far outshine liberals in terms of arrogance. Care to respond?
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