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Watching Obama
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The irony wasn’t lost on me. The only thing that would have made it more delicious would have been if he had come to Eugene, Oregon, on Palm Sunday rather than on Good Friday. And if his supporters had been waving palm fronds rather than “Change You Can Believe In!” placards. The Obama phenomena has risen to the level of religious, almost messianic fervor.
I see among many of the young a hopelessness that is almost tangible. Alongside that is an inability to trust others and to believe in ultimate truths and values. The mantra is that authority cannot be trusted and that the loudest voices in society want to do nothing more than “sell” something. Broken homes have created a generation with absolutely no one to look up to and to turn to for advice. So direction is lacking, commitment is rare, and despair is rampant.
Barack Obama strides into that void. While voicing “other worldly” themes he suggests “this world” solutions. His soaring oratory and his ambitious promises make his appeal to hope and his drive for change seem reasonable and attainable. He appeals to all that is innate and created in us in a longing for that “better country, that is a heavenly one” discussed in Hebrews 11. And he offers fulfillment in his election to the presidency at which time he will unleash the power of government to set things right in a world currently turned upside down. Thus he offers a messianic hope with the full weight and force of the U.S. government to back him up. For many right now, with the youth leading the way, this is a compelling combination. Heaven on earth is indeed appealing rather than having to wait.
In his forty five minute talk at the University of Oregon campus he repeated his tried and true political points. He introduced it by quoting Dr. King’s comment about the “fierce urgency of now.” He told the assembled crowd that it is “almost too late.” He observed that five years of war in Iraq have cost far too much in lives and treasure and have actually made the world less safe. He sees the economy in a shambles with the average American in worse shape financially than they were just a few short years before. He worried about an education system that leaves millions of children behind and a subprime crisis that threatens to leave millions more homeless. In the face of all of that he announced that we can’t afford to wait and that the current broken political system is completely ineffective. He humbly offered himself and his ideas as the way to bring about the changes so desperately needed.
And the crowd went wild.
He said many of the right things. Many things with which I would have to agree. He suggested that it is ordinary people who make extraordinary changes from the bottom up and not from the top down. He decried special interests and the entrenched political culture in Washington.
But it all kept coming back to government solutions. Our health care system is broken but his plan for bringing down insurance costs and expanding coverage to all will solve that problem (details forthcoming). The economy is a mess in part because CEOs are making too much and the little guy is suffering. Too many jobs are going overseas so we need to change our corporate tax structure as well as pour money into infrastructure and provide incentives for developing clean energy sources (details forthcoming). In his “better country” our educational system would be the best in the world literally from the time a child is born until the time they graduate from college. Make way for government financed early childhood education so that our five year olds are ready to face the cold realities of kindergarten. Oh and don’t forget the $4,000 college tuition credit in exchange for government “make work” projects. A “Newer Deal” indeed.
So we have a large portion of the electorate today that is looking to him to be, as he put it, the catalyst to pull this country forward by pulling together. He implored the crowd not to get distracted. Not by the talk about the man he is quick to tell us is his “former” pastor. Not by anything else that will be brought up in this increasingly acrimonious Democratic primary season. He urged the crowd to “put aside fear and reach out for hope.” And in conclusion he promised that “you and I together are going to change this country and change the world.”
At this point in my life that is way too much for me to expect from any politician. As God chooses to intervene in human history, the world is changed. But for many voters this year the hope for change is a journey of faith. But it is not faith in that transcendent “most real being” who is the author of all reality and sovereign ruler over the entire universe. Rather it is faith in a mere mortal. And it is faith in his message that government will provide solutions to the ills of the world. Ultimately it is faith that this particular elected government official will bring this about more effectively than the current crop of elected government officials or any other government officials that have gone before him. Would that their faith would be in one more worthy of that level of trust.
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Soul searching
Is it fair to say that Barack Obama wants a type of theocracy and he sees himself as our national pastor, maybe even our messiah? Consider some quotes/examples below:
* On October 7, 2007, Obama addressed an evangelical congregation in South Carolina, saying: “Sometimes this is a difficult road being in politics. Sometimes you can become fearful, sometimes you can become vain, sometimes you can seek power just for power’s sake instead of because you want to do service to God. I just want all of you to pray that I can be an instrument of God… and all of you are instruments of God… I am confident that we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth.”
* Obama likes to cite the Word of God to justify and advocate his political policies. He recently told a crowd at Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio, that he believes the Sermon on the Mount justifies his support for legal recognition of same-sex unions. After exalting his misinterpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, in the next breath, he usurped divine authority and dismissed another part of the word of God that he didn’t like (Romans One). Only messiahs can do that.
Listen to Obama from a week ago:
* “In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.” (Barack Obama in Philadelphia, March, 2008, in his speech about his pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ).
Obama said, “…let our politics reflect that spirit as well.” Does he want our government to be our “brother’s keeper.”
That’s called, “the nanny state.”
Just asking.
In a speech being hailed by his supporters as historic, Obama explained, “I can no more disown him (Rev. Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
That was bad.
But it got worse when he tried to explain why he was telling tales out of school about what he perceived as white racism in the woman who helped raise him.
He told a radio interviewer: “She is extremely proud, and the point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn’t. But she is a typical white person who, you know, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know, there is a reaction that has been bred into our experiences that don’t go away and sometimes come out in the wrong way. … That’s the nature of race in our society … and we have to break through it. And what makes me optimistic is you see each generation feeling a little less like that, and that’s pretty powerful stuff.”
I have emphasized the four words that struck me in this explanation – “a typical white person.”
What does that mean?
What is a typical white person?
If I said, “He’s a typical black person,” would such a statement not be considered racist?
From Peter’s post above (describing what Obama said to a crowd): ” He implored the crowd not to get distracted. Not by the talk about the man he is quick to tell us is his ‘former’ pastor. Not by anything else that will be brought up in this increasingly acrimonious Democratic primary season.”
In other words, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. And by all means, don’t do any independent observing or thinking of your own.
In yet other words, pay no attention to thoughtful posts on unapproved blog sites.
We are paying attention and I thank Peter for his thoughts.
I think this video convinced me that Obama is winning the sound-byte generation over by emotions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghSJsEVf0pU&feature=related
Again, my only question is when does he sit down in the temple?
You can’t criticize Obama! Don’t you know that he’s BLACK? Criticizing him is RACIST! Shame on you!
The “Sound Bite” generation, who aren’t paying hardly any taxes, WOULD love this guy.
This story lends anecdotal support to my contention that the voting age should be 21, not 18. Most 18 year-olds are still dependent on their parents and the government (college grants/loans). They are not yet fully able to think through the consequences of their actions for themselves and others. By 21, they have begun to recognize that those in authority (parents, government leaders) actually do know a few things and are even a little wise. They are also more likely to be in a full-time job and experiencing the joys of paying taxes, bills, etc.
The last time someone like this came around was RFK. My sister was 20 and went batty over this guy. Could this love of Obama coming from college kids be because they’ve been taken care of all their lives by mom and dad and just see the government as a substitute for that?
Obama is way more than a liberal. What you think
is yours, what you think you earned, bought and paid for one way or another - is not yours in the least. It belongs to who ever Obama says it belongs to. Here is a hint. He doesn’t think that it really belongs to you. He thinks that you have wrongfully claimed it long enough and it is time to share with those less fortunate (and thus closer to God) than you. He should and all.
He is not a liberal, he is Marxist.
The more time our kids spend in the government run schools, the further behind they fall. Spending more time in the government run school would leave us even worse off, wouldn’t it?
This seems typical of his whole agenda. There are real bad problems to which his solution always seems to be to spend more money doing more of the failed things with even greater effort. Which, if “sucessful” would only seem to lead to us being in worse shape.
Mr. Wierenga has written an excellent article. He effectively summarizes Obama’s appeal to a new generation of college-age kids and graduates around the country. Our universities, dominated by leftist faculties, have been like Marxist henhouses. Students and graduates are Red eggs ready to hatch. All they need is a little heat.
Obama is supplying that with all the old Communist rhetoric in new packaging. And Marxist eggs are now hatching all over the country.
These new recruits are too young to have personally seen the hideous and failed reality of the last 90 years of Communism. Their professors and Democrat fellow travelers are certainly not going to tell them about it in any meaningful way. For Marxist Democrats this represents a fresh source of naive and easily manipulated energy that they have been carefully incubating for years. With Obama at the head, they hope to ride this new wave of energy to the seats of power they covet.
Once in power, all the promises of change will eventually be seen as the same old failed stuff of the last 90 years of idiotic Marxism. It hasn’t worked and it will never work as promised. The only thing it produces is economic chaos and slavery—slavery to the dictatorial elites who run the system, not for the people, but for themselves.
In Obama we have a great orator who can sell government better than anyone. What McCain needs to do is to explain why this would be a bad thing.
He is not a liberal, he is Marxist.
Uh huh. And you base this on what, exactly?
SOME QUOTES from the article
Politico
Obama had greater role on liberal survey
By KENNETH P. VOGEL
3/31/08
During his first run for elected office, Barack Obama played a greater role than his aides now acknowledge in crafting liberal stands on gun control, the death penalty and abortion — positions that appear at odds with the more moderate image he has projected during his presidential campaign.
The evidence comes from an amended version of an Illinois voter group’s detailed questionnaire, filed under his name during his 1996 bid for a state Senate seat.
Late last year, in response to a Politico story about Obama’s answers to the original questionnaire, his aides said he “never saw or approved” the questionnaire.
Through an aide, Obama, who won the group’s endorsement as well as the statehouse seat, did not dispute that the handwriting was his. But he contended it doesn’t prove he completed, approved — or even read — the latter questionnaire.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9269.html
NOTE: another Obama excuse!