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Dobson on Obama’s Bible interpretation
In a broadcast that aired today, Focus on the Family’s James Dobson discussed Barack Obama’s view on the role of religion in government. Dobson cited a speech the Democratic candidate for president gave in June 2006 to the liberal Christian group Call to Renewal, where Obama said:
“[E]ven if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount—a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our bibles. Folks haven’t been reading their bibles.”
Yes, let’s read our Bibles, so we’ll understand, as La Shawn Barber explained so well on her blog today:
“Regarding Obama’s remark, Bible-reading, -studying, and -believing folks know that the [Old Testament] dietary and ceremonial laws and the sacrificial system were shadows of things to come. … The Old Covenant stood until the resurrection of Christ, whose death ushered in the New Covenant, one that depended not on the ‘goodness’ or cleanliness of the people, but on God’s mercy and grace toward the people.”
Dobson summed up the situation by saying, “[Obama]’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology.”
back to top263 Comments to “Dobson on Obama’s Bible interpretation”
Obama displayed a rather profound lack of understanding of Scripture. He should know better to expound on things he understands so little.
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Where is Dobson’s outrage and Barber’s outrage towards those who wish to display the 10 Commandments in courthouses?
Barber’s blog post is absurd. She dismisses the idea of continuing to respect and obey the OT’s rules but contradicts herself by acknowledging that Christ came to fulfill the old law, not abolish it.
Yet again WORLD has confused itself by mistakenly thinking it is a valid authority on anything at all.
The marriage of American Christendom and the Republican Party is absolutely a disgusting thing to see.
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If we’re not going to implement any of it because it is too radical, then why should we read the Bible?
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KRM,
If he did that, what would be left for him to expound on? That would eliminate Iran, Iraq, Israel, and foriegn policy in general. Not to mention the economy, off-shore drilling, NAFTA, how to deal with terrorism, and a host of others.
He’d be out of material. I’m not sayin’ that would be bad though. Every clip I watch of him, that isn’t scripted, leaves me wonderin’ where this myth about him being a great orator comes from.
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“For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.” – Hebrews 5:12
Either Mr. Obama’s church didn’t do a very good job discipling him in the Word, or he wasn’t paying attention, or ??
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Dobson has a legitimate point.
But who gets to question the Biblical interpretation of Dobson, Hagee, et al. who teach that the modern-day nation of Israel is the Chosen People — the Children of Abraham — and that it is therefore imperative for the US to ally herself with Israel, because God Himself told Abraham, “Whosoever bless thee, I will bless”?
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“Whoever blesses thee,” i.e.!
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Obama proves how little he knows or understand the Old Testament or New Testament.
Then he makes this absurd statement:
Obama believes the “Sermon on the Mount” is radical? — and where might that leave J. Wright who Obama can’t remember hearing many of his ‘bellows’ from the pulpipt.
Then there is this ‘gem’-
Yes Obama, open your Bible and start reading, good idea before YOU get carried away about a subject you know little about.
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Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK
The bible NEVER “suggests” that slavery is “OK.” As a matter of FACT, it’s exactly the opposite. While slavery, like divorce, may have been NECESSARY, it was never “OK.” Were we not slaves to sin made alive in Christ? Is not that the freedom we celebrate?
How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith
This is another blatant lie by Obama. That’s not what scripture says or “suggests” at all.
It appears Obama has been following previous world blog commenters in his attempt to proclaim the Bible as an outlandish, ridiculous document that should be thrown off the wagon by making straw man arguments and trivializing the very faith he has proclaimed allegiance to. What a shame.
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Dobson’s group is lying when it asserts that Obama “went so far as to equate Dr. James Dobson with the far-Left Rev. Al Sharpton.” That’s false. Obama clearly contrasted Dobson and Sharpton as mutually incompatible interpreters of Scripture. Obama treated both dismissively, but he did not “equate” them.
“Obviously, that is offensive to me,” Dr. Dobson says. What Dobson means to say is, he doesn’t want to share the same trash can with Rev. Sharpton. If one is fish and the other fowl, or one vegetable and the other mineral, then Obama should provide each his own trash can.
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“Barber’s blog post is absurd. She dismisses the idea of continuing to respect and obey the OT’s rules but contradicts herself by acknowledging that Christ came to fulfill the old law, not abolish it.”
Adam you once again display an inadequate grasp of scriptures. For one who has studied them for so long, you show an amazing lack of understanding.
It is correct that Jesus came to fulfil the law, but you misunderstand because of your Mormon preconceptions just what that means. He came to fulfil it in himself. The work of satisfying the law is accomplished through Jesus life, death, and resurrection.
Jesus was essentially telling his disciples (Obama would do well to remember that the sermon on the mount was addressed to them) that it wasn’t through works they would achieve atonement, but through faith in Jesus work that they would achieve atonement.
This is the same mistake the Mormons make in relying on their own good works…
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Obama is the most liberal member of the Senate so why is anyone surprised by this?
And of course liberals are never left-wing but conservatives are always right-wing.
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“Obama clearly contrasted Dobson and Sharpton as mutually incompatible interpreters of Scripture.”
Well that’s an understatement. I’d sooner trust Dobson’s interpretation of the scriptures than Sharpton’s any day of the week. If there was ever a political opportunist it’s “Reverend” Al… And Obama ranks right up there with him.
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“Where is Dobson’s outrage and Barber’s outrage towards those who wish to display the 10 Commandments in courthouses?”
One might argue that displaying the ten commandments in a courthouse is unconstitutional (although the framers of the constitution would be surprised by such a notion)but how that is any way analogous to a sophomoric misapplication of Scripture escapes me. One could be outraged at one or the other or both without any inconsistency. One argument is couched in political terms the other in Biblical hermeneutics. Your frothing at the mouth at conservative Chtristianity has derailed you into attempting to make utterly irrelelvant points.
Christ’s fulfillment of the law rendered the sacrificial system obsolete. That’s what fulfillment means. There is no contradiction. The greater revelation in Christ illuminates and brings to fruition the teaching of the OT. The book of Hebrews especially argues that OT types and shadows and patterns point toward Christ and are summed up in Him.
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No, Adam Beckham, it is you who are confused, just like Mr. Obama.
You need to find a church with a competent pastor.
The short explanation derives from verses like Deuteronomy 7:6 where God is addressing the Israelites He had brought out of Egypt:
“For thou [art] an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that [are] upon the face of the earth.”
Some of The Law is ceremonial, to identify these people as being His special people. Those laws don’t apply to Gentiles.
Jonah was sent to the Ninevites (who were not Israelites, but Gentiles) to proclaim their doom. But the Ninevites turned from their wicked ways and the Lord spared them, much to Jonah’s chagrin. I’m pretty sure their wickedness was not that they were eating shellfish or mixing fibers in their clothing. How did they know what their wickedness was?
There are moral laws that apply always and everywhere.
Was it wrong for Cain to kill Abel even though the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill” had not been given yet?
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Dobson is lying when he suggests that Obama offered an interpretation of traditional Biblical “understanding.”
What Obama actually did was ask a series of questions that raised the problem of how readers can use the Bible to determine public policy. Every sentence in the passage had a question mark. Obama’s purpose wasn’t to interpret the Bible himself but to suggest that people disagree over how to apply the Bible properly to policy.
Dobson is lying if he suggests that readers of the Bible don’t have problems of interpretation.
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Wiglaf at #9: The bible NEVER “suggests” that slavery is “OK.”
You’re right, it goes well beyond suggesting it. Yahweh creates laws to regulate it, which means it was assumed to be the right and normal thing to do.
How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith
This is another blatant lie by Obama. That’s not what scripture says or “suggests” at all.
You’re right … the passage in Deuteronomy requires death not just for your child but a list of other relatives too, in this circumstance.
Deuteronomy 13:6-10:
Suppose someone secretly entices you—even your brother, your son or daughter, your beloved wife, or your closest friend—and says, ‘Let us go worship other gods’—gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known. They might suggest that you worship the gods of peoples who live nearby or who come from the ends of the earth. But do not give in or listen. Have no pity, and do not spare or protect them. You must put them to death! Strike the first blow yourself, and then all the people must join in. Stone the guilty ones to death because they have tried to draw you away from the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of slavery.
You’re right Wiglaf, Obama’s all wet on this one.
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According to Dobson spokesman Tom Minnery, Dobson declined to meet McCain in Denver because Dobson “prefers that candidates visit the Focus on the Family campus to learn more about the organization.”
What an egoist.
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(NOTE: a few excerpts from this article – very enlightening)
National Delegate Count Tally
by FOXNews.com
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
“Does it mean that you feel you’ve got a personal relationship with Christ the savior? Then that’s directly part of the black church experience. Does it mean you’re born-again in a classic sense, with all the accoutrements that go along with that, as it’s understood by some other tradition? I’m not sure.”
“There are aspects of Christian tradition that I’m comfortable with and aspects that I’m not. There are passages of the Bible that make perfect sense to me and others that I go, ‘Ya know, I’m not sure about that.”
“It wasn’t an epiphany,” he says of that public profession of faith. “It was much more of a gradual process for me. I know there are some people who fall out. Which is wonderful. God bless them…. I think it was just a moment to certify or publicly affirm a growing faith in me.”
Falsani warns us that Obama’s walking the aisle at Trinity is poles apart from what Christians commonly refer to as being “saved, transformed or washed in the blood.” In other words, it’s not to be confused with what Jesus called being “born again.” As Mr. Obama himself explains, “It wasn’t an epiphany … but just a moment to certify or publicly affirm a growing faith in me.”
In another account of this event, Manya Brachear, writing in the Chicago Tribune, describes the event thusly: “When Obama sought his own church community, he felt increasingly at home at Trinity. Before leaving for Harvard Law School in 1988, he responded to one of Wright’s altar calls and declared a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Falsani wonders, “What kind of faith is it that is growing in Barack Obama? Is it the historic Christian faith? Not according to the good senator, who describes his faith as: (1) Suspicious of dogma (2) Without any monopoly on the truth (3) Nontransferable to others (4) Infused with a big healthy dose of doubt, and (5) Indulgent of and compatible with all other religions.”
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Moth – 18
Do you have an article link for the remark you made?
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Wiglaf, Mr. Obama has apparently read the bible and you have not:
Duet 13: 7-11
“If your own full brother, or your son or daughter, or your beloved wife, or your intimate friend, entices you secretly to serve other gods, whom you and your fathers have not known,
gods of any other nations, near at hand or far away, from one end of the earth to the other:
do not yield to him or listen to him, nor look with pity upon him, to spare or shield him,
but kill him. Your hand shall be the first raised to slay him; the rest of the people shall join in with you.
You shall stone him to death, because he sought to lead you astray from the LORD, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.
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SteveG,
“Yahweh creates laws to regulate it, which means it was assumed to be the right and normal thing to do.”
Yeah. Like he created laws about Divorce which he explicity stated that he hated.
Try a different argument for a change. That dog don’t hunt.
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Dobson lied when he said Obama claimed that, “unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe.” Dobson knows Obama supports the First Amendment. Dobson bears false witness when he claims that Obama holds a contrary, “fruitcake” interpretation of the Constitution.
Obama acknowledged the power of faith in people’s lives and called for “a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy.” Christians should be ashamed of Dobson’s response to Obama’s speech.
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Dobson needs to work on his own bible studies before he corrects Obamination’s. His aren’t too much better than the democratic candidate’s.
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“Fundamentalist” Christians are always trying to find breathing room for themselves in the spiked torture chambers of the OT. It doesn’t work. They are are “stuck” with the inerrant Word of the Fearsome God. (Not to mention the virulently nasty bits of NT misogyny and dominionism and Christ’s own words reaffirming the laws and many practices of the Prophets).
By the way, what was wrong with “The Old Covenant” anyway? Did God change his mind??? Or was it just that killing every living thing save a couple of humans didn’t get the message across, so maybe he decided to try a “softer” method??
I think he’s really the same jealous, ferocious, demonic guy in both books–who else would create and then sadistically kill off his own son just to ensure his own dominion and control?
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The speech Dobson denounces was mostly about the failures of progressives. Obama scolded:
. . . if we scrub language of all religious content, we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice. Imagine Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address without reference to “the judgments of the Lord.” Or King’s I Have a Dream speech without references to “all of God’s children.”
. . . secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. . . So to say that men and women should not inject their “personal morality” into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Dobson shows little respect for the truth about this speech. Obama upholds the Constitutional right of Christians to proclaim their faith. Dobson, however, disdains the discipline of democracy, which Obama says, “Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason.” Obama isn’t denying Dobson his constitutional rights, he’s calling upon Dobson to accept Democracy’s essential task of persuading others and allowing oneself to be persuaded.
Infallibly, Dobson fears Obama coming within 500 miles of him.
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This is rich. Dr. Dobbie, who distorts the Bible for his own religious and political views, accusing another person of doing it.
Dr. Dobbie, while claiming to be a Christian, viciously attacks another Christian.
Dr. Dobbie, while maintaining tax exempt status, campaigns openly for the Republicans.
I hope he keeps up his fundamentalist Christian rantings. It puts Obama in a better position to win in November.
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This statement of Adam’s bothered me:
“The marriage of American Christendom and the Republican Party is absolutely a disgusting thing to see.”
It is Obama who is trying to marry Christianity with liberal socialism. I guess that’s what he was taught in Wright’s church, which explains why Obama’s theology is “confused.” (Dobson’s right about that.) Anyone who really practices Christianity knows it has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with salvation. Obama will never convince people who have actually read and understand the Bible. He will, however, convince those who have some smattering of knowledge because it “feels” right to them.
So, yes, there is something that we’re seeing that is disgusting and that is the marriage of the Democratic party with Obama’s misunderstood version of Christianity.
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Dr. Dobson can tell anyone he likes who he supports as a candidate, — as a PRIVATE citizen. He didn’t lose his freedom, or freedom of speech because he founded a Christian organization.
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Below is the 12 Black Value Systems of Black Liberation Theology
1. Commitment to God
2. Commitment to the BLACK Community
3. Commitment to the BLACK Family
4. Dedication to the Pursuit of Education
5. Dedication to the Pursuit of Excellence
6. Adherence to the BLACK Work Ethic
7. Commitment to Self-Discipline and Self-Respect
8. Disavowal of the Pursuit of “Middleclassness”
9. Pledge to make the fruits of all developing and acquired skills available to the BLACK Community
10. Pledge to Allocate Regularly, a Portion of Personal Resources for Strengthening and Supporting BLACK Institutions
11. Pledge allegiance to all BLACK leadership who espouse and embrace the BLACK Value System
12. Personal commitment to embracement of the BLACK Value System.
Not one mention of – Jesus Christ – Salvation – the Bible – study of God’s Word -
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When Dr. Dobbie retires from his tax-exempt empire, then he can speak as a private citizen.
I wish NJLawyer would at least be less hypocritical. If she’s gonna criticize Obama for mixing politics and religion, shouldn’t she start in her own back yard? I’ve never understood why it’s ok for conservative Christians to meld politics and religion, but they scream like a banshee if anyone else does it.
Personally, I wish they’d all leave the Bible out of it (Dems and Repubs). We live under a Constitution, not a holy book.
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I’m waiting for Wiglaf to tell James and me how it is that Deuteronomy doesn’t really say what it says.
And I’m waiting for Victoria to explain how she can scoff at Obama for warning that Republicans will try to use racism to stir up fears about him and then post things like #30.
I’m guessing I’m gonna be waiting a long, long time.
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“When Dr. Dobbie retires from his tax-exempt empire, then he can speak as a private citizen.”
No Anlir, we don’t lose our freedom of speech because we have a Christian organization, and you don’t make the laws and rules in the USA, nor do you have the right to direct Dr. Dobson to speak or be silent regarding his choice!
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Wait no longer:
I didn’t dream up the 12 steps for “Black Value Systems of Black Liberation Theology” you will need to speak to their leader/leaders, that might be a good thing for you to pursue.
Can you just imagine if another church made up such a list of 12 and substituted “WHITE” for “BLACK” - we would never hear the end of it, nor would any church I have ever been affiliated with, even think of doing such a thing.
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Anlir is an idiot. NJ Lawyer. No need to respond to that.
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SteveG,
In Vicky dear’s mind, black = evil. Obama is black, ergo he’s evil.
*****
So Dr. Dobbie, and his fellow conservative Christian swift-boaters are unsheathing their swords. Let’s not forget – these people don’t have a moral compass, so it’s useless to appeal to them on things like human decency, respect, and so forth. I suggest a two-track approach:
1. Let them rant all they want. The more they run their mouths, the more the expose themselves as hateful extremists who don’t give a rat’s behind about this nation.
2. Speak truth to their lies, rumors, and innuendo. The best thing to do is point people to http://factcheck.barackobama.com/
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Anlir
YOU WRITE:….
“In Vicky dear’s mind, black = evil. Obama is black, ergo he’s evil.”
The above is a BLATANT lie, I have never said that, further more it is a PERSONAL ATTACK upon my character.
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Vicky dear shows her complete ignorance of IRS regulations for tax-exempt organizations. You can’t hide behind your tax-exempt status to engage in political campaigning.
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Does the IRS put a muzzle on those who, away from their organizations make comments regarding candidates, those who they believe would serve the country well? The answer is NO.
A person never loses their right to speak as an individual, but they may not speak for their tax-exempt organization. Two different scenarios -
By the way you seem to be having trouble with peoples names. Dr. Dobson is not Dr. Dobbie – nor is my name Vicky, its Victoria. I do understand you inability to spell correctly –
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Victoria throws in unattributed maxims of Black Liberation Theology, pretending not to link it to anyone or anything regarding this issue, then is shocked (SHOCKED!) that someone would impugn her motives. Care to connect the dots, Victoria?
Then perhaps someone can explain why Deuteronomy doesn’t mean what it says.
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Face it, Obama is right. If we were left with a “Christian-only” nation, who’s interpretation would we follow? How many different types of Christianity are there in the US alone. Getting Christians to agree on anything about the bible is like herding cats. Which, considering the word is inerrant, is remarkable.
Arcadia, #25, in addition to your question, I might add that according to at least 3 citations in the OT, the covenant was supposed to be forever! It shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations
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Dr. Dobbie is one of many “Rev. Wright’s” of the religious right. This is a guy who has spent his career spreading hate, primarily of gay people and their families.
Nay, I say – let him speak. Let him speak loudly and clearly so the American people can know what a religious fanatic he is.
He’s the talk of CNN’s blog site at the moment, having generated a huge number of responses from the American people. And 95% or more of the comments are negative.
His day has come and gone.
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Fyne, Jr., how right you are.
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James here’s the link.
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By the way James, this can be found many places, its NO SECRET, it’s widely plastered for all to see.
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Are your ‘dots’ connected yet James? LOL
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Victoria, your link is to a Fox News article under which comments left. One of the comments is by “Kim” who gives a lengthy “biography” of Barack Obama, and mentions this Black Liberation System you refer to.
It’s an anonymous source, which is no more valid than complete fiction, and I see still absolutely no relevance to the issue we have here. Other than throwing some mud to see if it will stick, I don’t see what you are getting at.
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Scroop #16
You are right. Obama was simply asking whose theocracy we should establish since biblical interpretation isn’t universal. Of course, no one is asking for a theocracy, so he’s simply knocking over a straw man. Dobson missed the actual issue by a hair.
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James here are two more.
http://www.erikrush.com/trinityunited1.htm
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Anlir,
First off, Dobson can voice his opinion just like you. His isn’t nearly as hysterical sounding as yours though. At post 27 you say;
“Dr. Dobbie, while maintaining tax exempt status, campaigns openly for the Republicans.”
Not true. He has not endorsed McCain or any repub for President.
From the MSNBC story out today;
McCain also has not met with Dobson. A McCain campaign staffer offered Dobson a meeting with McCain recently in Denver, Minnery said. Dobson declined because he prefers that candidates visit the Focus on the Family campus to learn more about the organization, Minnery said.
Dobson has not backed off his statement that he could not in good conscience vote for McCain because of concerns over the Arizona senator’s conservative credentials. Dobson has said he will vote in November but has suggested he might not vote for president.
Your statement isn’t even close to true.
At 38 you said; Vicky dear shows her complete ignorance of IRS regulations for tax-exempt organizations. You can’t hide behind your tax-exempt status to engage in political campaigning.
Again, you’re wrong. Also from the MSNBC story;
The program was paid for by a Focus on the Family affiliate whose donations are taxed, Dobson said, so it’s legal for that group to get more involved in politics.
So are you intentionally lying, or are you just ignorant?
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And seriously Anlir, if you want to hold on to what little credibility you have left, you’ll find a better source than the blog posters at the Commie News Network to back up your point. Hardly a broad spectrum of American’s opinions there. Liberal opinion definately, but hardly a good cross section of America.
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James – here’s another good one!
Obama’s preacher sanitizes website
Removes radical ‘Black Value System’ from church ‘About Us’ page
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SteveG #17, James 21. Has Deuteronomy 13:6-10 been quoted a hundred times on this blog yet? I’ve explained it nearly that many times, but it always went into the void. La Shawn Barber provides the answer once again, but apparently mockery is more fun than dialog. You err not considering the big picture of a message of love spanning thousands of years.
You are right to observe that the law was extremely harsh, brutal and even gruesome, but you can’t say it wasn’t just. In a perfect world, anyone who sins deserves to die. But without a law to establish a judgment of death, grace that provides eternal life would be meaningless. Substitutionary sacrifice was bloody and deadly, but dying for another demonstrates the greatest love.
Without the harshness of absolute justice, you could never understand the cost of absolute love, of someone taking the penalty of that law upon himself for you.
The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. Rom 8:2
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I agree with Dobson that Obama’s exegesis is a bit shoddy. But where was Dobson when the current President used the Bible for similarly specious purposes? Provide us a with a link to the FoF program that criticized GWB’s exegesis.
This demonstrates precisely why there is so much public distrust of evangelicals of the Dobson ilk. They are often willing to compromise their standards when their allies in the Culture War misuse the Bible. But then they have no such forgiveness to extend to those perceived not to share their cultural ambitions.
Dobson is a persistent disgrace…to the church and to the name of Christ.
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XION: Of course, no one is asking for a theocracy, so he’s simply knocking over a straw man.
I’m with you about hammy World Wrestling Federation matches between secularism and theocracy. However, if you read Obama’s speech closely (follow Mickey’s links), Obama isn’t engaged in an exhibition, but is actually making a subtle proposal, not about rights and the Constitution, but about the rhetoric of democracy. Obama is asking the Christian right to expand their discourse and employ the rhetoric of politics to advocate policies, instead of religious talk. He wants Dobson to use the repertoire of persuasion and participate in a debate that requires willingness to be persuaded (though not an obligation to agree, as Dobson misjudges). Such political participation is in some ways alternative incompatible behavior to the religious language of absolute judgment. But using political rhetoric rather than theology (what Aristotle calls logos, the language of absolute truth) doesn’t require you to set aside your religion.
I think Dobson’s hostility to Obama’s 2-year-old speech is as infallible as it is gratuitous. Don’t take my word for it, read the speach, which is interesting.
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Xion at #53: You are right to observe that the law was extremely harsh, brutal and even gruesome, but you can’t say it wasn’t just. In a perfect world, anyone who sins deserves to die. But without a law to establish a judgment of death, grace that provides eternal life would be meaningless. Substitutionary sacrifice was bloody and deadly, but dying for another demonstrates the greatest love.
Well and good. However, Wiglaf did not explain it that way; Wiglaf denied that Deuteronomy contained anything like that, and accused Obama of lying for saying it did.
Wiglaf has yet to return to this thread and admit to having been wrong and to leveling a false accusation.
We can debate whether or not the law was just or right, but the fact that it WAS the law, as contained in Deuteronomy — just as Obama said — is beyond dispute.
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#56 SteveG – Yes, but go easy on my friend.
#55 Scroop – Well stated, though I would say that Obama is making the same error (or worse) that Dobson makes.
Obama says, “today I’d like to talk about the connection between religion and politics” and then goes on to define government as doing God’s work. He proposes an infusion of religion into government like never before to implement the social gospel.
On the other foot, “Dobson has NOT backed off his statement that he could not in good conscience vote for McCain because of concerns over the Arizona senator’s conservative credentials.”
Dobson is failing to separate between the Kingdom of Heaven and the United States of America. God obliges Christians to be good citizens, even in bloody Rome! Voting does not decide what is best for God’s Kingdom, it decides what is best for America.
Both Obama and Dobson fail to distinguish between church and state.
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An other attempt to create controversy where there is none. Essentially, Obama points out the lack of agreement over what would be a biblically correct political world view. Xion calls it a straw man which may not be entirely the right word but it correctly signifies the lack of importance one should ascribe to the comments.
Victoria has become an expert in the “sources say” method of spreading rumours.
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HRW
“Victoria has become an expert in the “sources say” method of spreading rumours.”
What rumors have I spread, which are incorrect and false?
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Kiyoshi. I don’t know you, and I don’t care. You may be a troll here or not. Again, right now, don’t care. You still can’t make comments as stupid as the one above. You can’t chastise Dobson for not criticizing Bush’s so-called distortion of scripture, without even establishing that such a distortion exists. Then you went ten steps ahead in stating the consequences of Dobson’s actions (him being a disgrace), without even proving your first point. As a result, you’re just ranting. We have no clue what you are talking about.
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“Sources say” has become a regular means of saying something without having to be responsible for it. A referencing circle develops in which truth is difficult to establish and proving falsehood nearly impossible. In this way, people can make claims without having to establish their validity but yet are able to challenge their critics to prove their falsity. remember the inability of your critics to prove something false is not the same as establishing it as truth.
If I were to claim McCain is not a real american and then reference a comment on a blog which in turn referred to a rumour mentioned elsewhere etc., you could not prove me false nor could I have proven it to be true but the innuedo I raised will still remain. This is the game called “sources say”.
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Dr. Dobbie, as head of a tax-exempt organization, cannot use it to campaign for one political party, which he has done repeatedly for the Republicans over the last few years. Now that rule frustrates the conservative Christian dream of installing a theocracy in America. But it’s still in effect.
Granted Dr. Dobbie hasn’t endorsed McCain yet. But stay tuned. You can bet if the race gets close, God will suddenly reveal to Dr. Dobbie that he needs to endorse McCain to save America from the evil Democrats. I guarantee you that Dr. Dobbie will not sit out this election.
This whole thing about Dr. Dobbie having a separate organization to engage in political campaigning is a sham. Everyone knows it’s all in the family. It might escape the letter of the law, but it doesn’t pass the moral test. For a man who claims morality as his aspiration, this shows the hallowness of it. Like so many other conservative Christians, he smashed his moral compass and prostituted himself to the Republican Party.
But really, Dr. Dobbie’s dream of a fundamentalist Christian theocracy in America are not going to come true. Clearly he’s frustrated and angered by that and is lashing out at Obama.
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SteveG says:
I’m waiting for Wiglaf to tell James and me how it is that Deuteronomy doesn’t really say what it says.
Wiglaf did not explain it that way; Wiglaf denied that Deuteronomy contained anything like that, and accused Obama of lying for saying it did…Wiglaf has yet to return to this thread and admit to having been wrong and to leveling a false accusation.
Obama says: “which suggests slavery is OK…which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith”
The bible says, and this is the passage I thought Obama was referencing (Deuteronomy 21:18-21): ” If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; and they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.”
Now, consider the process. Who’s doing the accusing? How far has the rebellious son gone in is rebellion? Do you honestly think that parents in a society that actually valued children (“Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them”), would be quick to cast judgment on their own children? Are these passages showing the “zero tolerance” that we ARE NOW SEEING IN OUR OWN COUNTRY?? NO! Clearly, the implication demonstrates that the parents have tolerated their son’s straying and have attempted to bring him back.
I’d rather have the laws of the bible in it’s simplicity and brevity than the extensive LIBRARY of laws (hundreds of thousands of pages) that we have on the federal, state, and local level. If you think the bible is bad, STEVEG, you haven’t carefully read U.S. law. If you think you haven’t “sinned” against your own government in a multitude of ways, you’re fooling yourself. If you think that the U.S. governments on all levels is tolerant while the bible “suggests” intolerance and no mercy, you are again fooling yourself and don’t understand the bible at all.
On slavery, the bible says: “Pro 11:15 He who is surety for a stranger shall be ruined; and he who hates suretyship is safe.” “Luk 4:18 The Spirit of the Lord is on Me; because of this He has anointed Me to proclaim the Gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim deliverance to the captives, and new sight to the blind, to set at liberty those having been crushed…”
Now, while the bible allows for divorce, does God think it’s “OK?” The Bible says: “They said to Him, Why did Moses then command to give a bill of divorce and to put her away? He said to them, Because of your hard-heartedness Moses allowed you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so.”
I could go on, but I hope you get my point. The bible presents a more tolerant, merciful justice system than our own system today. Obama wants to “suggest” that the actual situation is the reverse. Maybe I’m wrong in my assessment of him, but that was my first reaction.
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Vicky dear shows her complete ignorance of IRS regulations for tax-exempt organizations. You can’t hide behind your tax-exempt status to engage in political campaigning.
Anlir shows his total ignorance of reality by failing to realize that foFs PAC arm is not tax exempt.
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Victoria throws in unattributed maxims of Black Liberation Theology, pretending not to link it to anyone or anything regarding this issue, then is shocked (SHOCKED!) that someone would impugn her motives. Care to connect the dots, Victoria?
Black theology = the theology taught in Obama’s “church” for the past 20 years.
Usually there is at least a good similarity between one’s personal theology and the theology of one’s church.
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HRW,
The swift-boating of Obama by conservative Christians is just now getting revved up. Vicky dear’s “sources say” innuendos about Obama are mild compared to what is in store on here. Hide and watch.
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Like so many other conservative Christians, he smashed his moral compass and prostituted himself to the Republican Party.
A perfect statement of the bitterness felt by the morally bankrupt supporters of a failed ideology toward the coalition that has defeated the in five of the last 7 presidential elections.
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HRW,
What part of Victoria’s links are “sources say” type of innuendo? They clearly show what was posted on Trinity’s site, and what it was changed to. The only question is why was it changed? HMMMMM.. I wonder? Just because they changed it, doesn’t mean is was never there. Interesting too, the ones that were changed. “Sources say” is OK if you actually have on the record sources. But you already knew that.
Anlir,
Oh right, that whole “truth=swiftboating” thingy again. Examining your candidates weaknesses is painful I know, but necessary. Stop hiding from it. Sticking your finger in your virtual ear, and lalalala ing will not change it.
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DR,
Thank you.
I think of you often, God bless you.
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HRW at 61;
“If I were to claim McCain is not a real american and then reference a comment on a blog which in turn referred to a rumour mentioned elsewhere etc., you could not prove me false nor could I have proven it to be true but the innuedo I raised will still remain. This is the game called “sources say”.
Yes you could try that, and everyone would know that McCain is an honest to goodness American, his service to this country has proven that, and you’d just sound foolish saying otherwise. Your statement is easily proven false, and dismissed accordingly. Innuendos don’t remain once shown to be false. Unless you’re willing to ignore the obvious.
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The real AJ, thank you.
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HRW – 61
Lets not mince words, – as you posted in #58 and I asked you in post #59 regarding your post #58: “What rumors have I spread, which are incorrect and false” – ?
Until you can give a specific answer to the question your post #61 makes no sense, you ramble on. So lets hear it, “What rumors have I spread, which are incorrect and false?” as I asked in post #59.
I’m waiting!
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Victoria,
While you wait, I have an idea for ya’. I see from alot of your links that you like worldnetdaily. I know you also like WMB. I’d like to recommend a couple more for you, I think you’ll like American Thinker, Powerline, and Breitbart. Breitbart is constantly updating, has tons of sources (mainstream, blogs, you name it), and is definetely good stuff. I’ve found alot of stuff on Obama and his “associates” that I would not have come across otherwise. It’ll help you pass the time.
I’m going to sleep. Nite all.
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AJ
Thanks, … I link up with ‘American Thinker often as well as Breitbart, they are both good sites – thanks. I will check out Powerline, thanks for the tip.
I don’t have a great deal of time with all the research I’m involved with, however I’m always grateful for a new site. Take care and sleep well.
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17(STEVEG): You say in reply to Wiglaf at #9 who states, “The bible NEVER “suggests” that slavery is “OK.””: You’re right, it goes well beyond suggesting it. Yahweh creates laws to regulate it, which means it was assumed to be the right and normal thing to do.
You are right, Steve. Slavery was a relatively benign economic system during Old Testament times and was carefully regulated by God. Of course, most people, including you apparently and Obama obviously, are heavily influenced by the corrupt and oppressive version practiced in this country and Europe. However, it is very clear that, other than the label, there is no commonality between Old Testament slavery and the abomination practiced in modern times.
What was a real abomination to God in the Old Testament was oppression and exploitation of any kind. If you do a word search on “oppression” and “exploitation” in the Bible, you find there are up to 150 references and all of them are severely condemned.
Consider the following events in the Old Testament which bear testimony to significant differences between Old Testament “slavery” and what most people think when they hear the term today:
1. Abraham sends out 318 of his slaves (trained servants) armed to the teeth to rescue Lot when he is captured by the Five Kings (Genesis 14:8-16). Obviously, slaves or servants in the Old Testament were trusted and important members of the household. Can you imagine a slave owner in the 18th and 19th century arming slaves and sending them out to do battle.
2. Abraham sends the “eldest servant of his house, that ruled over all that he had” to get a wife for Isaac. He sends him loaded down with wealth trusting he will return with a wife for Isaac (Genesis 24). What do you think would happen if a slave owner of the 18th and 19th century had sent a slave loaded with wealth to a far land? Would the slave have returned? Would the same slave ever reach the position of ruling over everything his master had?
3. Jacob runs away after Esau discovers Jacob’s deception. He sell himself as a slave twice to Naban in order to marry Rachel. At the end of the bondage, Jacob is an extremely wealthy man with slaves of his own (Genesis 29-32). Note the definite period of service and the acquisition of great wealth by Jacob in the 14 years. It is clear that in the 3500 years since Jacob, man utterly corrupted the economic system of slavery.
4. When Jerusalem is besieged by Babylon, Zedekiah the King and the leaders of Judah made a covenant with God that if He would spare them, the would revert to the God-ordained 7-year contract with their slaves and free them. After they did this, the Babylonians were pushed back. Zedekiah and the leaders promptly reneged on the covenant and re-enslaved the people. For this evil oppression, God gave Judah into the hands of the Babylonians (Jeremiah 34:8-22). In short, one of the major reasons, the Babylonian captivity happened was the oppression of their slaves and the breaking of the covenant to restore the 7-year contractual system. Reminds you of the blood shed in our own civil war doesn’t it. Could it be possible that Lincoln was right?
There are literally hundreds of references in the Bible that demonstrate that the Biblical system of “slavery” was vastly different than the modern evil we call slavery.
What God gave as a good and equitable economic system, MAN corrupted and turned it into an abomination. Makes a strong case for the total depravity of unregenerated souls, doesn’t it.
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So that’s what Obama means by ‘change’ – change the Bible’s meaning to fit his agenda.
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Dr Dave
You make an interesting point on economics. It would be useful I think to have an expansion on that point and explain the jubilee system that was proscribed for ancient Israel — it is not modern day capitalism.
On the topic — this seems just a fundamentalist reaction to the notion that various sects of Christianity interpret the Bible differently with the fundies making their normal claim that only their interpretation is the correct one and the only true Christian one as if fundamentalists have a trademark on correct theology.
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Wiglaf at #63: The bible says, and this is the passage I thought Obama was referencing (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)
Uh huh. But Obama specifically referred to passage about someone turning to a false religion, which this passage does not.
Deuteronomy 13:6-10, however, does. And it does demand death for the offender, and it does, yes, demand even that parents must stone their own children to death if they are guilty.
Deuteronomy DOES say it, Obama was NOT lying. Why can you not just admit you were wrong?
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Dr. Dave, good points on the economic side of slavery. Obama probably meant that the bible “suggests” slavery by race. Perhaps he meant to refer to a historical interpretation or something more general. In any case, his statement doesn’t demonstrate a knowledge of scripture; only a knowledge of popular attacks on scripture. It seems to me, he’d just as soon ignore scripture as a tool for wisdom on legislation because he thinks it suggests too many things that are wrong and explicitly states things that our government can’t do. In truth, he’s right about the defense department bit, but it’s not just the sermon on the mount part; it’s the whole bible. Consider Samuel’s warning to the Israelites about having a king. Our federal government is really not much different than having a king. We are all serfs. I don’t see Obama changing that. He’s got some rather unbiblical, materialistic economic views; also known as communism, class warfare, socialism, class envy, theft, etc…
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“But Obama specifically referred to passage about someone turning to a false religion”
False religion? I thought the phrase was “strays from the faith.” That could have several meanings. In any case, certainly the passage you referenced does require the death penalty; it doesn’t suggest it. Why should anyone find this offensive? I don’t; nor would I start demanding that the U.S. institute such a law. Of course, you could ask David Koresh or the mormon cult in Texas if they think there is already a similar law and you might get an affirmative response.
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This is certainly an EMOTIONAL topic!
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Wiglaf:
The dispute wasn’t whether it’s offensive, it’s whether it was there at all. It is.
But, I give up. You are now weaseling around with lawyer-like technicalities to try to avoid admitting the simple fact that you were wrong and your accusation that Obama lied was false. (Nice Christian integrity there.)
But the evidence is here for all to see, so I will drop it and let the facts speak for themselves.
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Let’s look at some other quotes:
“I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manufacturers’ lobby”
And thus, taking away the means of self defense to those who need it most?
“I would rather have someone who is grounded in morality and ethics, and who is also secular, affirm their morality and ethics and values without pretending that they’re something they’re not.”
Like Hitler?
“if we progressives shed some of these biases, we might recognize some overlapping values that both religious and secular people share when it comes to the moral and material direction of our country.”
Unfortunately, the worldviews are opposed and thus values may only appear or “suggest” to overlap.
“activists like our good friend Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo are lifting up the Biblical injunction to help the poor as a means of mobilizing Christians against budget cuts to social programs and growing inequality.”
Oh really? The biblical injunction is to create government programs and force people to give up their money, even poor people, in order to help the poor?? I beg to differ!
“When you’ve got an estate tax debate that proposes a trillion dollars being taken out of social programs to go to a handful of folks who don’t need and weren’t even asking for it, you know that we need an injection of morality in our political debate.”
This is the biggest piece of dung.
“And each side will need to accept some ground rules for collaboration.”
…Ground rules that will clearly favor the progressive worldview as the previous quotes demonstrate.
“Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do.”
Uh,…yeah.
“At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise.”
Yeah, again.
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STEVEG,
It’s all context, STEVEG. I’ve admitted what I’ve admitted. Perhaps Obama should actually reference scripture verses so we know what he’s talking about.
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Wiglaf and Dr. Dave.
We’ve had the slavery debate before at length, and I’m not interested in having it all over again, but briefly:
Exodus 21:20-21 establishes that slaves were property and could be beaten severely with impunity … even to death as long as the slave lingers “a day or two” before dying.
Leviticus 25:44-55 establishes that Hebrew slaves were to be treated as indentured servants, could be redeemed from servitude, and would be freed in the year of Jubilee if they had not been freed sooner … BUT, slaves taken from other nations were nothing but property, could be slaves for life and could even be passed down from the owner to the owner’s heirs.
These are direct commands of Yaweh, and they clearly condone slavery. There is absolutely no reason that God could not have said “Thou shalt not own a human being as property,” if he were really against it.
(This is, of course, only a problem for Biblical literalist inerrantists … as I am not one of those, I can take all this as an artifact of the primitive culture that created the Old Testament laws. You folks, however, are bound by your presuppositions to accept that God really did have no problem with slavery, even to the point of not caring much if slaves got beaten severely at the owner’s whim.)
There are a lot of other passages but these are two of the clearest. Modern-day apologists like to pretend that Biblical slavery was really a benign thing and not like 19th-Century American slavery, but the actual text of the Bible belies that revisionist history.
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Perhaps Obama should actually reference scripture verses so we know what he’s talking about.
I knew what he was talking about. It took me 30 seconds to find the relevant passage, right there is Deuteronomy, as he said.
It’s not Obama’s fault if you are unaware of what’s in the Bible.
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Well, STEVEG, you’ve done a good job of sniping. Who cares about the real issues here right? Instead we’ll talk about how Wiglaf is “unaware”, demonstrate zero tolerance towards his interpretation of Obama’s meaning of straying from the faith. Wiglaf may see a rebellious and drunk son as straying from the faith but STEVEG knows what Obama meant. But, hey! I thought you gave up? Why do you insist on beating a dead horse?
Obama says the bible suggest things it doesn’t suggest. Those passages aren’t “suggestions.” Slavery isn’t “OK”. He’s got a drastically different worldview than many Christians and he’s trying to find common ground? The focus needs to be on why our worldviews are different, not on whether or not Wiglaf understood Obama’s reference correctly.
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STEVEG,
Your opinion on biblical slavery is wrong. You have no understanding of the context of Exodus 21:20-21 or Leviticus. This is clear by your attitude. In any case, since Israel is no longer a nation as it was prior to 70 AD, the bondsman passage in Leviticus is not applicable today in it’s literal sense. Perhaps there may be some “general equity” gleaned from the passage, but you can’t apply something literally that requires a God’s Most Favored Nation (Israel) status. Like I stated previously, slavery was necessary. It wasn’t “OK.” There is no implication or suggestion that agrees with that statement.
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Wiglaf: The passage you thought Obama was talking about refers to a “stubborn and rebellious son.” It doesn’t say anything about straying from the faith and while it could be construed that being stubborn and rebellious could include that, it’s not specified.
In the other passage, it IS specified as straying from the faith and also leading others astray. I think that’s the one Obama had in mind.
But in either case, the truth that you’re trying desperately to sidestep, is that Deuteronomy does indeed include at least one instance where God orders parents to execute their own children. The fact that it’s not the passage you thought it was is not germane. It’s in there.
When you first raised this, you said it was a “blatant lie” on Obama’s part. Obviously, given that Obama was right, it was no such thing, and your accusation was false.
What is puzzling me is why you can’t just admit you were mistaken. You were. There’s no shame in being mistaken, but your increasingly hair-splitting defenses and rising agitation show me that you are strongly resisting saying so.
I’m not sniping. As a Christian, you shouldn’t be making false accusations, and when you do so by mistake, you should be eager to retract them. I am just wondering why you’re so resistant to being accountable to your own stated principles.
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Under what circumstances would slavery ever be “necessary?”
If slavery was in some way necessary, why was severely beating the slave permissible? Certainly THAT wasn’t necessary.
What context is it that I’m not understanding?
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We live in a culture that has been trained to consider the Bible as unimportant, being just another religious book and on the same level as any mythology. The foundational reason for this thinking is the Naturalistic world-view—since everything as evolved, and there is NO deity to create inspire, create, etc., then the Bible can only have a human source and so has no authority. The other side is that it is the inspired Word of God and therefore is extremely important and authoritative, because God made everything, we were placed here with a mission, and failure to follow that commission has consequences! That means that there ARE absolute values, and that is exactly what the Naturalistic crowd have worked so hard to jettison. We cannot expect these people to accept Biblical mandates, or that the Bible really means anything other than what they want it to mean for their particular purposes. This is most visible in political candidates who trot out “faith” only for the express purpose of wooing Biblical confused voters.
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STEVEG,
Regarding “sidestepping”. In either Deutoronomy case, arguing that the stoning is a “suggestion” is wrong. Regarding old testament law as applied to the Israelites, there is no suggestion. There’s a command. Maybe Obama wasn’t lying. Perhaps he truly believed that, but it was wrong. I could have used a better phrase than “blatant lie.” Unfortunately, you’ve latched onto this like this is the crux of the entire argument. It’s not.
Regarding slavery as necessary, slavery was several things in scripture. Which one wasn’t necessary? By their definition, do we have slavery today? Consider prison work for example. Should thieves pay restitution or just sit around in prison to “pay their debt to society?” This is a complex issue that requires more space than should be spent here.
Regarding beating slaves: What if the slave will not work or threatens the slave owner? What threat should the slave owner be able to hold over the slave? A time out? A plea for empathy? I’d argue that you should quit applying your 21st century understanding of “civilized” on the old testament period. Many people can’t even spank their children today without breaking a law.
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For those of you who are tired of beating your heads against the stonewall of SteveG’s misunderstanding of Scripture, I suggest you tour one of Steve’s favorite sites:
http://www.tentmaker.org/
This is a site that espouses a concept called “Christian Universalism”, with which Steve acknowledges agreement. The primary tenet of this concept is that ALL of mankind will be saved by Christ’s sacrifice. Those who are not saved during this earthly life will eventually be brought around by a limited time of punishment in a limited hell.
The justification for this concept is found mostly in a unique brand of wishful humanistic reasoning. Scripture is regarded as “containing” the word of God rather than “being” the word of God. This allows cherry picking the portions you like. The other portions of Scripture can then be discarded or reinterpreted in any fashion desired. This leads Steve to some rather bizarre interpretations and “understandings” of Scripture.
So, arguing with him about Scripture is like trying to nail jello to the wall. Do not expect any degree of observable success. However, many other people read these threads, some of whom never comment at all. Their evaluations are important too.
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Anlir,
I suppose I risk violating the boards policies in doing this, but you are a Big Fat Liar. Your inexusable attacks on Jim Dobson are transparently motivated by your homosexual agenda. In fact, you are filled with the hatred and bile of which you accuse him. The whacko left wing has done a good job of attacking and threatening Focus on the Family over the years, and sicced the authorities on them multiple times. But each time this happens FOTF is fully exhonerated.
“Dr. Dobbie, as head of a tax-exempt organization, cannot use it to campaign for one political party, which he has done repeatedly for the Republicans over the last few years. Now that rule frustrates the conservative Christian dream of installing a theocracy in America. But it’s still in effect.”
This lie, among others, that you’ve told about James Dobson, has been thoroughly debunked, several times. The organization has gone through (if I recall correctly) repeated audits whereupon the officials declared that everything was in order, and there have been NO violations.
Did you get that?
Let me repeat it again.
No major violations, not even any minor violations, NO VIOLATIONS OF ANY KIND.
I think that if every business or organization practiced the same above board financial dealings as Focus on the Family, (think Enron, Bear &Stearns, S&L bailout, recent housing mortgage debacle) there’d be a lot less problems in this country.
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Yikes!
What a lot of huffing and puffing from the good Doctor.
We’re talking about the intersection of politics and faith.
I am so disappointed in the radio — it’s a lesson in willful distortion. If Dobson and Minnery read their Bible no better than they read this speech, they are in a world of spiritual trouble.
And are we really supposed to believe that somehow (somehow!) Dr. Dobson didn’t know about this speech until just a few days ago? The Conference was covered by NPR, the Chicago Trib, Slate, and the competitor to World Magazine (which shall not be named
). It’s not exactly as if this took place in obscurity — the media department at Focus is far too capable, too well-read to make Dobson’s and Minnery’s assertions remotely plausible.
Wilfull distortion. Misrepresentation. This
is precisely the sort that has tarred Evangelicals, and given the secular left a causus belli against all religion — ironically, since the subject of Obama’s speech was on the place of religion in public politics.
On the other side, it’s the Obama camp which has reached out Focus (as the World Mag article notes), even to the point of meeting at the Colorado Springs campus.
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since the subject of Obama’s speech was on the place of religion in public politics.
No. Obama’s speech was a sales pitch. He was, in effect, saying, “My worldview is better than yours. Let’s make a deal, a compromise. You accept my worldview and we’ll work from there.”
Obama’s religion is government, the healer of all ills in his mind. He’s wrong and his worldview is wrong.
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Wiglaf: Regarding “sidestepping”. In either Deutoronomy case, arguing that the stoning is a “suggestion” is wrong. Regarding old testament law as applied to the Israelites, there is no suggestion. There’s a command. Maybe Obama wasn’t lying. Perhaps he truly believed that, but it was wrong. I could have used a better phrase than “blatant lie.” Unfortunately, you’ve latched onto this like this is the crux of the entire argument. It’s not.
Wait a minute … so your objection is that Obama softened the meaning by referring to it as “suggesting” that parents execute their children when in reality it commands it?
Wow … ok.
Regarding slavery as necessary, slavery was several things in scripture. Which one wasn’t necessary? By their definition, do we have slavery today? Consider prison work for example. Should thieves pay restitution or just sit around in prison to “pay their debt to society?” This is a complex issue that requires more space than should be spent here.
The slavery of the Bible was not about making restitution or being punished for a crime. I don’t think anyone would regard servitude as punishment for something the person did to be slavery. Slavery is about buying, selling and forcing labor out of people who are treated as property.
Regarding beating slaves: What if the slave will not work or threatens the slave owner? What threat should the slave owner be able to hold over the slave? A time out? A plea for empathy? I’d argue that you should quit applying your 21st century understanding of “civilized” on the old testament period. Many people can’t even spank their children today without breaking a law.
And you continue to dance. The passage in Exodus does not require the slave owner to have any reason at all. If he beats the slave and the slave dies immediately, the owner is to be punished. If the slave does not die, or if the slave lives a couple of days before dying, the owner is off the hook entirely … whether he had a good reason or no reason at all.
I can read plain English, Wiglaf. That’s what the passage clearly says, unless it’s been badly mistranslated in every available translation.
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Michael Martin: It’s funny how often I get accused of “misunderstanding” Scripture because I’m here insisting the words mean what they mean.
By the way, I don’t actually care for the Tentmaker site that much. I referred you to one article on it, because I thought that particular article was good. That wasn’t intended as an endorsement of the site as a whole.
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In defense of SteveG, we should all at least agree about what the law says. We differ in interpretation.
Trying to reinterpret the law of Moses as an appropriate set of rules for modern society is as dangerous as misinterpreting it all together. Even Jews do not keep the law – because it is impossible.
Watering down the offensiveness of the law dilutes the grace that paid it all. The offensiveness of slavery is mitigated by Christ who sets us free.
God explained way back with Abraham that his descendants would be slaves (Gen 15:13). Slavery was part of God’s plan. It is a critical element in the story of redemption. Then in due time he would liberate them and lead them to the Promised Land.
The greater question is why God chose to tell his story of redemption in this way, not with ink and paper, but with the very lives of his people over thousands of years. Well, he’s God Almighty. He operates differently than we do. Life and death are in his hands.
But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. Rom 8:17,18
So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Gal 4:3-5
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OK, Steve.
However, in our previous conversation on the thread, “Angry God: Part II” you did acknowledge your agreement with “Christian Universalism” as espoused on that site.
In conversing with someone, it always helps to know where they are coming from and the basis for their Biblical hermeneutics.
So, when I talk to you I never take anything for granted as possibly being something I’m familiar with. I need to know that I’m going to get something from the “SG” translation.
The same can be said for Obama, Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan and other devotees of the “Black Liberation” translation of the Bible.
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“The passage in Exodus does not require the slave owner to have any reason at all.”
So what you’re telling me is that the elders were not the thought police, but judged actions instead. Well, that’s a point in favor of Israelite law then.
And you continue to dance.
No. I’m not dancing at all. I assume the best. You assume the worst. Certainly, a slave owner could beat a slave without reason, however, there’s no economic incentive to do so.
“Slavery is about buying, selling and forcing labor out of people who are treated as property.”
Sure. What’s wrong with that? It was likely better to be a bondsman than a dead enemy; a bondsman (slave) that the Israelite owner had a longterm economic interest in.
“Wow … ok.”
By what standard do you judge scripture?
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Dr. Dobson is just one more voice affirming that Senator B. H. Obama speaks on too many subjects with which he has too little familiarity.
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Michael Martin: However, in our previous conversation on the thread, “Angry God: Part II” you did acknowledge your agreement with “Christian Universalism” as espoused on that site.
That is true. I am a universalist and I do think Christian universalism makes much more sense than exclusivism. I just don’t want to imply that I think the Tentmaker people do an especially good job of expounding it.
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By what standard do you judge scripture?
Compassion and reason. Which tell me that any command to parents to murder their own children could never come from God, even if a primitive tribe at one point in their history thought it did.
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So what you’re telling me is that the elders were not the thought police, but judged actions instead. Well, that’s a point in favor of Israelite law then.
Are you being deliberately provocative, or do you really believe sick stuff like that?
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Obama has responded to Dr. Dobbie’s vicious personal attack. Obama said Dr. Dobbie was “making stuff up”.
I think Dr. Dobbie and his fellow conservative Christians are in for a surprise in 2008. I don’t think Swift-boating is not going to work this time, particularly on Obama. The American people have become weary of the sleazy, underhanded tactics of the Republicans and their conservative Christian acolytes.
Of course, Dr. Dobbie is an old man who’s bitter because his dream of changing America into a fundamentalist Christian theocracy is not going to come true.
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Anlir,
Swift-boating 1) v. (as used in 2004) exposing a politician in a lie by first hand experience. 2) usu. n. colloq. (as used by liberal democrats today) a derogative term of ones political opponent when he catches ones political ally in a lie. A variant of the common practice of character assassination and name calling of ones political opponent in the hopes that the facts that he exposes will be ignored.
Do any of the rest of you wonder why liberals are consistently reminding us of the effective exposing of Kerry’s lies by the Swift Boaters?
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“Compassion and reason. Which tell me that any command to parents to murder their own children could never come from God, even if a primitive tribe at one point in their history thought it did…Are you being deliberately provocative, or do you really believe sick stuff like that?”
How do you define compassion and reason? How do you define “sick stuff?” If not by God’s standard, then who’s? Is it not God who has defined love, compassion, and “sick stuff” in his word?
What makes you think your definition of compassion and reason are the right definitions?
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Wiglaf — don’t you pretty much admit the point, that the speech was about religion in politics? Of course he is speaking persuasively — as Dobson was, as well. “Life’s a pitch, then you die,” is how one marketer put it.
The question Obama raised was that of how differing religious viewpoints can meet in the political sphere. “Whose religion…” is how he puts it in the paragraphs cited above. Obama argued against two errors (yes, “argued”, this is a brief as you would well know): the error of the left where religion is denied any role, the public square is the secular square; and he argued against that view that Dobson has long championed, that engagement must be on explicitly Christian terms.
The difficulty with the latter is that only one form of Christian expression is accepted as legitimate. The evangelical, dispensational thought world (note Minnery’s off-hand comment about the “Church Age”) is the one that is privileged against the views of millions of other Americans. Obama’s rejection of this view mirrors that of classic, ante-bellum civic republicanism: sects (belief systems) compete with one another in the public sphere, but no one gets a leg up. (Horace Mann’s Report No. 12 is an example of this argument).
At a deeper level, the argument turns on the issue of anthropology: who are we as human beings? Do we start first with our confessional status, so that engagement in politics is one of explicit principles, first? Or do we start with a common grace view, where we participate as people of a certain level of rationality, albeit one defaced by sin? Apologetics almost always (pace C Van Til) with the latter, not the former, and with good reason.
If the bright line on life issues is first Christian confession, then is it any wonder, that those outside, liberals and non-Christians, look at those of Dobson’s approach as people who want to impose their religious view on the rest? Is this not a definition of theocracy, protestations to the contrary?
Dobson’s misrepresentation then only confirms the fears of many.
As an Evangelical, as some one who believes that we can appeal to people rationally, and as a Democrat, I simply fail to see the upside in Dobson’s approach. Broad and easy is the path to the margins.
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Stop! Hold the phone! What is this pap? Expel every non-Christian? Where did this idea come from? The Bible? The Constitution? Bzzz! Wrong! The implication of course is that BHO’s brand of Christianity would never do that and everyone else’s would. So, only his brand is the authentic, real deal. Of course, if it ever came to expelling every “non-Christian”, BHO would be weighed in the balance and found symbolically challenged.
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“The difficulty with the latter is that only one form of Christian expression is accepted as legitimate.”
I disagree with that opinion, but at least, if it is the case, there is a more common starting point among Christians. Obama’s approach is to abandon Christianity for feelings and intuition. He, thus, has and will be swayed by whatever sounds good or whatever the popular opinion is.
Sure, non-Christians and Christians can come to agreements about what makes good law, but as Christians, we must always be vigilant to guard where our definitions, principles, and world views come from. The more Obama reveals himself, the more he reveals himself as someone who has abandon Christian principles and replaced them with socialism; the religion of government as god. He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing; pretending to be what he is not. This is exactly what he accuses others of doing.
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Obama says that the religious folk have to make an appeal on more universal grounds if they want to see something done about a problem or an issue in this country. He believes that you have to make a broad appeal to people and convince the majority that your cause or issue is worth adopting.
Dr. Dobbie says “poppy-cock!” to that idea. His idea is to divide and conquer. He wants to exploit the divisions in American and then establish conservative Christians as the power broker, and force their agenda on everyone else.
Obama’s views on the matter have a greater appeal to people and seem to be in the ascendancy.
Dr. Dobbie’s views are falling out of favor as conservative Christians have lost power and influence in this country. Quite simply, they don’t have the numbers, and they have a horrible image problem with regular people.
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Anlir is right. Dobson and his followers had better get used to being increasingly marginalized and demonized.
Unfortunately for Dobson, millions of people now regard him as no better than David Duke or Fred Phelps, and that number is growing every day. Dobson and his colleagues and their millions of evangelical followers sat by and did nothing as our media, culture and government declared war on “hate” because they pretty much agreed with the culture, media and government that some opinions are so beyond the pale that they should be considered evil.
But, lo and behold, the same powers that be have now decided that opposition to gay marriage, or the belief that homosexuality is a sin, or even the notion that being gay is any way less desirable than being straight is on the same moral plane as the beliefs and statements of Duke and Phelps. Just as modern evangelicals believe that most of their ancestors, and pretty much everybody up til about 1980 were haters and bigots, the stage is now being set for Christians 20 years hence to denounce this generation of Christians as moral reprobates. It’s a never ending process, but the Dobson & Falwell types and the millions of Christians in this country never seem to have caught onto the game. They thought that they would be left alone if they denounced Christians of yesterday as haters and bigots for their sincerely held interpretations of the Bible. But it doesn’t work that way. And now that they themselves are being denounced as evil reprobates, bigots and haters, they don’t know what to do.
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The bible NEVER “suggests” that slavery is “OK.”
Wiglaf’s right – the Bible doesn’t “suggest” that owning other human beings is OK. It explicitly says so, directly from the mouth of “God” himself.
As a matter of FACT, it’s exactly the opposite.
Now that’s just a flat out lie. As anyone who’s read the Bible knows, God himself told the Israelites to take slaves from the other nations, and never once condemned the practice. As Jon Rowe has often pointed out, the only slavery the Bible condemns is slavery to sin, spiritual slavery. God fully approves of human chattel slavery.
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Wiglaf: How do you define compassion and reason? How do you define “sick stuff?” If not by God’s standard, then who’s? Is it not God who has defined love, compassion, and “sick stuff” in his word?
What makes you think your definition of compassion and reason are the right definitions?
It is rather sick by any measure to argue that allowing a slave owner to beat his slave for any reason or no reason would be preferable to a system that held the owner accountable to justify the need for the beating.
Both would be primitive and cruel, but one would be premised on the idea that the slave is, while property, also human and afforded a basic right to not be brutalized without justification. The other is premised on the assumption that the slave is merely property for the owner to treat however he sees fit.
This latter is what you found to be a “point in favor” of the ancient Israelite system.
That is sick stuff to even believe came from God, let alone applaud.
You appear to advocate mindlessly taking whatever the Bible says as true AND good, and shrugging off any moral qualms by saying, “well, that’s what it says.”
It does have the advantage of freeing you from any responsiility to actually think about the implications of the morality you embrace, but it does not make you a moral person. By the evidence in this thread, I think it might actually make you a rather scary person, in terms of what you’re willing to call ‘good’ just because it’s in the book.
Before you tell me that I have no absolute authority, allow me to point out that neither do you. You have chosen to regard the Bible as such. You have no way to know whether that choice is the right one; it is just an arbitrary decision.
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RE #17 and #21 – apparently Wiglaf went to the same Bible college as Outkast.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: There is no other religion that cancompare with Christianity when it comes to the number of its adherents who are abysmally ignorant of what’s actually in their holy book. They’re not only ignorant of its contents, they go around attacking the people who do know what’s in the Bible.
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The last refuge of conservative Christian scoundrels:
Question or impugn the Christianity of someone who doesn’t agree with their fundamentalist mindset.
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STEVEG says “You appear to advocate mindlessly taking whatever the Bible says as true”
Actually, it is YOU who advocate that. I’m the one who’s saying to think about the implications and purpose of the law rather than assuming the law means what it says and that’s it. You, as well, ignored everything else I’ve said regarding what is and is not applicable based on the meaning of the passages and scripture as a whole. You, who’ve stated “I give up.” Can’t quit can you? Perhaps, because you know I’m right and just want to continue sniping without actually trying to understand me?
BTW, I’m glad you admit you have no absolute authority. I do regardless of what you say. If you don’t believe that, how do you claim to even be a Christian?
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Night Train,
You should listen before you speak. You’ll learn nothing by entering into every conversation 2/3 of the way through them and blabbing away regarding who’s right and who’s wrong. Nor does it help you to put words in my mouth and act as if your straw man was real. It only makes you look mean spirited and sneaky.
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Wiglaf [112]
Where do you hear him abandonning Christianity for feelings and intuition? Doesn’t that fly in the face of Dobson’s criticism that he was appealing to “the lowest common denominator,” viz. our common rationality?
Second, could you be mistaking the purpose of the address? Since Obama is intent on arguing for a place for faith in the political discussion, it can seem like there is this watering down you rightly fear. But this strikes me more as a confusion of an address on political philosophy — a general address — with that of a more personal one. For instance, the opening of the speech talks about the need for faith and meaning that is common to lives, and how as a secular person he did not have it. He found that meaning in the church. There, you can hear him move from the general to the specific or individual.
And if I may advance a little snark: what part of the economy does Obama want the government to take over? I mean that is the definition of socialism, isn’t it?
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Wiglaf, I stand by my post. It’s a flat out to say that the Bible teaches that slavery is a not “OK”.
A flat out lie.
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I believe that some may want to check out the following web site and hear what was actually said by both men.
http://www.citizenlink.org/clspecialalert/A000007665.cfm
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Harris,
When it comes to law and politics without an higher standard, there’s not a lot of difference between “common rationality” and feelings and intuition. STEVEG’s response makes that clear.
One can’t make a speech like that without appealing to some underlying principles. It is the foundation of his speech. That principle appears to be, “let’s all just use our rational abilities and be real and moral and we can all get along.” Smooth talker Obama will then tell us all what is rational and moral. We’ll all nod our heads and say, “well it sounds good. It must be rational. It must be right!” We’ll have good intentions all the way down the paved road to hell.
Harris, on your last question:
Health care, money (through taxes), “charity”, education, inheritance, etc. The list could go on.
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Wiglaf, I stand by my post. It’s a flat out to say that the Bible teaches that slavery is a not “OK”.
Night Train,
and again you state what I DID NOT state. The bible permitted slavery (and NOT the kind of slavery most people think of today). It wasn’t the ideal situation, but it was allowed. God did not say “and there was slavery, and it was good.” I compared slavery to divorce. Is divorce legal? Is it good?
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Wiglaf: how do you claim to even be a Christian?
1. I don’t.
2. But I could, because there are many, many Christians who do not believe that they are required to believe the whole Bible literally in order to follow Christ.
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Wiglaf: Actually, it is YOU who advocate that. I’m the one who’s saying to think about the implications and purpose of the law rather than assuming the law means what it says and that’s it.
OK, but in the course of doing so you emphasized that the law in Deuteronomy requires rather than “suggests” that parents should execute their own children in some cases, and you applauded the system for letting slave-beaters off scot-free unless the slave dies during the beating, WITHOUT any regard for whether the owner had a justification for the beating.
I don’t see how you think you are improving your position any.
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Re: #122
Citizenlink is one of Dr. Dobbie’s websites. It’s an advocacy site for Dr. Dobbie’s religious and political agenda, not an unbiased news site.
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“there are many, many Christians who do not believe that they are required to believe the whole Bible literally in order to follow Christ.”
I’m among those. I don’t read the whole bible as if it were literal. That’s asinine. No one does.
“you applauded the system”
No. I didn’t. I applauded the fact that they judged actions and did not presume to judge people’s thoughts. Hate crime laws anyone?? On what basis are those justified?
STEVEG, in a biblical capital crimes case, who must be the first to throw the stones? What if they refuse? You should try considering the procedural aspects of biblical law as well. Then maybe you’d understand the mercy inherent in the system.
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Oh, and Steve, please consider the practical outworkings of such laws; not just the plain English.
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Obama’s comments seem to prove that he has absolutely no understanding of biblical Christianity.
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SteveG (#125),
Your posts make more sense now. Before you admission I thought that you might be just a misguided Christian since you stated your agreement with “Christian Universalism.” Now I see that you are no Christian at all.
Your views on the Bible are riddled with misconceptions, inaccuracies, contradictions, and just plain ignorance of the spiritual truths contained therein.
Paul gives an accurate description of all people like yourself:
“The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1Cor 2:14)
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CCC: Expel every non-Christian? Where did this idea come from?
The “idea” is not a proposal, it’s a thought experiment designed to show that even Christians need to employ political rhetoric to persuade each other, rather than just appealing to scriptural authority.
Dobson is howling “not guilty” to an accusation that Obama didn’t make. Some of Dobson’s associates accuse him of “soft theocracy,” but Obama didn’t go there. At the same time, Dobson accuses Obama of trying to drag him down to the “lowest common denominator.” In fact, Obama merely asked Dobson to join in a shared political language. That’s what Aristotle, Jefferson, and Madison would ask of Dobson, too. But no, Dobson thinks he’s above that.
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“In fact, Obama merely asked Dobson to join in a shared political language.”
…and there’s the key! Shared. Political. Language (aka principles). They don’t share political language. “Common rationality” is not a universal “shared” item. Otherwise, from the Christian perspective, everyone would agree that the Bible is rational, moral, and right. On the other hand, the humanists would expect everyone to agree that the Bible is irrational, nonsensical, and foolish. So who’s rational here? If presuppositions cannot be agreed upon, any argument, rationality, or language will be resting on a foundation of Chinese public school cement.
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Obama understands Biblical Christianity just fine. It’s the conservative Christians who don’t get it.
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Communist Party USA
New Times, New Opportunities
Author: Sam Webb, National Chair
First published 04/11/2008
In recent months, as the Obama campaign has unexpectedly surged into the lead and as a movement has sprung up in the context of his candidacy, the new charge of the media and especially the right-wing media is to diminish his stature and his candidacy. Over the past two weeks, the repeated playing of the tape where Reverend Wright says “God damn America” is not only incendiary, but is also a very conscious effort to cut Obama down to size, to deflate his supporters’ balloon, and to make him appear unpatriotic and a close cousin to the “Muslim enemy.”
Of course, Obama addressed this head on with a speech that was both courageous and brilliant. Never before have we heard such a speech from a political figure who is so close to becoming the next resident of the White House.
He could easily have lain low and hoped the furor would blow over, but he chose instead to speak out about the role of race and racism in our nation’s life. Only time will tell, but his speech could well become a defining moment in this election and in our country’s history.
What are we to make of the effort to diminish Obama’s stature? It seems to me that sections of the ruling class and right-wing Democrats are anxious to diminish his stature for fear his candidacy and message will not only take him into the White House, but will also set in motion a process going far beyond anything with which they are comfortable.
The next nine months are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We have to act on that basis and convey that same message to everyone we meet. When the New Year rolls around, it is easy to visualize that the monkey of right-wing extremism will be off the backs of the American people and people around the world, that a movement of enormous proportions will have taken shape, and that the balance of power in our nation’s capital has shifted qualitatively. If this is the case — and I think it will be — besides ringing the year in with a glass of champagne or a stein of ale or a shot of whiskey, we can turn our attention to translating an historic landslide victory into a people’s legislative agenda.
http://www.cpusa.org/article/view/928/
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Obama doesn’t understand Biblical Christianity just fine. Then again, many conservative Christians don’t either.
Anlir: Yes he does.
Wiglaf: No he doesn’t.
Anlir: Yes he does.
Wiglaf: No he doesn’t.
Anlir: Yes he does.
Wiglaf: No he doesn’t.
Anlir: Yes he does.
Wiglaf: No he doesn’t.
Anlir: Yes he does.
Wiglaf: No he doesn’t.
Anlir: Yes he does.
Wiglaf: No he doesn’t.
Anlir: Yes he does.
Wiglaf: No he doesn’t.
Anlir: Yes he does.
Wiglaf: No he doesn’t.
Anlir: Yes he does.
Wiglaf: No he doesn’t.
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Obama is some weird mixture of Marxism, Islam and Black racism. In attempting to make himself palatable to America, he is attempting to cloak this grotesque blend with a false cloak of Christianity that he doesn’t understand.
I become more convinced by the day, that he is today’s version of the “Manchurian Candidate.”
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Michael, my question is ‘who does Obama represent’- is America asleep?
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As Wiglaf and others so ably demonstrate, conservative Christians have contempt for the concept of shared political language and dialogue. They don’t give a rat’s behind about appealing to the wider audience of the American people.
What they are interested in is power so they can force their religious/political agenda on the rest of us. They care not that they are in the minority or that the majority of people don’t care for their agenda.
When you believe God is on your side, arrogance and power become endemic.
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“Obama has deep faith in Lord Hanuman and that is why we are presenting an idol of Hanuman to him,” said Bhama.
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MICHAEL MARTIN: Obama is some weird mixture of Marxism, Islam and Black racism.
How could you leave out terrorism, Michael?
You are a weird mixture of Christian authoritarianism and American paranoia. Also, a violator of the command against bearing false witness. Shame on you!
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Re: #137
Another swift-boating lie from the conservative Christian community.
Obama is a Christian, not a Muslim.
That lie (that he’s Muslim) has been thoroughly and widely discredited.
Yet, conservative Christians keep deliberately spreading the lie for political purposes.
Yet another example of how conservative Christians have lost their moral compass.
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It is funny to see ‘modern enlightened’ folks creating a designer god in their own image who is tiny and weak and fluffy and would never harm a flea. This is not the God of the Bible.
God permits suffering and disease and evil. God permits death. God permits capital punishment. God creates life and destroys it, much like a gardener planting and reaping. You may not like to think of yourself like a flower or weed that can be plucked at any time, but it is true just the same. You’re in denial.
Your life is a mere puff of smoke in the light of eternity. Any suffering is a mere pin prick, like a parent allowing his child to be vaccinated.
You can’t impose your value system on God. His value system stands whether you like it or not.
God planned for Joseph to become a slave. God planned for the entire Jewish nation to become slaves. But as Joseph observed, people meant these things for evil, but God meant them for good (Gen 50:20). Joseph’s brothers were doing evil, but Joseph explained, it was God’s plan for good. Only the Almighty can turn evil into good.
In no way does God condone slavery. It is an evil that he used for good. Without it redemption makes no sense.
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Let’s see Scroop,
The Islam connection is easy to see. Farrakhan, family members, including dad and some half brothers. Check.
Black racism is easy, you need look no further than Trinity Church, and his 20yrs there.
Marxism is easy too. Check this out.
http://tinyurl.com/652qf6
Here’s a little taste; His name is Martin Klonsky. Who, you might inquire, is Martin Klonsky? Jim Hoft steers us to this website where Steve Diamond fills in the blanks:
Well, on one level, he might just appear to be a protege of Bill Ayers in the education world. He received, as I detail below, a $175,000 grant from the Ayers/Obama-led Annenberg Challenge to run the Small Schools Workshop that he and Ayers started in Chicago to push their school reform agenda.
But that is only half the story. Klonsky was one of the most destructive hardline Maoists in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the late 60’s who emerged from SDS to form a pro-Chinese sect called the October League that later became the Beijing-recognized Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist). As chairman of the party, Klonsky travelled to Beijing itself in 1977 and, literally, toasted the Chinese stalinist leadership who, in turn, “hailed the formation of the CP(ML) as ‘reflecting the aspirations of the proletariat and working people,’ effectively recognizing the group as the all-but-official US Maoist party.” (Elbaum, Revolution in the Air, 228).
I know of no indications that Klonsky has ever expressed any regrets about that activity. Perhaps like his SDS comrade, Ayers, he, too, thinks he did not do enough back then. In my view they did more than enough.
And yeah you’re right about one thing, Michael did leave out terrorism. His close ties to Ayers covers that.
So what’s false about MM’s claims.
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A.J. represents conservative Christianity at it’s finest: lies, rumors, innuendo, slander. You know – all the things Jesus approves of.
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WIGLAF: They don’t share political language. “Common rationality” is not a universal “shared” item. Otherwise, from the Christian perspective, everyone would agree that the Bible is rational, moral, and right.
Alas, WIGLAF, where to begin? Let’s begin with Aristotle! The rhetoric of politics is shared, but not to worry, it’s not universal. You don’t have to use our shared political language to talk about everything under the sun. It won’t replace your professional lingo or shop talk, for instance. It certainly won’t replace your theological discourse or infringe in any way upon your expression of absolute truth! No, political language limits itself to the mundane topics that humans perpetually state otherwise — politics and ethics. Meanwhile, the Oracle at Colorado Springs can continue to talk logos all he wants. All Obama asks, is to please jack up the political rhetoric regarding matters of politics.
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From Frank Schaeffer (”Dr. Dobson Has Just Handed Obama Victory” – Huffington Post 6/24/08):
Dobson is one of the Evangelical religious right old guard. He’s to the right what Nader is to the left. Like the late Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and others Dobson has alienated as many evangelicals — let alone moderate Christians — as he’s inspired. In fact, ever since he tried to get Richard Cizik, vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) fired last year Dobson has found himself painted into a reactionary corner. Many evangelicals still fear him and so won’t denounce his posturing power-plays but they also despise him.
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AJ –
Your allegation of an “Islam connection” doesn’t on the face of it indicate that Obama consists of some “mixture” of Islam.
My uncle, for example, was a Christian man who spoke Arabic, wrote learned articles about Arab science, and reverently discussed the attributes of God with his muslim medical students in Chicago. He partly attributed the rise of science to Islam.
You might as well say that Obama consists of a “mixture” of Islam because he took some science classes, uses algebra, and calls ethanol “alcohol.” By the way, the founding scholars of Arab studies at Yale were Christians.
Also, Islam isn’t a trait carried by DNA.
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ANLIR — Thanks for the helpful reference to Frank Schaeffer. Hopefully some of the Dominionist posters around here will look at it.
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AJ
That was a little too easy. And that ought to set of the warnings that maybe something was left out, skipped over, etc. Easy associations, like easy company often lead astray.
As the Bible teaches, we are responsible for our own deeds and not those of our fathers, and so not of our associates either, those degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon relations. I think that especially goes for those we consider for national leadership. McCain will be judged for McCain’s views not those of Bush (per the recent thread), and so too, Obama can and should be evaluated for what he says and does.
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Michael Martin at #131: Your views on the Bible are riddled with misconceptions, inaccuracies, contradictions, and just plain ignorance of the spiritual truths contained therein.
My view of the Bible is that if it says a certain thing, that’s what it means. Odd how that position is the one that you label to be a “misconception.”
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Of course, labeling someone as “Muslim” or accusing them of being associated with Muslims is the 2008 version of labeling someone as a “Communist” or accusing them of being associated with Communists.
Conservatives (and their conservative Christian brethren) have a long history of peddling this crap to try and destroy people.
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Wiglaf [123]
Haven’t forgotten your comments at all. Actually, I think them very interesting. For the record (and avoid scrolling up so far):
I can hear the point you’re reaching for, that the language of “rationality” can be a cover for a game that is essentially rigged, a game where God is left off, and then abruptly shoved off, as well. Rhetorical gamesmanship. And both sides play it.
My problem with that interpretation in this context, is that it runs against the tenor and development of the speech as a whole. (This is the fundamental problem with the Dobson critique — it draws conclusions that our of kilter with speech when taken as a whole). If this appeal to “rationality” was a game, then why did Obama make such a big push back against the secularists at the top of the speech?
And you’ve watched him enough already (I suspect), to recognize how sharp his mind is — self contradicting in that fashion does not seem to be his style, does it? I think it better to bring some of his legal background into play here.
Appeal to rationality is not an appeal to smooth talking, but to disciplined public discussion. Ideas get tested. That’s the way of policy.
When Obama proposes that faith-based policies be presented in the cloak of rationality for public discussion, he’s making a claim about Truth that many of us would affirm: God’s truth is perceptible by all and so can be acted on by all. Of course we have to translate it — this is one of the conditions we live in as strangers and aliens.
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Anlir,
His ties to to Islamic radicals like Farrakhan is fact.
His ties to Trinity, and their racist theology are fact.
His ties to Ayers, a known terrorist, are also fact.
And I just showed you his ties to Marxists in 144.
Just because you won’t accept the truth about your chosen candidate, doesn’t make them lies, innuendo, rumors, or slander. These are from reputable news sources. If they’re slandering him, don’t you think he would have done something about it? But he can’t, because it’s not slander if it’s true.
But hey, since you keep calling everyone you disagree with a liar, you should just stick with that. It seems to be working so well for you.
And speaking of lies. What about Obamas fake birth certificate? Don’t you find it funny that he’s using fake documents to refute what he calls lies on his website? I find it laughable.
http://tinyurl.com/5j58nx
From the link;
An authentic Hawaiian birth certificate for another Hawaiian individual has since surfaced which, using the same official form as the presumptive Obama certificate, includes an embossed official seal and an authoritative signature, coming through from the back. Obama’s alleged certificate lacks those features, and the certificate number referencing the birth year has been blacked out, making it untraceable.
Janice Okubo, Director of Communications of the State of Hawaii Department of Health, told Israel Insider: “At this time there are no circumstances in which the State of Hawaii Department of Health would issue a birth certification or certification of live birth only electronically.” And, she added, “In the State of Hawaii all certified copies of certificates of live birth have the embossed seal and registrar signature on the back of the document.”
And;
The Obama campaign, however, continues to flaunt the unstamped, unsealed, uncertified document — notably in very low resolution — on its “Fight the Smears” website, with campaign officials vowing that it’s authentic, sending the image around as “proof” to reporters, and inviting supporters to refer to it as they battle against supposed distortions and calumnies against their candidate. However, the campaign refuses to produce an authentic original birth certificate from the year of Obama’s birth, or even a paper version with seal and signature of the “Certification of Live Birth.” Nor has it even published an electronic copy with the requisite embossed seal and signature.
The failure of the Obama campaign to do so, and its willingness instead to put up an invalid, uncertified image — what now appears to be a crude forgery — raises the dramatic question of why the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate might have to hide.
What’s he hiding?
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It’s funny you should mention calling people “liars” on here A.J.
I direct your attention to post #94 above where in no uncertain terms, I am called a “big fat liar”.
Then I direct your attention to post #35 where I am called an “idiot”
I, on the other hand, have refrained from personal attacks on my fellow Worldmag bloggers.
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Obama doesn’t talk about dual citizenship – WHY is that?
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150 some odd post later, I’m left with only one impression — the conservative Christian posters here can not make that leap of thought beyond the literal. Obama suggests a thought experiment and mentions diverse interpretations of scripture, posters here discuss the validity of his starting assumption and which biblical interpretation he favours. Obama has forced the right to consider the implications of a religious political position and the arguments this will entail – the conservative reaction is to demonstrate the argumentation we can expect.
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Harris at 150,
I’m a little confused. On one hand you say Obama should not be judged by what his family and associates do. But then you say Obama should be evaluated by what he says and does. Alot of what he’s said and done, was with these same associates you say he shouldn’t be judged by. Like Ayers, Khalidi, Wright, Phfeger, and the new one, Klonsky. He’s financially supported, and directed money to them thru various positions he’s held, on things like the Annenberg Challenge. He’s financing these people and their projects, those are his actions, and I’m evaluating those. I don’t believe much of what he says as truthful. I’m looking at what he does, and it ain’t pretty.
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Horrors! Dual citizenship!
*****
Barack Obama:
Are you a dual citizen or have you ever associated with anyone who is a dual citizen?
*****
When I hear conservative Christians talking about their dual citizenship (heaven and earth) it makes me want to puke. I suppose I should have the same reaction to Obama. I’ll work on it.
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Obama doesn’t talk about dual citizenship – WHY is that?
Because nobody cares other than small-minded nationalists.
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Since yesterday evening, Victoria and friends have continued to demonstrate rather aptly the game of “sources say” and then wonder why I won’t play along. But for me or anyone on the left to play this game is to immediately allow the game players to win (since now I accept the innuedo as part of the public discourse) and hence I don’t play. I can debate the merits of Victoria’s sources, the relevancy of their claims, or the validity vs the falsity of the claims but to do so would allow Victoria to establish the grounds for debate. Instead click the following http://factcheck.barackobama.com/
Now of course my response will be declared to be a cop out but that again demonstrates the inability of the posters here to move beyond the literal and instead move to the rational.
Look at #156
Obama doesn’t talk about dual citizenship – WHY is that?
The implied assumption is Obama’s is hiding something whereas the rational answer is dual citizenship isn’t a campaign issue and hence Obama doesn’t talk about it.
The implied assumption in Victoria’s title is that Obama is not a real American whereas the rational answer is most first and second generation Americans are entitled to citizenship of their parent’s home country. To illustrate this further, let me say My daughter is a citizen of Poland. Is my daughter not a real Canadian? Is she actually a Pole in disguise? No like Obama she is entitled to a second citizenship but has yet to take advantage of it.
So Vitoria’s not lying she is playing the game to lower Obama by throwing sources out until something sticks in the reader’s mind. Now that I have rationally debunk 156 I will be asked to debunk the rest of her “sources say” posts but thats the whole point of the game so I won’t.
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Anlir says;
“I, on the other hand, have refrained from personal attacks on my fellow Worldmag bloggers.”
You seem to prefer the broad brush approach. You didn’t single anyone out individually, you simply attack conservatve Christian in general. Does scoundrels, swiftboating lies, spreading hate of gay people, and such ring a bell? It should, those are your words.
And then you get all offended when someone calls you on it.
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So Klonsky was a Maoist. And I went to an evangelical college. However, my youthful indiscretions are not pertinent to my current world view nor are Klonsky’s youthful indiscretions. Really — I expect better
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The Constitutional requirements for President:
1. Natural born U.S. citizen.
2. At least 35 years of age.
3. White, reformed Presbyterian.
Ok, I made the last one up. But couldn’t you see the conservative Christian hearts go “pitter patter” at the thought?
Anyway, absolutely nothing about dual citizenship.
Sorry Vicky dear.
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A.J., I’m not the least bit offended. I can more than hold my own on here.
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My apologizes to Victoria — she’s playing a great game let me play along — try this site on dobson
http://www.jamesdobsondoesntspeakforme.com/
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HRW nails it about the rumors and innuendo. It is a matter of conservative Christians throwing up everything in the world (no matter how false, unseemly, or low-down) and hoping it at least creates a negative impression of Obama in people’s minds.
It’s a “scorched earth” political tactic done by folks who have lost their moral compass.
Believe me, we haven’t seen nothing yet. Come back in September or October and this site will be on fire with Obama bashing.
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since victoria uses worldnetdaily I hope its okay if I use daily kos to accuse McCain of lying
http://tinyurl.com/5l65nw
you see I can play “sources say”
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HRW,
The difference here is that you, quite obviously, now denounce your “youthful indiscretions”. Klonsky and Ayers, have not. See the difference?
And none of you have anything to say about Obamas birth certificate? Doesn’t raise any questions about it’s authenticity? Doesn’t bother you that what appears to be a fake document is up on his website as supposed proof to discount supposed rumors? I’m shocked. OK, not really.
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And why is the birth certificate number, which could probably be used to verify one way or the other, blacked out? Where’s the official raised seal that they get stamped with? Hmmmm. These are the things that raise red flags about Obama.
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AJ demonstrates why the game leads nowhere. Disprove , mock or trivialize one innuendo/rumor and he picks up an other.
Doesn’t bother you that what appears to be a fake document is up on his website as supposed proof to discount supposed rumors?
check the language used “what appears” “supposed” “supposed rumors” — classic fudge words.
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Anlir
T Boone Pickens, the money behind Swift Boat, declines to give the reward he promised to those who disproved him.
http://tinyurl.com/4c368r
just one more reason why the game is not worthy of being played.
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Thanks, HRW, for the link. I signed.
Evangelicals say that they want a place in the public square. But when they conduct themselves in the public square in the manner in which Dobson has, the public is right to dismiss them.
I recently re-read Hofstadter’s book, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” Irrational demagoguery, it seems, is part of the fabric of our national politics from the earliest days of the Republic. Dobson isn’t the first evangelical alarmist to come along, and he won’t be the last.
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HRW,
No offense, but just what has been disproven by you guys? Nothing that I can see. Are we only allowed to question one of Obamas obvious flaws? Who made that rule. I’ll keep asking ALL of my questions and concerns, until someone shows me the why I’m wrong. And you haven’t. And I, as an American citizen, actually get to vote in this election, so I’ll continue to ask whether some Canadian thinks it’s fair or not. Got it?
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Its not a question of fairness but of logic and intelligence. Throwing up or chasing down rumors and innuendo is not a rational means of discussion.
Again disproving is not my intent — I merely point out the game you and others play and its limitations. If you wish to play the “sources say” game and ask for refutation go to obama’s factcheck site I already linked to.
I’ll keep asking ALL of my questions and concerns, until someone shows me the why I’m wrong.
No you will keep repeating rumors and innuendo until you have achieved the rope a dope solution that will satisfy you. Its not your concerns, its the concerns others have create for you in order to distract you from the issues — war, economy, etc.
As for my nationality, you are using it as a distraction to questions and issues I raise. “Sources say” game playing does not generate any reasonable discussion. I threw up a post on McCain — its easy and in a juvenile sort of way a fun thing to do but it does not contribute to the public discourse surrounding the validity of Obama’s or McCain’s candidacy. In other words rationality is not present. Demonstrating the lack of rationality has lead you not to change the rules of your game but only to change the target from Obama to me — Obama may be Kenyan and we know I’m Canadian.
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OK, so you see why I think your opinion is irrelevant at least. And I have several questions about Obama, not just the ones in this post. And they don’t distract me from what you call, the issues. Obamas stand on the war is a joke, and his tax raising ideas will not help the economy. Talking about them will not help Obama either. If we talk about that, and you don’t like where it goes, will you then whine about distractions and innuendo again?
And why would I take the word of Obamas fact check site, when I already know of the questionable content, the supposed birth certificate, on his other site? C’mon.
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The same flat out lie repeated for the 500th time doesn’t somehow become true.
The god of the Bible most certainly DOES condone making slaves of other human beings.
condone: To forgive, excuse or overlook (something); To allow, accept or permit (something);
God wasn’t allowing, accepting, or permitting slavery when he said this:
Why do Christians feel free to repeat the most outrageous lies about what the Bible says?
Have they no shame or self respect whatsoever?
And when they’re this intellectually dishonest, how do they expect people to take them seriously?
In a few years, of course, your kids and grandkids will be swearing up and down that the Bible nowhere condemns homosexuality.
Man, if I was so ashamed of what was in my holy book that I had to tell laughably blatant and easily refuted lies about it, I think I’d find another religion.
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AJ
By believing the innuendo and the rumors you have discounted any attempt to answer them. You’re trapped. You believe the rumors so you can’t believe his refutation. Even though his fact check site merely directs you to various media reports which refute the internet smears.
Your view on his view on taxation is an example. Obama will actually lower taxes whereas McCain will either lower or raise them depending when and where he is talking. You believe reports he will raise taxes but its inaccurate — you may be skeptical of his web site but at least have the decency to hear your opponent out.
http://tinyurl.com/52g6tq This will link to Obama’s fact check site from there you can back tracl through various news sites and transcripts.
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Harris, you say, “Appeal to rationality is not an appeal to smooth talking, but to disciplined public discussion. Ideas get tested. That’s the way of policy.”
…and ideas tested in the public discussion that become popular become policy. There’s certainly truth in that. Part of my efforts here is to point out that just because Obama thinks guns shouldn’t be in the inner city, doesn’t make his opinion Christian, biblical, or rational. Just because Obama thinks people with extensive “estates” shouldn’t be able to keep 100% of them, doesn’t mean that his opinion is not equivalent to desiring to break the 8th commandment. Just because Obama thinks governments should take from the wealthier to give to the poor, doesn’t mean God smiles on his efforts.
The problem I find, is that there are so many things wrong with his platform, that it’s hard not to think that his principles are opposed to Christianity. I think the same way about Huckabee, too. That also goes for George W. Bush and McCain. The funny thing about them is, I don’t 100% blame their actions. They’re part of a political momentum that is not easily slowed down or changed. What they do have, is power over their words. Needless to say, I’m not impressed.
While STEVEG goes on a rampage about a civilization he has not experienced and has no right to judge with such vitriol, I’m simply trying to point out where I see Obama’s display of Christianity is in stark contrast to his platform, and that his supposed knowledge of the bible doesn’t seem as well thought out as it should be.
To the rest of you I disagree with a lot, if I can agree with you regarding a law that should be enacted or a regulation that should be rescinded or troops that should be brought home, I will. I have in the past. But many of my principles are in stark contrast to yours. I’m not going to compromise them so we can be one happy family. I’m not going to be quiet in order to avoid conflict. You all obviously don’t either. Hopefully, I’ve at least given you pause to consider another view other than your own; that there may be better ways to do things. I don’t always demand that I’m right and your wrong. I’ve learned things from those I disagree with. My beliefs have been tested by yours.
I hope that I attempt to address each of you according to your beliefs and not make blanket statements about a “class” of people that may not even fit many of you. I’m seeing some of that “class” warfare here. It doesn’t foster debate; only antagonism.
Finally, if I do agree with you, don’t assume for a second that I agree with you for the same reasons. I might not.
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Anlir, haven’t seen you around in a while. How’ve you been feeling?
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OK HRW,
While Obamas site may refute some of the internet smears, as you call them, I saw nothing that refutes the ones I’ve brought up, like the birth certificate.
And I did like you asked and checked out your link. Some observations and questions. First, Bush’s tax cuts weren’t just for the wealthy. I got money back a couple of times. And I already get a deduction for my mortgage interest. How does BO’s plan help me? What are the specifics?
When you raise taxes on business, you cut jobs. Taxing the wealthy sounds great, until people lose their jobs so employers can make up the difference. They’re not gonna eat it ya’ know. Just like the windfall profit tax. Sure it sounds good, but do you really think Exxon and the like will simply say, Oh well? No, they’ll pass it on to the little guy thru raising prices. So how does that help me? Sure the govt get’s more tax revenue to waste, but I get hosed with higher costs to make up what the companies lose. It trickles down. And the majority of us end up getting wet.
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AJ [159]
Here’s where I hear you going off track. You complain about a vague connection with Bill Ayers, who is an admitted radical. But where in Senator Obama do you read of anything like a sympathy for his radicalism? What actions of his betray this hypothesized radicalism?
You point to the Annenberg Challenge, a program that has since evolved into the Chicago Public Education Fund. Off hand, have you consulted the Board of Directors there? All those radicals from Nuveen, Goldman Sachs and the like? You hypothesize some relationship with black muslims, but again the evidence if anything, is to the contrary.
These “ties” which you and others assert are rather thin things that lack any correspondence in actual positions or words of the Senator himself. And without support, what are these links then but then a sort of hearsay, or perhaps an idle wives tale.
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AJ:
So the argument is that Obama went into politics, won several elections, became visible on the national stage in 2004, decided to run for president and take the intense public scrutiny that requires … all the while knowing he was not a U.S. citizen and could produce only this fake birth certificate that, if your assessment is correct, is an obvious forgery?
And nobody noticed until now, a few months before the election?
For you to put that forward seriously just makes you look really, really gullible.
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“…direct your attention to post #94 above where in no uncertain terms, I am called a “big fat liar”.”
Well, well, well. So you did see that.
Hmmmmm… well I take it back. I have no idea whether you are “big” or “fat.” However, you are certainly a liar on that issue.
I notice you don’t make a single mention that I called you BIG TIME on that BIG FAT LIE you told. So it’s a fact that you are a liar. You can’t refute what I said, because I was right, and YOU were lying.
There’s not a single instance that you can point to prove your assertion that Dobson has done anything remotely illegal when dealing with financial or political matters. That’s why he made sure to set up an independent board to deal with that stuff. He’s been investigated countless times because of folks of your ilk, and not a SINGLE TIME has he been found guilty of what he’s been accused of.
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And when you engage in such underhanded rhetoric, knowing full well what you are doing, and I notice it, don’t you think I should call you on it? And why in the world should anyone trust anything else you have to say? It’s obvious that you have an agenda that drives what you say, and it doesn’t matter how you achieve it. Now I don’t trust you as far as I could throw you- even if you aren’t big and fat.
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Wiglaf[180]
I rather appreciate your answer. I would point out, however, that this relationship between religious confession/conviction and policy is often a rather difficult (and cloudy) one.
If I may intrude a bit of personal history here: one of the more important points in my thinking was a confrontation I had with a friend from the Republican party over our then Republican governor, a man I despised. He confronted me on my attitude, in turn opening my eyes to the possibility that Christians were on both sides of the issue (duh! I know). These days I find it entirely possible that religious conviction plays itself out in a variety of political postures and positions. I do not hold to only one Christian position.
Now perhaps some of the heat of this discussion comes from a tacit assumption that there is a one-to-one connection between conviction and policy. Those of us who come from or are part of a Reformed tradition know how strong this push is (in fairness, the Catholic Thomistic Natural Law style can be pretty unilateral, as well). With a conviction that faith and policy are tightly linked, then obviously, a different policy must imply a different and sub-orthodox faith.
I find that linkage to be looser, and so think more in terms of warranted belief. That’s approximately what I heard in Obama’s speech, admitting that this could be a case of self-delusion (GIGO).
I do not read Obama as you apparently do, where the Senator is asserting that his is the one right way as opposed to the Evangelical Right Way of a Dobson. (This goes back to the point above, regarding tight linkage). I would be surprised if anywhere the Senator lifts himself up as a biblical expert, his ideas are best those of basic centrist mainline theologies. I think what makes the Senator stand out so, is that he speaks a language of faith as an active politician on the left. We haven’t been hearing that voice for a while — maybe a generation — so our ears are not accustomed to its sound.
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Momoffour:
Thanks for asking. I still don’t have my voice, and the damage appears to be permanent unless I’m willing to submit to some risky treatment. I lost it a year ago this week. I can talk very quietly for a few seconds at a time. Singing, regular conversations, and yelling for the Vols are the things I miss the most.
In any event, it doesn’t seem to stop me from running my mouth on here.
Hi Make it Man
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Harris,
I was refering to muslims in general, not just black. Khalidi is another example I mentioned.
Check these out, and you’ll see why.
http://tinyurl.com/5tb4bx
http://tinyurl.com/3kc579
Follow the money Harris. When you’re getting money from, and directing money to, radicals, it’s not thin. I don’t care what he says. I’m looking at what he does, and has done for these radicals. Ayers isn’t the only one. They back him, and the cash shows up. Same goes for Wright and Phleger. He’s sent plenty of money their way thru these so called innocent groups he and they are a part of.
And the muslims you post to in the NYT article are only pissed because he knew it wasn’t a good idea to show them with him. He knew the perception Americans might get from that. They’ll still vote from, at least those that can.
The ties are there, and they’re not thin, if you follow the money. Change my butt.
And Steve says;
“And nobody noticed until now, a few months before the election?”
Gee, maybe that has something to do with the fact that he just released his supposed birth certificate. It’s not like it could have been scrutinized before now, is it?
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Harris says;
“I would be surprised if anywhere the Senator lifts himself up as a biblical expert, his ideas are best those of basic centrist mainline theologies.”
Black Liberation Theology is not a basic theology. Nor is it centerist. And it’s not even close to mainline. It’s what’s usually refered to as radical.
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And look folks, I finally found something I agree with Obama on.
http://tinyurl.com/688q75
He got this right. I tip my hat to him.
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Anlir,
What makes you think that Obama is a Christian?
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AJ at #189: Gee, maybe that has something to do with the fact that he just released his supposed birth certificate. It’s not like it could have been scrutinized before now, is it?
It’s inconceivable that a non-citizen could win national office and be in the spotlight for at least four years (if we take his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention as his first introduction to the nation outside of northern Illinois) and nobody have discovered this already.
Apart from that, Obama well knows what kind of scrutiny presidential candidates undergo, and he is not a stupid person. It’s also inconceivable that he would try to defraud the electorate as you allege, knowing full well how easily he could be caught.
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Further points, AJ:
Do you not think that the Democratic party, or the Federal Election Commission, would have been certain to verify legal requirements such as citizenship before allowing Obama or any other candidate to run under the party’s banner?
Do you really think Obama is stupid enough to put forth a forged birth certificate that, by your account, is obviously fake it might as well be a counterfeit $20 bill with Gerald Ford’s picture on it?
Do you think that a copy of the birth certificate — if the image is not of the original document — would have the same embossed seal as the original? (I don’t know how Hawaii operates, but it many states if you request a copy of your birth certificate, you get a photocopy without any of the official markings that certify the original.)
The argument just doesn’t hold up. If Obama were a non-citizen trying to put one by us, he’d have already been caught. And if by some miracle he had not been caught, he’d be setting himself up for a long prison stretch if he got elected on the basis of a fraudulent citizenship declaration.
I just don’t buy it. It makes no sense.
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Michael Martin at #132: Your posts make more sense now. Before you admission I thought that you might be just a misguided Christian since you stated your agreement with “Christian Universalism.” Now I see that you are no Christian at all.
I didn’t say that either. I said I don’t call myself a Christian.
Allow me to explain …
This site, like many other discussions predominated by Christians, frequently become embroiled in debates over who is and is not a “true Christian,” and what beliefs are or are not necessary to call oneself such.
I don’t care to be involved in a debate over what label I should wear. I don’t call myself a Christian because to do so immediately sparks the predictable questions (usually asked in a demanding tone with the assumption that the questioner is entitled to answers) about what specifically I believe about Jesus, or the Bible, or this or that other thing.
I am less interested in establishing a label than I am in provoking people to think about why they believe what they do. I think that much too often people settle into a set of beliefs that they don’t examine very closely. While I do have opinions on the issues that come up here, and will readily share and argue for them, I am not all that concerned with whether people come to agree with me. I am more interested in seeing people think through their own positions and be able to argue for them with something that reflects more thought than “Well the Bible says … ”
So am I a Christian? Maybe yes, maybe no, and a lot depends on how you define it. I will say that by the criteria most on this site would use to define it, I’m much too theologically liberal and inclusive to qualify. So I leave it at that.
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“I think that much too often people settle into a set of beliefs that they don’t examine very closely.”
Well many of the folks you debate with on this blog do NOT fit that description. If you haven’t recognized that, then you need to give it another shot.
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I will say that by the criteria most on this site would use to define it, I’m much too theologically liberal and inclusive to qualify.
I appreciate your honesty. I’m also glad to hear we have similar agendas regarding why we debate on this site.
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Well many of the folks you debate with on this blog do NOT fit that description. If you haven’t recognized that, then you need to give it another shot.
MIM, you’ve got people on this thread and many others, and not just one or two, swearing up and down that the god of the Bible never condoned slavery.
SteveG is right – many Christians not only don’t examine their beliefs very closely, many of them are appallingly ignorant of what’s in the book they claim is a lamp unto their feet.
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I think we make a mistake to apply the Sermon on the Mount to governments.
Jesus taught the Sermon on the Mount to his disciples, and to individuals seeking to follow Him in the kingdom of heaven. One of the main teachings of this sermon involves showing mercy as an individual to those that mistreat us. A warning of this sermon is that only those who do the will of God will enter the kingdom of heaven, not just those who claim to do good things in His name.
I think the main function of those in authority in governments is stated in Romans 13:4, “…he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.”
So governments have to be concerned mainly about justice, in order that evildoers will be punished and the rest can live in peace. The business of governments, including the Defense Department and the FBI, is not showing mercy or turning the other cheek.
Christians in governmental organizations are still called upon to show mercy in their dealings in an individual capacity with other individuals with whom they work.
An interesting passage in Proverbs (20:28) states, “Mercy and truth preserve the king, And by lovingkindness he upholds his throne.”
I believe this is speaking to kings or those in authority as individuals, not as officials. A king could show mercy to someone who offended him personally, but still was called upon to execute justice on behalf of those who were mistreated by others.
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AJ [189. 190]
Finally have a chance to respond.
Honestly, these connections still seem more those of a guilt by one remove.
The first complaint [189] is that Obama gave out some $60,000 to Arab-Americans (chiefly Palestinian) in Chicago. To put in perspective, the Fund distributes approx $3 million annually. So this 2 percent grant constitutes evidence of radicalism? Does that really pass a smell test?
And this concern about susceptibility to muslim extremism — that has been a fear, especially by those who would characterize themselves as friends of Israel. Judging by the feedback from the Senator’s recent AIPAC speech, that concern has abated considerably. The suspected radicalism, in this instance, does not stand.
Again, I think these are manifestly thin ties:
a 2% grant
recipients have alleged links with Palestinians
I mean, where IS the fire?
As to Black Liberation Theology [190]. Read the speech. Where do you find in any of this a link to anything like Black Liberation Theology? Read these words again,
I fail to see how this supports the charge of a hidden Black Theology agenda.
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Night Train are you talking about Genesis 9:20-27?
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This is my first post so I hope I sound ok. I do not support Dobson due to his political statements, however, I have noticed (as have others) that anything said against Obama is seemingly considered an attack.
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This site gives photo’s of the certificates and explains the problems.
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Harris,
Way back in 145, I gave another link to another radical associate of Obama, the Marxist Khlonsky.
You keep insisting that these are thin ties and distractions. If they are so thin, why did he have a blog on Obama’s site? On his offical website. That is, until today. You say it appears that these ties were thin. Well why give him space on your site then? And as I said, until today. It seems that still anotherBO associate has been thrown under the bus. At this rate, they’re gonna have to start putting them in the luggage area, because they don’t have any room under it.
http://tinyurl.com/5corh7
From the link;
Yesterday, we asked the question “Who is Martin Klonsky?” It turns out Mr. Klonsky was another one of those radical acquaintences of Barack Obama who are only a “distraction” from the real issues of the campaign; like trying to find someone who wasn’t a Weather Underground/radical racist/bigot/crook from Obamaa’s past.
Klonsky, the Maoist hardliner who received $75,000 from the William Ayers-Obama led Annenberg Project had a blog right on Obama’s website.
Until today:
Today his blog was removed from the Obama website.
Comrade Klonsky is no longer with us.
Earlier today when one went to the Community Blogs on the Obama website there was the Klonsky blog on education policy and something he calls “social justice teaching.” Tonight, all you get at the same “freedom teachers” URL is: “Invalid blog/profile URL.” Today’s softer version of the Stalinist airbrush.
Thin indeed. But I guess this doesn’t raise any red flags either.
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Harris,
C’mon. You fail to see the connection to black liberation theology agenda? One little clip convinced you of this? He spent 20 yrs in that church. That is what they teach. It’s their version of the social gospel. So I’m supposed to ignore his 20 yrs listening to this type of preaching, and it’s impact on his views, because of one paragraph that might hint otherwise? And you guys call me gullible. Sheesh.
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Night Train are you talking about Genesis 9:20-27?
No, I’m talking about this passage, among others.
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Night Train: Obviously that passage doesn’t mean God approves of slavery. It’s just a neccess…
OK, I can’t do that with a straight face. Sorry.
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That’s hilarious. You tried, though! That’s the main thing.
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AJ,
Did I really call you gullible? If I did, that would be unwarranted. And wrong. If I did, please accept my apology, I should not have spoken that way. But let’s get to the point.
I just fail to see the point bout Klonsky. “Obviously, Obama barely knows Klonsky if at all,” is how American Thinker put it. The fact that he has a blog at the Obama community site pretty much proves nothing, since that’s the nature of community sites — any one can join. User-generated content by its definition does not implicate the owner. Otherwise we would have to hold our sainted Lynn responsible for every idea that gets posted here.
And again black liberation theology. Don’t you think that if Obama were fed a steady diet of this it would seep into his speech? In case you haven’t read the whole thing, head for Dobson’s site, they have a link there. Without evidence, it’s very difficult to think your inference is correct.
I really do believe our arguments will be better when we back analysis with evidence.
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This VIDEO is not to be missed. Liberation Theology started in Latin America. This sheds LIGHT on the whole theology of “Black Liberation Theology and its beginnings which are Marxist.
Columbia Encyclopedia: liberation theology,
belief that the Christian Gospel demands “a preferential option for the poor,” and that the church should be involved in the struggle for economic and political justice in the contemporary world-particularly in the Third World. Dating to the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and the Second Latin American Bishops Conference, held in Medellin, Colombia (1968), the movement brought poor people together in comunidades de base, or Christian-based communities, to study the Bible and to fight for social justice. Since the 1980s, the church hierarchy has criticized liberation theology and its advocates, accusing them of wrongly supporting violent revolution and Marxist class struggle.
Bibliography
See studies by P. Berryman (1987), A. Hennelly (1989), and J. R. Pottenger (1989).
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As I recall, Victoria, Jean Paul II publicly rebuked a priest in South America for preaching liberation theology. But then again, he was very much against any form of Marxism, socialism, communism, whatever you want to call it. He fought against it and won, but it was a long struggle. If only those here would see what is happening and reject it.
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NJL, they don’t want to see it, they can’t bring themselves to face ‘Liberation Theology’ – ‘Black Liberation Theology’ its Marxism, or the other things which it stands for. They stand on one particulare verse in the Word of God, and have used that as an EXCUSE for what they believe.
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AJ #182
like the birth certificate.
this is one of the more bizarre claims I’ve seen floating about for which Steve gives the appropriate reply. You state the registration number is blacked out — releasing the numbers opens up countless opportunities for fraud — blacking them out is quite sensible.
When you raise taxes on business, you cut jobs.
Corporate taxes have been in a freefall since the 70s and each year contribute less and less of a percent of the national tax income. Unemployment in the same time period has increased and decreased without any correlation to corporate tax rates. Business taxes are only a small part of operating expenses — labour costs, utilities, health care etc are a far greater consideration.
Trickle down theories don’t work. Prosperity doesn’t trickle down and neither do expenses. True, Exxon could pass the cost onto me but then capitalism is supposed to provide the competitive pressures to prevent all the cost from being forwarded onto the consumer. Secondly, to pass the expense of a windfall tax onto to the consumer only insures that the windfall tax will be reapplied the next year. Eliminate the windfall and the tax is no longer applied — the incentive is there to absorb the cost.
As for the specifics of Obama’s tax proposals — don’t ask me go to his website. As you know I not voting so I’m probably the last leftist on this site you should ask. I entered this thread with a simple remark on the illogical use of “sources say” as a means to argue against Obama.
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Victoria
the birth certificates are very similar — any difference in embossment and shading etc can be expected once a document has been copied multiple times in various formats. And as steve points out — this is one of the more ludicrous and silly attempts at slander so far.
And yes the origins of liberation theology is in socialist derived critiqe of capitalism and imperialism. I’ve never denied it and I don’t see the problem …. it has as much relevance to Obama as the exclusionary origins of American Protestantism has to the Republican party. Both would make interesting Phd thesis (in fact its probably been done to death in academia) but an election is not about the archeology of ideas but rather the application of ideas and the personalities which will try to apply these ideas.
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Also — Obama’s core appeal lies in blacks, urban professionals, and the under thirty. All three of these groups have no interest in the origins of liberation theology and if they did they would probably like it. For Obama to succeed he only needs to broaden his base slightly to include most Clinton supporters — older women and blue collar workers. It won’t take much to attract the older women — younger women will convince them as will McCain’s misogyny — name calling his current wife won’t sit well with older women as does dumping your first wife for a younger women. As for the blue collar workers — they have very little to show from eight years of Republican misrule and with the exception of the religious right, they will either stay home or vote Democratic. Thus the countless silly smears are only a side show.
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HRW
One cannot pretend the seal exists for Obamas Birth Certificate — however it does exist for his sister’s —
The certificate number exists for Obama’s sisters Birth Certificate, but for Obama’s, NO CERTIFICATE NUMBER – If he wanted to prove his point he would use the CERTIFICATE NUMBER, plus there would be a SEAL which would print, just as it does on his sisters BIRTH CERTIFICATE –
It’s not a matter of how many times it was copied, the SEAL isn’t there, not a trace!
This will become an issue as time goes on -
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I have no idea how many documents some of you have had to print, but documents print to say they don’t would mean you either have old equipment, or you need to change your cartridge or ……..
I’m sure Obama and his campaign can afford the latest copy equipment, LOL
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This will become an issue as time goes on -
For the 50 or 60 people who can’t grasp the fact that candidates have their citizenship vetted before they’re allowed to represent a major party, maybe. Or who think Obama is so dumb he would actually subject himself to the scrutiny that comes with running for president knowing all the while that all it would take is one person making a simple inquiry to expose him as a fraud.
But not for anyone else. It’s an unbelievable claim that makes absolutely no sense.
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Anything is possible with NObama, he can’t remember what was preached and bellowed from the pulpit, so who knows -
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85(STEVEG): We’ve had the slavery debate before at length, and I’m not interested in having it all over again, but briefly:
OK, SteveG. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and spent an evening searching the WOW archives for all the arguments you and others put forth on the topic of Slavery in the Bible. What I found is that you focused on Exodus 21:20-21 to the virtual exclusion of everything else. You did not mention either of the following:
1. Deuteronomy 23:15. “If a slave has taken refuge with you, do not hand him over to his master. Let him live among you wherever he likes and in whatever town he chooses. Do not oppress him.” NOTE: Clearly, the master-slave relationship at the time of the patriarchs and Moses was one of mutual respect. Otherwise, the master could never retain his servants (slaves).
2. Exodus 12:43-45. “The LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “These are the regulations for the Passover: ‘No foreigner is to eat of it. Any slave you have bought may eat of it after you have circumcised him, but a temporary resident and a hired worker may not eat of it.” Note: This is interesting because it essentially states that a foreign slave remains a permanent slave only if He/She refuses to convert to Judaism. At the time of Moses, Jews actively proselytized within the Law.
SteveG says, Exodus 21:20-21 establishes that slaves were property and could be beaten severely with impunity … even to death as long as the slave lingers “a day or two” before dying.
You didn’t even get this one right (unless you have a translation I am unaware of). Exodus 21:20-21 states (NIV), “If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property.” The master, in fact, could not beat the slave severely with impuity–even to death. If death occurred the master was punished, period. And in light of the previous two passages, a master would be very stupid to beat his slave unless there was extreme provocation.
SteveG further states, “Leviticus 25:44-55 establishes that Hebrew slaves were to be treated as indentured servants, could be redeemed from servitude, and would be freed in the year of Jubilee if they had not been freed sooner
Correct SteveG. But you conveniently missed Deuteronomy 15:12-15 which states, “If a fellow Hebrew, a man or a woman, sells himself to you and serves you six years, in the seventh year you must let him go free. And when you release him, do not send him away empty-handed. Supply him liberally from your flock, your threshing floor and your wine press. Give to him as the LORD your God has blessed you. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the LORD your God redeemed you. That is why I give you this command today.”
Interestingly, Moses follows this with a remarkable commandment that makes absolutely no sense unless slavery in his time was relatively benign and possibly even mutually beneficial. In Deuteronomy 15:16-18, Moses writes, “But if your servant says to you, “I do not want to leave you,” because he loves you and your family and is well off with you, then take an awl and push it through his ear lobe into the door, and he will become your servant for life. Do the same for your maidservant. Do not consider it a hardship to set your servant free, because his service to you these six years has been worth twice as much as that of a hired hand. And the LORD your God will bless you in everything you do.”
SteveG continues with “BUT, slaves taken from other nations were nothing but property, could be slaves for life and could even be passed down from the owner to the owner’s heirs.”
But see my first two quotes above.
SteveG concludes, (This is, of course, only a problem for Biblical literalist inerrantists … as I am not one of those, I can take all this as an artifact of the primitive culture that created the Old Testament laws. You folks, however, are bound by your presuppositions to accept that God really did have no problem with slavery, even to the point of not caring much if slaves got beaten severely at the owner’s whim.)
No, Steve. There is no difficulty. Read the passages on oppression of the slave, the widow, the fatherless, the orphan. God considers exploitation and oppression true abominations and punishes persons and nations who practice it. I strongly suspect that the Civil War, WWII, the Korean War, and the Cold War were direct interventions by God in our history to relieve oppression and genocide.
SteveG then engages in wishful thinking: “There are a lot of other passages but these are two of the clearest. Modern-day apologists like to pretend that Biblical slavery was really a benign thing and not like 19th-Century American slavery, but the actual text of the Bible belies that revisionist history.”
Wrongo!
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Dr. Dave: As I said, I’m not interested in having that argument all over again. Briefly, I will agree that some passages urge slave owners to treat their slaves well. Others, and in particular the Leviticus 25 passage, paint a very different picture, at least as far as non-Hebrew slaves were concerned.
Whether this is an internal contradiction in the Bible or a stark difference in how God wanted Hebrews treated compared to foreigners, I don’t know.
Exodus 21:20-21 is problematic in translation. You are correct that in the NIV, it appears to refer to a slave who is beaten severely enough to be out of commission for a couple of days but ultimately survives.
However, the New American Standard has it:
“If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished.
“If, however, he survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken; for he is his property.
King James has it: And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished.
Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished; for he is his money.
Young’s Literal Translation says: 20`And when a man smiteth his man-servant or his handmaid, with a rod, and he hath died under his hand — he is certainly avenged;
21only if he remain a day, or two days, he is not avenged, for he [is] his money.
All of those sound like if the slave dies a day or two after the beating, the owner isn’t punished; by losing his property, he’s suffered enough.
On the other hand, the New Living Translation concords with the NIV:
20 “If a man beats his male or female slave with a club and the slave dies as a result, the owner must be punished. 21 But if the slave recovers within a day or two, then the owner shall not be punished, since the slave is his property.
So different translations disagree strongly on what this passage actually says. I duly note that.
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Victoria — if you look at the second birth certificate posted for comparison, it has a portion of the embossed seal completely missing. Using your logic, it too is an obvious forgery since the seal shouldn’t have disappeared and thus it was never there. Thus both certificates are a fake and hence your site is unreliable. (according to your logic anyway). Finally, the numbers are blacked out for a very good reason — the use of an authentic birth certificate is the easiest means to identity theft. The fact that the comparison certificate did not black out the numbers indicates this individual is not worried about identity theft. Now using your logic, I will muse about the lack of care taken by this person and with some heavy handed innuendo conclude that this person doesn’t care about their identity or perhaps never existed in the first place.
Victoria I go through at least 30 student records a year, each contain either a photocopied birth certificate, immigration card, citizenship card or refugee card. All photocopies are done on the school copier yet all are of varied quality. Birth certificates come in three styles — pocket size, unofficial copies and official originals. Only in the latter is there an embossed seal. If there is validity to the birth claim, McCain only needs to ask the elections commission to look into it.
Accusations such as yours only succeed in making Obama’s opponents look ridiculous.
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In my post #138, I expressed the opinion that Barack Hussein Obama was a “weird mixture of Marxism, Islam, and black racism.” The immediate comeback from his supporters was to categorically dismiss the supposed charge that he is a Muslim, no doubt in the hope that the entire subject can be swept under the rug so as to avoid any further scrutiny. However, that diversionary tactic will not work.
My contention relates to his mindset and values, not necessarily to any official or public affiliation with the religion itself. On that score, we all know that the Obama machine has done everything in its power to distance him from any visible connection. However, they have not been able to entirely sanitize his history.
He was born in 1961 to a bigamist Muslim father and an atheist mother, Anna Dunham. The father abandoned them two years later. In 1968 the mother married another Muslim, Lolo Soetoro Mangunharjo, and they moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country.
In 1968 Obama was enrolled in the Franciscus Assisi Primary School under the name Barry Soetoro; his religion was listed as Islam. In 1971, he was tranfered to the government Besuki Primary School and enrolled as Barry Soetoro, Muslim. Here he is required to study Islam daily, read and write Arabic, recite his prayers from the Quran and study the laws of Islam. Numerous teachers and fellow students of that time remember him as a devout young Muslim student.
In 1972 Dunham divorces Lolo and sends “Barry” to Honolulu to be raised by his liberal, white grandmother. Her money buys him entrance to the prestigious Punahou School. The school is expensive ($15,725 for the 2007-2008 academic year) and has a liberal, global orientation in its educational philosophy. Here he begins to rebel against his “whiteness.” It is no wonder, his homelife has been anything but stable—broken family, abandoned by both his mother and father[s], multiple divorces, atheism, Islam, and now a school and grandmother with the standard liberal guilt complex about things American and white. By the time he is in high school he has become an angry young black man with an admitted smoking, drinking, marijuana and cocaine problem.
According to him, he cherishes every cause for complaint he can discern against white folks. He is constantly distressed at being half-white. Obama says he “ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.”
I feel sorry for Barack Obama because of his confused, dysfunctional background and the many problems this has brought into his life. He obviously needed help. But the only help he was going to get, as we will see, was from sources that would further exacerbate his problems and growing racist attitudes.
In 1979 Obama enters Occidental College in Los Angeles and continues the search for his “blackness,” as he calls it. He says, “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists.”
His search for “blackness” continues and in 1981 he transfers to Columbia on the south edge of Harlem. Here Obama swaps drugs for Marxism. He begins attending Marxist-Socialist conferences at Cooper Union and African cultural fairs in Brooklyn.
In 1985 Obama goes to Chicago where his personal identity search now has a dual focus: “blackness” and Marxism. He begins work as a “community organizer” using the techniques pioneered by the leftist radical Saul Alinsky. Alinsky’s, ”Rules for Radicals” becomes his bible. Alinsky’s methods concentrate on creating discontent, fostering class warfare, agitating against the government and capitalism, civil disobedience, and portraying all opponents as evil oppressors of the working class—all the classic Marxist techniques for the destruction of societies to be replaced by Communist “utopias.”
Obama says that the four year training he got in this “community organizing” was the best education he ever got anywhere. It is interesting to note that Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis at Wellesley College was also a fawning study on Alinsky titled, ”There is Only The Fight…An Analysis of The Alinsky Model.” Over the years almost all Democrat politics have increasingly taken on Alinsky’s methodology and purpose.
Coming to the present day we are all more recently aware of Obama’s mentor Jeremiah Wright. Under Wright’s twenty year tutelage we find the full fusion of black racism, black Islam, and Marxism. This of course, is presented under a cloak of supposed Christianity, the mainstream religion of America. But it is a false and deceitful cloak that attempts to hijack Christian ethics and good works to a cause that is anything but Christian. The 12 covenantal statements of Jeremiah Wright’s church is as grotesque a picture of Christianity as Judas is a representative of Christ. Obama bound himself for twenty years to this man as the father he never had. His recent public rejection of Wright and Trinity was done very reluctantly and only as a matter of expedient political necessity. But the philosophy of “the end justifies the means” has always been a guiding tenet of both Marxism and Islam, and now Barack Obama too.
Obama’s mental chaos is a strange mixture, but this confused and angry man thinks he has finally found himself and wants us to join him. He wants to be president of the United States and bring about “change” as he calls it. But early on, he consistently resisted calls to be specific about the changes he seeks. Considering his background and attitudes, that is not at all surprising. In fact, it is to be expected. Very few Americans want the Barack Hussein Obama hidden agenda. So for good reason, his campaign is dominated by lies, dissimulation, evasiveness, flamboyant rhetoric, style and smiles over substance, and grandiose promises.
He is a con-man who, if elected, will bring to America just the opposite of all that he promises. But, as in all cons, the victim’s greed and other vices are just what make him vulnerable to all the lies. If we elect Obama, it will be to our eventual sorrow and we will get just what we deserve.
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And too think I always thought he was too right wing.
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Michael Martin, please think about reposting 223 in today’s don’t make them angry strategy thread.
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HRW
The question of the ‘Birth Certificate’ is not a small question, nor does it have anything to do with whatever you copy in your local public school. Whether you can see the difference in the Birth Certificates is of little interest to me —
The equipment we have is very sophisticated, up to date, it copies documents which must meet requirements, so that seals, etc., would also copy –
Whatever copy equipment you have in your local public school in Canada, has nothing to do with the equipment we have in our office or the up-dated equipment that is available to those who want PERFECT COPIES.
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you don’t get it — the records I view are in a variety of different forms — no one form is in perfect shape. Similarly, the two certificates shown by your website are in different shape and neither one is perfect, the comparative form is missing the middle portion of the embossed seal. Hence, its not a perfect copy — according to your logic this demonstrates that the referred website is also not interested in perfect copies.
The equipment we have We??? Is that your own website — because if it is the second copy is not perfect and hence you may want your money back on the equipment you purchased. Secondly, you may want to black out the registration number as you are leaving someone (or their estate) open to identity theft.
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Michael, I would be cautious about referring to “Obama’s mental chaos …” as there is not evidence of such chaos.
What you have asserted is that he is a creature of various influences (many of which are then painted as vile). Leave aside the flawed anthropology here (we are creatures merely of outside influences), you still must demonstrate the chaos you see in action.
What I find missing in your “biography” then is a link between asserted influences and behavior or words. .
Were you to say that action A is a result of influence B, that would make bio credible. But without that kind of link your conclusions — like those of Dobson — remain unsupported. And unsupported conclusions — accusations — does seem to be a good definition of “mental chaos”
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I’m not getting the birth certificate stuff. Hawaii was a state when Obama was born in a hospital in Honolulu. Just because a second birth certificate was registered in Kenya says only dual citizenship, maybe, to me. Why is this an issue? Are you referring to a requirement that he had to live a certain number of formative years here? Wassup?
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Harris: Michael Martin’s essay is a blatant attempt to declare Obama guilty by vague association.
Everytime I hear someone make similar accusations, I ask them what in Obama’s own words, policy positions or actions reflects the supposed influence. And there is never anything … it’s just about who he has shaken hands with or what he might have heard in a sermon, or something he said 25 years ago — none of which has any connection to anything he believes today.
It is a pathetic attack, but it is really all they have.
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Have your read his book?
Do we really want a cokehead as president? I mean we couldn’t have a druggie as a Supreme Court justice (Ginsburg).
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NJL, I had put this up earlier in post 203.
This site gives photo’s of the certificates and explains the problems. There are a few links, if you scroll down the page you will find very good copies of two Birth Certificates, notice the names, dates and lack of embossed seal on BO’s-
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Harris (#228):
Obama’s early dysfunctional years are clear for all to see as my post more than adequately demonstrates. He speaks of it himself as he describes his own confusion and search for meaning.
For anyone knowledgeable of the disparate claims and philosophies of Marxism, the black liberation movement, Islam, traditional American values, and genuine Christianity, “mental chaos” is an excellent term describing what would be the inevitable result for any normal person attempting to resolve the many irreconcilable differences between these views.
The fact that Obama supports all these things at the same time leads me to the conclusion that he is in a state of mental chaos or that he is being deceitful about what he really supports. Another possibility is that he has redefined these things in his own confused mind to make them compatible with one another—sort of a “Brave New World” “Newspeak” operation—and which allows him to lie with a straight face. In this case, he would be just another version of Bill Clinton who manufactured his own deceitful definitions almost daily.
In any case, Barack Hussein Obama, is not qualified to be President of the United States. He is qualified to be black, Marxist agitator, nothing more.
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Oh, and he is obviously qualified to be the Democrat nominee, for whatever that is worth.
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Okay, I viewed the two documents, and I can think of a variety of reasons why they might be different. Mostly, the paper is different, so they were using different forms at different times. That said, if this were for real, someone would be suing him to prove it, and I think that someone would be Hillary.
I still carry many of the attitudes I learned in the church I grew up in and even use some of the same phrasing which most of the people here do not, and I’ve tried to be certain to weed those phrases out by retraining myself. I think one has to be very conscious of that because it stays with you, and I don’t think you can get rid of all of it. So, if Obama was a good little Muslim boy in Muslim school, it is my opinion that there’s something there. That doesn’t make him a Muslim, however. But for me, he gets another tick on the “con” side of the page.
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HRW,
This comment is hysterical —–
I get it – no its not my website – you obviously have no clue as how material can be copied, or the quality which good equipment can reproduce -
Identity theft?
people don’t use a ‘Birth Certificate’ to obtain credit, nor is it the only identification needed to obtain a Passport, at least in the USA, last but not least, much more would be needed to receive an inheritance from an estate than a ‘Birth Certificate’ -
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Victoria,
The last two states we have lived in, a birth certificate and social security card were required in order to get a drivers license. Unfortunately, social security numbers have been so widely used that some thieves probably have a record of a great many of them. If they can get hold of a copy of a birth certificate and match it up with the info they already have, that may be enough to get a drivers license (I think the Social Security card can probably be faked, the ones my family has don’t seem to have any security measures). And with the drivers license as ID they can probably make a decent start at making serious problems for the person whose identity they stole.
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glad you are amused – when you said “we” when discussing the quality of the photocopies on the website it gave me the impression that it was your website.
As for identity theft — a birth certificate is usually the first thing needed to re-acquire other ID if you lose your wallet etc. At one point, the Mossad used Quebece baptismal certificates to build up new identities. Credit isn’t the only thing that your identity can be used for.
IF you think this is hyperbole on my part — post your own birth certificate on the internet.
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HRW since you live in Canada and I live in the USA, there are different laws and rules which govern each country, and that of individual states.
In obtaining credit here, one must produce a DL, several credit cards, and this even to open a checking account.
A Birth Certificate will not obtain credit where I live, nor is it asked for when buying a home, or obtaining other types of credit.
Social Security numbers are identification as to who one is, that is unless its been stolen, but a Birth Certificate does not take the place of a SS#
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Michael
I think your psychological model you implicitly reference doesn’t particularly match the facts of individuals’ lives. Many are a mix of differing inputs gathered over time, very few are so consistent over time. Indeed such consistency would be a testimony less to individual stability, than to the individual’s sheltered life and perhaps a lack of intellectual curiosity.
These influences do not stay in us, undigested, as you evidently suppose they do in Obama.
Substantively, you think him a Marxist largely because of his affinity to Alinsky. And here we can see how one digests and transmutes an influence. Clearly the social concern remains, but that stream has also deepened with the incorporation of teachings from the mainline church. The confrontational aspect of Alinsky, has been shed (if he had it all in the first place); the style is not to confront or to polarize, but to find some kind of common ground. This is actually quite different from the Alinsky method. One part of Alinsky he has kept: organizing — the political tactics and fundraising of his campaign reveal a strong embrace of the idea of campaigning from “the bottom up.”
And about his being an angry Black. That certainly doesn’t match with what we have understood to be the angry Black — if Obama is one, it is of an entirely new species. It may be here, that the assertion that he is an angry Black reveals more about the desire for racial division on the part of those who advance this characterization.
Lastly, as I understand your point, it is that Senator Obama hides all this. In essence, it’s true precisely because he does not mention it. This reminds me of the joke about the optimistic kid in the room with the pile of manure, shoveling madly away, convinced “there has to be a pony in here.”
So as to the assertion that Obama is a “black, Marxist agitator,” I can only say,
Sorry, no pony.
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NJL,
Exactly, this week alone there have been several checks into the con column. The birth certificate, Khalidi, Klonsky, public financing, etc….
But Harris and HRW and Steve simply dismiss it all with a wave of the hand, while calling them distractions, with no relevance. But when you add it all up, the Marxists (there’s more than one) although he did recently throw one under the bus and off his website, the black liberation connections (Pastor and church), Palestinian terrorists, American Terrorists, his wanting it both ways on the second ammendment, flip-floping on public financing, most liberal voting record,
100% rating by the abortion lobby, obvious lack of foriegn policy skills (the war, Iran, Israeli-Palestinian conflict), tax the rich ideas, stand on drilling he becomes alot less appealing. And those were just off the top of my head. If I tried I could probably come up with more for the con column. There is very little about Obama to like, despite what his few supporters, and one cheerleader who can’t vote for him, say to the contrary. The more we know and see, the less shiney the Golden Boy looks.
Michael Martin, Victoria, MIM, myself, and others have asked plenty of legit questions and made observations, which deserve answers, the reponse is always “distraction”, look over here instead. They just refuse to acknowledge his flaws. They’d rather talk about what the Bible says about slavery instead. I’m beginning to think that you just can’t reason with some people.
No pony, just another donkey.
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AJ: he becomes alot less appealing
If that were coming from someone who had found him appealing at some point, it’d be meaningful.
The birth certificate is a ridiculous non-scandal, for reasons I’ve already detailed.
Guilt-by-association doesn’t persuade me. I’m concerned about what Obama believes, not by what some people he knows or has known or shook hands with once at a party believe.
Black liberation theology doesn’t trouble me either. I know you think we’re all supposed to shudder in fear at the mere mention of it, but as far as I can tell, whatever Obama may have taken from it is only a sympathy for the poor and oppressed, which I don’t think is a bad thing at all for the president to have.
Your reference to “terrorists” is just fear-mongering.
You guys keep harping on his alleged “flip flop” on public financing and pretending that McCain is an angel on it, but you know that isn’t true. McCain not only flip-flopped on it, he made sure to get a loan based on assuring his creditors he’d be taking public financing in the primaries … and only once the loan was in the bank did he go back on his word.
Suggesting that Obama and only Obama has been less than honorable on that issue is an outright lie.
I am not concerned about his liberal voting record. For the most part I agree with it, and so do a lot of people outside of this community. In any case, as president he’ll be tempered by Congress.
Foreign policy skills? When McCain figures out the difference between the various factions in the Middle East so that he can talk about them without Joe Lieberman having to be on hand to correct him, let us know.
The rich should be taxed. They’re the ones who have money.
So you have a laundry list of issues, none of which amount to much unless you’re already disposed to dislike Obama. And if you are, then there’s no real point in arguing because you’re not going to vote for him anyway.
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AJ — no dismiss with the hand. I’ve explained why I believe your associations don’t work. I suppose we could go over it again (and again
). But to be brief, the marxist charge is simply empty, tantamount to calling a Southern Baptist a racist because some Southern Baptists in fact are racists. Proximity only works if the person in question also shares the characteristic, but no evidence has been advanced that Obama himself holds these convictions.
Empty charges are so much chaff, and they don’t serve you well.
Otoh, you bring up a number of substantive issues, as well, such as his stance on taxes, foreign policy, oil drilling and the Second Amendment. These are points of honest discussion and dissent. But it’s really hard to pick up these issues if you insist on packaging it with these loose and unproven charges.
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Another flip-flop by BO. He supports vouchers, then he doesn’t. Even after test scores show raised scores thru the program, which he said would be the test, he flops. Musta got an earful from the NEA. Check the links in this one, it shows the truth. Another check for the con column. I better get another sheet of paper.
http://tinyurl.com/6aohv4
Now is this an issue, or just another distraction? I can never tell.
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More tried and failed policies from BO.
http://tinyurl.com/4own9w
It’s a long one, lotta pages. The quick summary? Basicly poor people got the shaft, BO’s friends, including Rezko, made tons of money. Free govt money to developers, and developer contributions to BO in return. And the poor got substandard housing, in shoddy builings. Follow the money. It’s all about the money.
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Who would have ever guessed?
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I don’t know, AJ. Does it matter to you that Obama didn’t really say to the Milwaukee paper what the right-wing site you’re linking to says he said? (In other words, once again the conservatives are lying about him… I KNOW, that’s so unlike them!)
Asked about a Milwaukee voucher system, here’s what he really said:
I have to admit that I have been a strong champion of charter schools as a way of fostering competition within the public school system. I have been a skeptic of school vouchers because my view has been that you are not going to generate the supply of high quality schools to meet the demand. Instead you’re going to get a few schools that glean the kids that are easiest to teach, and nobody’s really interested in the enormously difficult task of teaching the special ed kid or the extremely impoverished kid. And so you get further stratification of the schools in the inner city without any real net improvement. So I’ve been skeptical of the school voucher program.
When Milwaukee initiated the school vouchers plan, I thought that at least there was an experiment that would allows us to use that as a test case. You’d have the control group, you’d have the test case and we could evaluate what happened. I was stunned to find out from Gov. Doyle that there is no assessment process. After 7, 8, almost 10 years now, there are no studies to figure out whether or not it worked. If there was any argument for vouchers, it was, let’s see if this experiment works, and then if it does, then whatever my preconceptions, my attitude is you do what works for the kids. Turns out we have no data to support the notion that kids are doing better in these voucher schools.
Here’s the upshot. I think the status quo is intolerable. Whether it’s in Chicago, or New York, or L.A. or Milwaukee. If you’ve got half the kids dropping out, and you’ve got only one out of every 10 kids reading at grade level or going on to college, the system does not work. I don’t think only money solves the problem. I do think money helps.
He then goes on to talk about a variety of ideas for improving public education, none of which are vouchers. When the subject does turn again to vouchers, he says the other phrase that was quoted, but again, it’s out of context. He is asked whether he would support vouchers if a study were to show their effectiveness, and he says:
What I don’t want to do is start saying, ‘well if the study shows that it works, I’m all for it,’ because I’d want to find out, is this a legitimate study? The parents that took the affirmative step to take their kids out of an existing school and put them into a school of their choice, are those parents who tend to be more attentive or more aggressive parents, and that would somehow … I’m assuming any credible study would have to factor some of that stuff out. Here’s what I will say: I will not allow my predispositions to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn. We’re losing several generations of kids, and something has to be done.
So as you can see — if you’re honest — the parts in bold are what was widely quoted to make it look like Obama was speaking in favor of vouchers. If you read the words that come before and after those sections, you see that he was talking about a specific program and then lamenting the fact that there is no data to show whether it made a difference or not. And then finally, he suggested if he were convinced by a reliable study, he might be willing to consider it.
I can’t link directly to the interview, which is apparently only on video, but if you click here and type “Obama” and “vouchers” into the search box, that should take you to it.
So this is not an Obama flip-flop … your source pretends that he was gung ho in favor of vouchers when he spoke to the Milwaukee paper’s editorial board. The video shows that he was not at all so; he was willing to consider them if, and only if, research proved that they make a difference, and he was disappointed that Milwaukee had a program and had not been gathering data to show whether it made a difference.
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Steve,
Since when would AJ allow facts into the discussion?
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Godlumps: Good point.
But I am always hopeful that there might be lurkers reading who are more connected to reality.
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Steve, from your post;
When Milwaukee initiated the school vouchers plan, I thought that at least there was an experiment that would allows us to use that as a test case. You’d have the control group, you’d have the test case and we could evaluate what happened. I was stunned to find out from Gov. Doyle that there is no assessment process. After 7, 8, almost 10 years now, there are no studies to figure out whether or not it worked. _If there was any argument for vouchers, it was, let’s see if this experiment works, and then if it does, then whatever my preconceptions, my attitude is you do what works for the kids. Turns out we have no data to support the notion that kids are doing better in these voucher schools._ (LIE there is data)
Here’s the upshot. I think the status quo is intolerable. Whether it’s in Chicago, or New York, or L.A. or Milwaukee. If you’ve got half the kids dropping out, and you’ve got only one out of every 10 kids reading at grade level or going on to college, the system does not work. I don’t think only money solves the problem. I do think money helps.
What I don’t want to do is start saying, ‘well if the study shows that it works, I’m all for it,’ because I’d want to find out, is this a legitimate study? The parents that took the affirmative step to take their kids out of an existing school and put them into a school of their choice, are those parents who tend to be more attentive or more aggressive parents, and that would somehow … I’m assuming any credible study would have to factor some of that stuff out. Here’s what I will say: -I will not allow my predispositions to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn.-(but he’ll try to do away with a program that works, that’s standing in the way)_ We’re losing several generations of kids, and something has to be done.
OK, I see. BO was refering to the Milwaukee program. But that still doesn’t get around the fact that he said if vouchers were shown to work, he’d support them. As the DC program shows, it does work. See this link.
http://tinyurl.com/6k6da5
Now here is a program with proven results, and yet he wants to end it. Why? If he says he’ll support them if they can be proven to work, and then he and fellow dems don’t support the program that works, that’s flip-flopping. Or lying. He said he’d support it, but now he won’t, even though it’s been shown to work with the DC program. His own words which YOU posted Steve, says he’d do it, if it could be shown to work. The link above clearly shows it does work, yet he won’t keep his word.
Sorry, it’s goin’ in the con column.
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AJ: Based on the link, it does appear this program has shown some early success. I’d want to know Obama’s rationale for opposing it before judging.
I am generally not in favor of vouchers because it has the effect of government paying for students to go to religious schools, which isn’t proper for government to do. If the vouchers were available only for non-religious private schools, I might (depending on specifics) support that.
But it’s not an automatic negative for me that Obama opposes them. It might be if he had clearly and unequivocally said he would support any such program that shows success and then failed to uphold that.
But I don’t think he did. In the interview (did you watch the video?), he’s very reluctant to express any support (probably because he knows people would use any such words against him, just as you’re doing here) and only when pressed does he say he might be willing to consider something under some conditions.
So his opposition to vouchers in general I consider a plus, and the allegation of ‘flip flopping’ here I consider (1) unproven and (2) paling in comparison to McCain’s defrauding his lenders.
Now THAT was a con … in either sense of the word.
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Dr. Dave, or anyone else: Comments on #221? Having been reminded of these widely different translations, I’m interested in opinions.
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SteveG (#242) writes,
Guilt-by-association doesn’t persuade me. I’m concerned about what Obama believes, not by what some people he knows or has known or shook hands with once at a party believe.
Steve attempts to assume the high moral ground here and paint his opponents as shallow and judgmental in their thinking, if indeed they think at all. According to him, the pejorative “guilt-by-association” mind-set is the only thing we have and he can just casually brush that aside. He (Harris, Moth, et al) really knows what Obama believes and supports while our concerns are just made up out of our own paranoid imaginations.
However, it is my contention that Steve and others are being incredibly naïve in their thinking. In a political atmosphere such as we are dealing with here, all evidence must be considered, including associations, past and present. Political candidates routinely hide things that they know will damage their campaigns. Everything they say is carefully crafted to appeal to what they know people want to hear. Some candidates, like Obama, do it more than others.
Obama’s personal history of Muslim devotion is an open fact. His history of Marxist sympathies in college and Chicago politics is an open fact. His history of alcohol and hard drug abuse is an open fact. These things are documented and incontrovertible. No one in their right mind should ignore these things when the candidate is seeking one of the most powerful positions in the world. Yet that is what the foolish Obama supporters here are doing. Only what he says now is important, they say.
However, only a political moron would expect a campaigning Obama to stand up and speak like Louis Farrakhan or Jeremiah Wright. Only a naïve and gullible disciple would demand matching quotes from Obama as the only acceptable proof that he is of like mind with them.
Consequently, in the political jungle, a discerning person must look at all the evidence about a candidate, not just what he says as Steve, et al, disingenuously demand. Close associations, past and present, are important as they are evidence of mutual agreement. One must look not only at who Obama associates with, but at who supports him. The unrepentant Marxist terrorist William Ayers likes Obama for a very good reason. The terrorist group Hamas also likes Obama for a good reason. Top Hamas political adviser Ahmed Yousef said the terrorist group supports Obama’s foreign policy vision. That is significant and not to be lightly dismissed.
Obama’s relationship with the bigoted, racist, ranting, America hating Jerimiah Wright was so close that Obama proudly called him his mentor—until Wright’s views became public knowledge. Only then did he reluctantly begin to distance himself from Wright. His first attempts were the obvious lies that he didn’t know what Wright believed, that he wasn’t in church on those Sundays, that he didn’t know what Trinity Church stood for, etc. It is simply unbelievable that he could be that close to Wright and his church for twenty years without knowing these things and being in sympathy with them. Obama’s approach to this controversy adds a second indictment against him: blatant dishonesty. Obama is not to be trusted.
Yet Steve blindly gulps down Obama’s poison kool-aid because he agrees with him on so many other things. He is similar to Senator Byrd, only not as candid. When confronted with Clinton’s impeachment crimes and lies, Byrd acknowledged them and agreed to his guilt. Yet he still would not vote to convict him because he liked his politics.
Abundant evidence has been offered here on this site for Obama’s concealed racism and his concealed Marxist and Muslim sympathies. I have offered some and AJ and others have offered much more. What has been the response of the Obama kool-aid drinkers on this thread? — Just a condescending brush off.
My conclusion about the Obama sycophants here is this: they actually accept his racism, his Marxism, and his Muslim sympathies because, like Senator Byrd, their mutual political agreement trumps everything else.
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A.J. and Michael are conducting a smear campaign against Obama on Worldmag (what else is new?). While it’s “crack” for conservative Christians, who are still addicted to the stuff, there’s growing evidence that the American people have come down off that “high” and headed toward rehab.
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SteveG,
You seem not to have grasped a fundamental concept. The quote of Mr. Obama is:
“[E]ven if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith?
Whose Christianity teaches that slavery is OK now? Whose teaches that eating shellfish is abomination now? Whose teaches the stoning of their children for straying from the faith now?
None! It’s a complete strawman argument!
Christianity obliterated slavery from all but the fringes of the Roman Empire. (As a teenager, St. Patrick was kidnapped from Roman Britain by Irish pagans and kept as a slave until he escaped)
Centuries later, the British resumed slave trading over strenuous Papal opposition.
Christianity stamped it out again in the British Empire and then in America.
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Anlir,
Thank you!! I’m happy that you would included me with posters like MM. You shouldn’t have left out the rest though, MIM, Victoria, NJL, Bob Buckles, Llama, and others, just to name a few. I’ll wear that as a badge of honor.
Just so I make sure I’m current on the definition thing, I’ll summarize, and you can tell me where I’m wrong.
#1-truth=swiftboating/and is equal to smoking crack
#2-questioning BO=smear/racism
#3-pointing out his associates=distractions
Did I leave anything out? Please let me know if I did. I gotta make sure we’re all working from the same sheet of music here. Or I could just ignore your constant whining, and just continue on as before.
I’m gonna go with B.
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John Denney at #255: Christianity obliterated slavery from all but the fringes of the Roman Empire. (As a teenager, St. Patrick was kidnapped from Roman Britain by Irish pagans and kept as a slave until he escaped)
Obama’s point was that there are many different versions of “Biblical morality,” and when people go around insisting on applying it to America, they should make clear just what they mean by it.
He used hyperbole to make the point, following in the footsteps of others who have used the same technique (like, speaking of camels going through the eyes of needles), by pointing out — completely correctly — that the Bible does, in fact, command the things he mentions. The fact that Christians today don’t insist on those same things doesn’t change the words of the text.
And if you believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, then you worship a God that at one point did demand parents execute their own children for straying from the faith and who laid out the rules under which the ancient Hebrews had to govern their slavery system by. The fact that those rules are no longer operative doesn’t make them less troubling.
(The defense that “those rules no longer apply so we don’t have to justify them” is like a thief on the witness stand saying “I don’t steal things anymore, so I shouldn’t be held responsible for what I did two years ago.”)
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Michael: This is why your rants are not credible.
Obama’s personal history of Muslim devotion is an open fact.
Lie. He has no such history. It’s not that I don’t think it would be important, it’s that there’s no evidence of any such thing.
He grew up exposed to a variety of faith traditions and embraced none of them. When, as an adult, he did become part of a religious affiliation, it was Christianity.
Your strongest evidence of “Muslim devotion” is that when he was seven years old his Muslim step-father wrote “Islam” on a school form for him.
His critics, ludicrously, accuse him in one breath of being a Muslim and then, in the next breath, of being the wrong kind of Christian. This is a strategy of throwing every smear you can at the wall and hoping some will stick.
His history of Marxist sympathies in college and Chicago politics is an open fact.
“Marxist” is one of the words ultra-Conservatives toss around freely against anyone who advocates any sort of redistribution of wealth. I guess it sounds dirtier than “commie” these days.
Show me solid evidence that he wants to make America a communist country, and I’ll worry. If the best you can do is that he favors some programs that spend tax funds on programs to aid the poor, then I’m not concerned.
His history of alcohol and hard drug abuse is an open fact.
Admitted by him and left behind long ago. George Bush’s history of alcoholism is also an open fact.
So?
Another point for you to remember: Most of us outside the ultra-conservative Christian community don’t get freaked out by this stuff. As long as Obama convinces us he’s a patriot who will be a capable and inspiring leader, we really don’t care what somebody said about him when he was a small child or whether he experimented with drugs 25 years ago in college.
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Steve (#258) writes,
As long as Obama convinces us he’s a patriot who will be a capable and inspiring leader, we really don’t care…”
This is the most telling thing that Steve writes, “…we really don’t care…”
So long as Obama’s spoken politics is what Steve likes, he doesn’t care about anything else. He is a soul mate of Senator Byrd, as previously noted, and willing to accept anyone or anything that advances his own leftist political views.
I have often wondered how the German people could so enthusiastically accept Adolph Hitler despite all the evidence of his flawed character, background, and intentions. He promised them what they wanted and, like Steve, they didn’t care either. All the other baggage he brought along with him was of no concern. To use Steve’s words, he was an inspiring, capable, and patriotic leader—they thought. In their own naivety and delusions this is what they allowed themselves to believe. Then he brought them disaster. After the war, to cover up their shame, they said, “We didn’t know.” That was just as much of a lie as those lies of Hitler that deluded them in the first place.
Steve calls me a liar when I point out Obama’s past, most of it from Obama’s own written word. But it’s somewhat of a fair trade I suppose. I consider Steve to be naïve and deluded by a charlatan.
It is my hope that the majority of the American people will not be similarly deluded. The full scope of the changes that Obama promises to bring to this country, if elected, is currently unknown.
At a minimum we know that it will be continued millions of deaths from the willful murders of abortion. We know that it will mean wholesale surrender in Iraq and Afghanistan—just what our terrorist enemies and Muslim sympathizers want. We know that it will mean skyrocketing taxes for most Americans to support multitudes of giveaway programs designed to redistribute income by government force—just what any Marxist thief revels in. We know that it will mean the vengeful pummeling of business by reams of new oppressive regulations and the leech-like infliction of parasitic taxes that could very well plunge us into a major depression. But that’s OK with the Marxists since it is their traditional means of grabbing ultimate power.
These are just a few of the known and possible consequences for our nation if Obama and his ilk get their way.
I remember coming in to work on the morning after Clinton’s first election to be greeted by a big banner that read, “Happy Days Are Here Again!” Eight years later the nation was not singing the same tune as the most horrible president in history left office in utter and thoroughly deserved disgrace. We have still not recovered from the damage he did in so many areas.
Can we survive another and even more lethal dose of his kind of politics? Obama and his new campaign partners, Hillary and Bill, promise us more of the same. Plus, Obama will bring us his own new baggage of racist, Marxist, and Islamic sympathies. I believe that if Obama is elected this November, four years from now Steve will be attempting to cover his shameful complicity with a lame, “I didn’t know.”
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Michael Martin at #259: This is the most telling thing that Steve writes, “…we really don’t care…”
So long as Obama’s spoken politics is what Steve likes, he doesn’t care about anything else. He is a soul mate of Senator Byrd, as previously noted, and willing to accept anyone or anything that advances his own leftist political views.
Well, I suppose it’s telling in the way you want to be if you lift it out of context.
IN context however, it’s clear that I was not saying we don’t care about actual and substantive evidence of real character flaws. Even the sentence you lifted that partial quote out of goes on to say, quite specifically, that what I’m not caring about is whether his Muslim step-father listed his religion as Islam when Obama himself was seven years old, nor do I care that he experimented with cocaine many decades ago.
Now if you had some real evidence that he has secret radical Muslim sympathies now, or is still a habitual coke-snorter, my evaluation of his fitness for office would be quite different. But you don’t have that. You have facts about the distant past and only rumor and innuendo about anything recent.
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I remember coming in to work on the morning after Clinton’s first election to be greeted by a big banner that read, “Happy Days Are Here Again!” Eight years later the nation was not singing the same tune as the most horrible president in history left office in utter and thoroughly deserved disgrace. We have still not recovered from the damage he did in so many areas.
Damage like an enormous peacetime economic expansion, or a balanced budget for the first (and last) time in recent history?
I think we’ve recovered pretty completely from such “damage.”
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Steve (#260),
Your leftist political goals trumps all else and renders you unconcerned about far more than just the two items mentioned in your last sentence of #258. The context includes the many other posts you have authored that brush aside any concern over Obama’s past, his associations, and his current dissimulations.
So your bogus charge of “lifting out of context” does not fly.
You and Senator Byrd are “birds of a feather”—the flightless and witless Dodo.
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SteveG,
Obama’s point was that there are many different versions of “Biblical morality,” and when people go around insisting on applying it to America, they should make clear just what they mean by it.
That wasn’t clear to me.
the Bible does, in fact, command the things he mentions.
No. It does not. Your word “command” is present tense; it should be past perfect tense. “The Lord in times past had commanded . . .”
What you consider “troubling” is petty compared to other things the Lord has done. He destroyed entire cities (Sodom and Gomorrah), destroyed everyone on earth except eight people (Noah and his family), and killed the firstborn of everyone in Egypt who did not have the blood of the lamb on their doorways.
Speaking of The Lamb, He’ll be back:
“…the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power;” – 2 Thessalonians 1:7b-9
He did not destroy Nineveh when they turned from their evil ways.
God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. – 2 Peter 3:9
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