Just another Wallisian Christian celeb?

First, Jim Wallis tried to make it okay for Christians to vote for a pro-abortion candidate. Then Brian McLaren followed suit. These two paved the way for the inevitable: an evangelical celebrity who would go the whole nine yards and endorse Barack Obama.

Meet Donald Miller. Apparently Miller's claim to fame is a book that he authored, entitled Blue Like Jazz. I've heard rave reviews of the book but have not read it; there's too much great literature out there and so little time to spend on fads. Miller is using his fame to campaign for Barack Obama. Like other Christians who have recently announced their support for Obama, he wants to treat abortion like a traffic management issue and marriage like a civil rights issue. And he has some absurd notions about law and the Supreme Court. All this proves is that he has never given a moment's reflection or study to moral, legal, or political philosophy. But young Christians are listening attentively and taking his assertions very, very seriously.

I am sure that Miller's heart is in the right place. And he is right to support male mentorship and assistance to the poor and suffering. (It is interesting to note, however, that conservative Christians have been championing and furthering these causes for decades without fanfare or self-aggrandizement.) Good on him for motivating young Christians to good deeds. But before opining on policy, law, and morality, he would do well to read a book or two on the subjects.

Another Catholic falls for it

What is it about Obama that induces once-reasonable Christian intellectuals to check their reason at the door? Nicholas Cafardi joins Doug Kmiec in endorsing Barack Obama for President.
Cafardi's justification falls far short of reasoning. It is full of fudges, contradictions, plays on words, and outright prevarications. He’s wrong to suggest that the abortion battle is lost. And he's irrational to adopt a consequentialist justification for his position. The issue is not one of reducing the total number of abortions, as if abortion policy were somehow comparable to traffic management. Even assuming what is manifestly not true, namely that Obama's proposed policies would reduce the number of abortions in America, encouraging others to vote for Obama is immoral. The issue with abortion in this country is that a tyrannical judiciary compels the participation of the American people in a grave moral wrong. Cafardi is enabling that evil.

Cafardi vastly overstates his case on torture; McCain publicly and emphatically opposes torture, and no reasonable person believes that all enhanced interrogation techniques amount to torture. Reasonable people can disagree about the justness of the Iraq War, and it is telling that the Pope has not spoken out against American activity in Iraq since becoming Pope. And to call “ignoring the poor” an intrinsic evil is not to make an argument but rather to slander one’s intellectual opponents.

The problem is that many people are going to reason: If Kmiec and Cafardi support Obama, it must be reasonable for a Christian to do so. This is the stuff that really gets my goat. I have no problem with hearing and reading these arguments from my secular friends. To get it from a Christian brother is just galling.

UPDATE: A very thoughtful colleague challenges my reasoning here. Given that McCain is not opposed to embryonic-destruction research and is arguably opposed to abortion not in principle but rather as a matter of political expedience, isn't a vote for McCain immoral in the same way as a vote for Obama? I respond in two parts.

First, I am not really voting for McCain, I am voting against Obama. That is a distinction with moral significance. My moral obligation is to avoid being complicit in the perpetuation of a grave moral evil. A vote for Obama certainly entails that complicity. A vote for McCain (as compared with, say, a vote for a write-in candidate) makes it less likely that Obama will be elected.

Second, there is a relevant distinction between voting for a candidate and endorsing that candidate. Voting for Obama is bad enough. Encouraging others to vote for Obama is morally unjustifiable.

The case against McCain, not strong enough

George Will makes the conservative -- that is to say, reasoned, principled -- case against a John McCain presidency. It is a strong case. It resonates with me. I am troubled by many aspects of a potential McCain presidency. But there remain two conclusive reasons why voting for McCain is the right choice.

First, there's Sarah Palin. By choosing Palin, McCain has helped to commit the future of the Republican party to conservative quarters.

Second, there's Barack Obama. Obama is not merely liberal. He is for abortion on demand, he refuses to oppose infanticide, he promises to put liberal activists on the federal courts, he promises dramatically to expand costly federal entitlements, including health insurance, and has already demonstrated his fecklessness in foreign relations and policy.

I am not enthusiastic about a McCain presidency. But the Candidate of the Past must be stopped.

Obama and slavery

The inimitable Gerry Bradley puts Obama's moral self-deception into its proper historical framework. Obama's accommodation on abortion bears a striking resemblance to the apologies made 150 years ago for slavery. That is surely an uncomfortable fact for Obama, who identifies himself with the grievance politics of Black America, but it is undeniably a fact, nonetheless.

Perfect timing; Divine Providence

After watching Palin's speech last night, I remarked to a friend this morning that she is no Lady Thatcher, but that Obama and Biden must have been peeing their pants. My friend retorted, "She's no Thatcher yet."

That is Sarah Palin's "x" appeal among conservatives: she has extraordinary potential. Her potential is unrealized, but she has potential nonetheless. As Rudy Guliani put it, she is the future of the Republican party, and the future looks pretty good. In this respect, she resembles the Democrats' nominee for President, Barack Obama. Of course, the resemblance ends there.

Palin might turn out to be a big flop. She might never realize her potential. But right now, in the infancy of her career on the national political stage, potential is all that is expected of her. Contrast that expectation with the one now sitting upon Obama's shoulders. When he spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention his potential was enough to satisfy. That was four years ago. Obama has not been running for president forever, it just seems like it.

Which begs the question: did Barack Obama peak too early? Or, put differently, did the Democrats tap him too late, after it had become painfully obvious that his potential was all puff and dander, completely devoid of substance? What might have happened had John Kerry tapped the Obama well in '04? Might Kerry be running for a second term as President today?

Thankfully, we'll never know. Which makes me believe that God still cares about America after all, and has great plans for her. Only Divine Providence could have arranged this chance for a conservative resurgence in spite of strong anti-Republican sentiment and the apparent inevitability of Barack Obama's coronation.

More on Democrats' antipathy to free speech

Powerline has the latest in a "series of near-daily 'Democrats vs. Free Speech' stories." Stanley Kurtz has now crossed the Dems' hawse with his inquiries into Obama's connections to the terrorist Bill Ayers. According to Politico, the Obama campaign responded with an effort to disrupt Kurtz's appearance on a Chicago radio program.

The campaign e-mailed Chicago supporters who had signed up for the Obama Action Wire with detailed instructions including the station's telephone number and the show's extension, as well as a research file on Kurtz, which seems to prove that he's a conservative, which isn't in dispute. The file cites a couple of his more controversial pieces, notably his much-maligned claim that same-sex unions have undermined marriage in Scandinavia.

"Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse," says the email, which picks up a form of pressure on the press pioneered by conservative talk radio hosts and activists in the 1990s, and since adopted by Media Matters and other liberal groups."

It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves. At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz's lies," it continues.

Clearly, this issue touches a nerve in the Obama campain.

UPDATE: Guy Benson has a first-hand account.

So much for free speech

Barack Obama is trying to silence a group that is raising legitimate, unanswered questions about Obama's ties to the terrorist William Ayers. He is threatening to employ the Justice Department to pressure television stations that carry advertisements linking him to Ayers. And he is impliedly threatening to have the stations' broadcast licenses revoked, asserting that running the ads violates the stations' obligations to operate "in the public interest." That phrase is a term of art, the standard for determining which television stations get to broadcast and which ones do not.

I have not seen the ads. Perhaps they imply stronger inferences than the evidence will bear. However, Obama is a public figure, so the ads are almost certainly not defamatory. Cheaps shots? Perhaps. But in this country we happen to believe that tough questions in a political campaign are protected under the First Amendment. And we trust American citizens to distinguish between political ads that are legitimate and those that are over the line.

The bigger issue is this. If Candidate Obama is willing to go to such extremes to silence critics during a political campaign, imagine what a President Obama might do once he has actually obtained the reigns of power. The man obviously has little regard for the First Amendment. Add this to the list of things -- human life, marriage, free markets -- for which he has little regard, and one discerns a troubling pattern.

UPDATE: Police in Denver have arrested an ABC news producer for "trespass" on a public sidewalk, a physical impossibility. At the time of his arrest, the producer was attempting to photograph Democratic senators and DNC donors. How little do Obama's folks value free speech?

I am informed that Rush Limbaugh is covering this story on his radio show.

Facts that don't fit the narrative

For the mainstream media, frenzied in its peurile, pubescent passion for the Big O, facts have little value. The Washington Times, not infected with Obamamania, has uncovered a fact that the New York Times, the networks, and CNN -- in short, Obama's communications agents -- refuse to report because it doesn't fit their Obamanarrative: Obama's half brother lives in a hut in Africa, subsisting on three cents per day. It seems that the multi-millionaire and Democratic-nominee Candidate of the Past wants to spend your hard-earned money and mine on programs for the poor but cannot bring himself to share a meager fraction of his own coin with his own flesh and blood.

This fact is consistent with recent revelations that the Obamas make millions each year and, as the Washington Times points out, live in "a mansion that a mobster helped pay for." Also consistent is the fact (again, tip to the Washington, not New York, Times) that the Obamas give less than the national average to charities. And the fact (yup, Washington Times) that Michelle Obama's employer, a hospital in Chicago, steers poor blacks to other hospitals. The list goes on, but you won't read any of these facts in the news section of your mainstream paper or any news service that relies primarily on the AP and/or Reuters.

The moral of the story is simply this: if you want a liberal narrative devoid of any connection to reality within the four dimensions of time and space, get your "news" from traditional sources. If you want facts, conservative media is the place to go.

Remaking the world, secular European style

In case you've not yet picked up on the messianic ambitions of the Junior Senator from Illinois, we have this passage from his speech today in Berlin. "With an eye towards the future, with resolve in our heart, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again." The highly-secular Germans ate it up, averaging more than one applause interruption each minute throughout the speech.

Barack Obama and western Europe: religiously immanentizing the Eschaton.

Add hypocrisy to the list

Barack Obama is currently on his world tour running for... it's not clear what. One would be forgiven for concluding that he is hoping to be elected Emperor of the Secular Western World. In any event, Obama made a campaign stop at the Western Wall in Jerusalem yesterday morning, complete with campaign posters written in Hebrew. Predictably, some in attendance heckled, others chanted their support.

Rather than accept responsibility for turning a holy site into the host of a political convention, Obama had this to say: "It was rowdier than the last time I was there, you know? I mean, people were sort of, like, holerin'. You know I was expecting more reverence."

Obama has demonstrated an increasing number of unattractive vices in the last several months. Add hypocrisy.

Dangerous because so very naive

Barack Obama pledges to rid the world of nuclear weapons during his tenure as President. As if the goal were not sufficiently naive, his means are laughably so. "Obama said adhering to nonproliferation treaties would put pressure on nations such as North Korea and Iran."

The notion that Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be so shamed by our voluntary disarmament that they will give up their nuclear ambitions can only be maintained in a very small, very weak, or very immature mind. The Candidate of the Past must be defeated. We cannot afford to capitulate to thugs and terrorists.

The September 10 Candidate

We have here called Barack Obama the Candidate of the Past because of his extraordinary resemblence to Jimmy Carter. Obama is mired in the failed policy proposals of the 1970's.

As Andrew McCarthy today points out, Obama is also mired in the failed national security mindset of another moment of the past, September 10, 2001. McCarthy drives the point home:

When an elitist lawyer like Obama claims the criminal-justice system works against terrorists, he means it satisfies his top concern: due process. And on that score, he’s quite right: We’ve shown we can conduct trials that are fair to the terrorists. After all, we give them lawyers paid for by the taxpayers whom they are trying to kill, mounds of our intelligence in discovery, and years upon years of pretrial proceedings, trials, appeals, and habeas corpus.

As a national-security strategy, however, and as a means of carrying our government’s first responsibility to protect the American people, heavy reliance on criminal justice is an abysmal failure.

A successful counterterrorism strategy makes criminal prosecution a subordinate part of a much broader governmental response. Most of what is needed never happens in a courtroom. It happens in military operations against terrorist strongholds; intelligence operations in which jihadists get assassinated — without trial; intelligence collections in which we cozy up to despicable informants since only they can tell us what we need to know; and aggressive treasury actions to trace terror funds.

Barack Obama lacks the will to oversee these necessary operations, and he is far too enthralled with his own moral and intellectual superiority to deal honestly with the problem of terrorism. For the preservation of all that is good about Western civilization and this great nation, the Candidate of the Past must be defeated.

Let them eat... less

We've made the comparison before, but Barack Obama is now not merely making Jimmy Carter-esque policy proposals, he is now also sounding a lot like our Elder National Disgrace.

George Bush and McCain have suggested that me being willing to sit down with our adversaries is a sign of weakness and sign of appeasement.

Did he say "appeasement"? Like Carter's premature peace-in-our-time declaration after his meeting with the terrorist organization Hamas?

How about this from Obama?

We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times.

Compare that with selections from Carter's infamous 1977 energy speeches:

All of us must learn to waste less energy. Simply by keeping our thermostats, for instance, at 65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night we could save half the current shortage of natural gas.

and

One choice is to continue doing what we have been doing before. We can drift along for a few more years. Our consumption of oil would keep going up every year. Our cars would continue to be too large and inefficient. Three-quarters of them would continue to carry only one person -- the driver -- while our public transportation system continues to decline.

Of course, we all think conservation is a good idea. But there is something unbecoming, un-American, and unimaginative about a President or candidate for the presidency telling Americans how to spend their money.

Are we prepared for four years of economic malaise, a projection to our enemies of a weak will, and feckless leadership in the face of real crises? That's what we will get with an Obama presidency.

Obama's vision for an activist judiciary

Ed Whelan has been carefully documenting the evidence -- thus far unrebutted -- that an Obama presidency would result in a dramatic increase in the number of liberal activists in the federal judiciary. Today he adds to the pile.

There's nothing too surprising here. Any reasonable reading of Obama's and McCain's speeches, votes, and campaign commitments leads to the parallel conclusions that a McCain presidency would at least marginally improve the federal judiciary and that an Obama presidency would cause significant deterioration in the third branch of government. Federal judges have difficult, lonely jobs. And the vast majority of them are talented, virtuous public servants. Obama's vision of a qualified federal judge is depressing, and is one more reason why an Obama presidency would be an unmitigated disaster for the United States.

The Catholic divide

Meanwhile, there appears increasing evidence that a substantial bloc of the Catholic vote will follow Doug Kmiec into Obama's camp this year. That would be a shame. Unlike evangelicals, Catholics have recently stood firmly for orthodoxy and the intrinsic value of human life and marriage.

If these trends continue, and Obama wins the presidency, a lot of evangelicals and Catholics will soon regret the part they played in his election.

Clinton wins big, race goes on

Despite being outspent by millions of dollars, Hillary Clinton looks to have pulled off a double digit win in the Keystone State. Governor Ed Rendell rightly calls last night's results a "game changer," and he is right.

Before Wrightgate broke, this was Obama's election. Since then, Obama has been seen in another light. Add to the fire the William Ayers story and Obama's boneheaded belittling of "bitter" working class Americans who "cling" to religion and guns.

All these stories will follow Obama into the general election if he ends up pulling it out in the Dem primary.

Now you have to really question whether this guy can win...or better yet, Democrat poobahs need to ask that question and adjust their support accordingly. He clearly is not the teflon candidate as his supporters had hoped. Teflon candidates don't get their rears served to them by an underwhelming candidate to the tune of 10 points or more.

Lastly, Democrats who are all over the airwaves saying this is not hurting their party are completely full of it. If this trend continues and super-delegates do indeed begin to move for Hillary, the Party will have a full fledged revolt on their hands. Are we to believe that denying the democratically elected Obama the nomination will not have repercussions with black voters and young voters? Nonsense.

Obama compares Coburn to 1960's terrorist

Maybe Obama should just stop talking and go into hiding for the remainder of the campaign. At this rate that seems his surest bet to win the nomination and the Presidency. In recent remarks on the campaign trail Obama compared conservative Senator Tom Coburn to 1960's radical terrorist William Ayres, who has recently been connected to Obama.

Obama after complaining about "manufactured issues," says, "this is what I'm talking about... He lives in my neighborhood, he's a professor of English. Not someone I've accepted endorsement of, it's not someone I exchange ideas with on a regular basis... (!) He did detestable acts when I was eight years old."

I'm also friendly with Tom Coburn, a man who has suggested the death penalty may be appropriate for those who perform abortions.

What!? The only bombs Tom Coburn throws are rhetorical in nature and usually aimed at Senate liberals and misguided devoid of principle GOP old bulls. He is a life long physician who has delivered thousands of babies and who to this day would rather be bringing a new life into the world than dealing with the myriad of nimrods in the Senate. Obama clearly understands that in many ways Coburn is a revolutionary. But that makes him akin to a patriot, not a terrorist.

Faith and Democrats

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, I do not believe that Senators Clinton and Obama scored a big victory for the Democratic party with their appearances at Messiah College on Sunday. Those evangelicals with whom I have spoken about the forum were impressed with Clinton's candor but disagree with her convictions on abortion and with many of her policy proposals. I have yet to hear from anyone who thinks Obama hit a home run, or even a base hit. He came across as calculated and awkward. As a commenter on this site opined, Obama seemed "uncomfortable using the evangelical lexicon." And as Titus pointed out, Obama was hopelessly inconsistent on the abortion question. That was striking; he must have anticipated that question. Surely his advisors gave some thought to issue. But that was not at all apparent from his response.

Furthermore, McCain is unlikely to suffer from his decision not to participate. Reasonable people understand that McCain has sealed the Republican nomination and that it is in his best interest to lay low for now and watch the Dems beat each other up.

Also, the audience was quite clearly liberal. Assertions that Al Gore won the presidential election in 2000, that Jeremiah Wright's statements have been distorted, and that a cap-in-trade policy will best incentivize alternative energy production all earned applause. The representation of believing Jews and Christians did not appear to be anything near proportional. Any accretion of credibility to Obama or Clinton will be accordingly modest.

*****

The truth is that neither Hillary nor Barack came across as a genuine person of Christian conviction. Consider this bit from Hillary, resisting an invitation to identify occasions on which she felt the presence of the Holy Spirit.

And I am not going to point to one or another matter. ... And it is just such a part of who I am and what I have lived through for so many years that trying to pull out and say, oh, I remember, I was sitting right there when I felt, you know, God's love embrace me, would be, I think, trivializing what has been an extraordinary sense of support and possibility that I have had with me my entire life.

In other words, Senator Clinton can't think of any occasions on which she has felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. And the grand failure of her sniper-fire prevarication has made her wary of making stuff up. No one believes that sharing memories and experiences of God's grace trivializes God's grace. Stories are powerful, especially when they are true. If Clinton had at any moment in her life devoted a single, fleeting thought to God's love for her, you can bet your life savings she would have grasped the opportunity to tell that story on national television.

Similarly, Clinton gave a long, evasive non-answer to the question what first principles inform her judgment on important political questions. She discussed the importance of civility, of considering all sides to a question, and of soliciting input from advisers and critics. However, she did not identify a single, immutable conviction from which she will not turn. One could be forgiven for concluding that she has none.

Except, that is, the right to have an abortion on demand. When asked whether she believes that life begins at conception, she unequivocally stated that abortion should be legal. Ironically, considering her audience, that might have been her best moment in the forum. She was as candid as she was wrong, and that counts for something.

*****

Obama, by contrast, was neither right nor candid. He badly fumbled the abortion questions. (He was lobbed two of them.) He was enigmatic on the morality of end-of-life decisions and on the efficacy of abstinence education in nations ravaged by HIV. He rightly invoked the principle of stewardship in environmental protection, then undid his good words by pretending that his cap-and-trade policy proposal is a necessary corollary to good stewardship.

Furthermore, Obama was guilty of Wallisian hubris. He indulged in more than one implied defamation against conservatives, at which Accommodators like Jim Wallis (who tossed Obama a softball at the forum) are so well practiced. Obama assured us that he is "careful and suspicious of attempts to paint Islam with a broad brush." Why is that relevant? Does he suppose that American Christians are guilty of that offense? He dusted off the canard that universal, single-standard health care is a "moral imperative." And those of us who believe in increasing choice in health insurance, making it more varied and less expensive, are ignoring our moral obligation? Obama warned against sacrificing civil liberties out of fear. Who would cower in such self-defeating fear, allowing their leaders to infringe upon their inalienable rights? Obama's "nation." The US of A. That's who.

This is emotional blackmail in its most blatant form. It is not, as we have seen, beneath Jim Wallis. But it ought to be beneath a serious candidate for the office of President of the United States.

Obama on faith

Two clips of interest here from last night's CNN forum on faith. In the first (only watch the first minute) we see Obama awkwardly answer the question about when life begins. Obama says he cannot "presume to know" when life begins. It may be "when a soul stirs" or "when a cell separates," he simply cannot know. But he does grant that "there is something extraordinarily powerful about potential life" and that power has a "moral weight to it."

So regarding the question of abortion, Obama's logic should lead him to err on the side of life. If life does begin when a cell separates, then even early on abortions are the ending of that life and therefore a grievous violation and affront to the "moral weight" that Obama concedes that life carries. This does not even begin to address the late-term procedures that Obama will go to his grave to legally protect.



Now, switching gears. In the video below we are witness to the world's greatest softball question pitched from an Accomadater in chief, Richard Cizik. Cizik at his perch atop the National Association of Evangelicals has been a hero of the liberal left and darling of the MSM.



"Should it be part of God's plan to have me in the White House I look forward to our collaboration." Thus the already massive egos of our friends the Accomodaters quadruples in size.

UPDATE: While we are on the topic, note Obama's promise to Jim Wallis to cut the amount of poverty in half in ten years. Follow the link for background.

And then there's this

You own a gun? You're religious? You think the government should enforce immigration laws? That's okay. Barack Obama forgives your transgressions. He understands that you're really just bitter about being unemployed. When his enlightened policies have had a chance to jump-start economic progress in the Rust Belt, you won't have to resort to such distasteful tendencies.