Obama crosses America’s one bright line *UPDATED*
Bookworm on Aug 21 2009 at 10:44 am | Filed under: Barack Obama, Religion
One of the brightest lines in America, a line that goes back to our Founders and the Constititution, is the imperative rule that the American government stay out of religion. That does not mean that people in politics cannot be religious or that their values cannot be informed by religion. It does mean, though, that the government may not dictate doctrine or sermon. Bruce Kesler takes Obama to task for doing just that. Oy! First the 10th Amendment and now this. We are dubiously blessed with a president who doesn’t even bother to explain away his Constitutional violations. He just tramples through those rights, supremely confident that he’s above the petty rules that have guided our nation for so long.
I’m sighing a lot lately. Sigh….
UPDATE: Peter Wehner makes an equally astute point:
Where Obama is getting into dangerous territory is when he takes a biblical injunction—we have a moral obligation to care for one another—and strongly implies that his health-care plan has God’s imprimatur. It is one thing to think theologically about public matters; it is quite another to describe what the right “Christian position” is. The temptation for people of faith who are in politics is to enunciate a principle—justice, compassion, peace, the rights and dignity of the individual, stewardship of the earth—and simplistically connect the dots, as if the principle itself easily translates into an obvious policy. It rarely does. And those who play this game create all sorts of confusion.
The purpose of Obama’s call to religious leaders was to create an implicit syllogism: if you love God and your neighbor, you will support ObamaCare. If Obama does not believe this, he has a responsibility to say so. Because as it now stands, based on the context of his comments (which was to urge those leaders to work on behalf of his health-care plan), this is a reasonable inference.
Some of us have criticized the Religious Right for making precisely this error—for portraying complex policy questions as ones for which there is only one obvious and “godly” answer; for denying that people of goodwill can disagree on which policies advance the common good; and for portraying those who hold differing views as cartoon figures driven by questionable or corrupt motives. This mindset is what Senator Obama warned against—but something that President Obama seems eager to embrace.
Engaged in a fierce public debate, with support for his health-care plans plummeting, Obama is jettisoning the subtlety and careful parameters about which he once spoke. He denies to others the presumption of good faith he once sought. One can only hope he feels a pang of shame at what he is doing—and that he pulls back before he creates a divisive and ugly conflict among people of faith.
I’ll add only that Obama represents the first time that a President has “portray[ed] complex policy question as ones for which there is only one obvious and ‘godly’ answer.” In the past (at least in the modern era), this line of argument has always been confined to special interest groups. And coming from special interest groups, the argument may fail because it doesn’t have broad appeal to those who don’t share your “godly” views, but at least it doesn’t implicate the Constitutional prohibition against the federal government interfering in matters of religion.
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6 Responses to “Obama crosses America’s one bright line *UPDATED*”
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Like many of his followers, his self awareness is lost in a vast cloud of smug. That is why I think of them as Stepford Libs. They’re like the old joke about Catholics in heaven. They live in hovels but think they’re the only ones up there.
But we all know the truth is that Bush violated the Constitution. At worst, he and Obama are the same.
(This is why you should not allow Leftists to control education, cause they’ll just produce some useful idiot drones)
Statism is a political religion. As is sharia.
Sorry, but I do not see this as a violation of the First Amendment.
As I understand it, the First Amendment basically requires government to be neutral with respect to religion (and non-religion as well). In this case, I do not think Obama is telling anyone what they ought or ought not to believe. I think he is, rather, telling certain religious leaders that since you (already) believe we ought to take care of one another, then you should support my health care plan.
My problem with his argument is not that it is unconstitutional, but rather that it is false.
It’s like the teenager’s argument: You say you want me to grow up to be independent. If I had a car, I would be more independent. Therefore you should buy me a car.
I recall many of us having interesting discussions with Ozzie, who found violations of the First Amendment under nearly every pebble at the beach. What would Ozzie say about this?
I think this is merely an extension of the Left’s decision to coopt the “religious right”. Throughout the campaign, Obama professed religious piety, and no one on the left was excised.
They found a candidate that spoke a better religious line than Clinton, and were and are comfortable he doesn’t mean a word of it.
The left has been mad for years that the right has owned the religion thing.
I think they’re glad to get a chance to prove they got religion too.
It’s not particularly effective, and I think everybody in the country knows he doesn’t believe a religious word he says.
The uninsured receive medical care in America, so the moral obligation has already been met.
It’s a stretch to think there is a moral obligation to provide insurance for everyone in America.
We all agree it’s an expensive form of medical care and both sides want to reduce the cost of providing it. We disagree on the best way to achieve that.