A rift
Just in case there was any doubt, Obama assures us that religion is indeed mandatory in the US. Just in case we had any hope that the relentless ‘faith’-mongering would go away when Bush went away, Obama tells us it won’t. Just in case people who don’t consider ‘faith’ a cognitive virtue were feeling at all optimistic, Obama goes after the godbothering vote in a hail of ‘faith’ language.
“Now, I know there are some who bristle at the notion that faith has a place in the public square,” Mr. Obama intends to say. “But the fact is, leaders in both parties have recognized the value of a partnership between the White House and faith-based groups.”
Thanks; that’s a big help. So all those people who think – who claim to know – that God wants them to murder their daughters or persecute gays or bomb abortion clinics – how do you plan to tell them their ‘faith’ is wrong? Once you make ‘faith’ a virtue how do you plan to talk about anything in a rational way? Compartmentalization? But that’s just arbitrary, so it’s vulnerable to everyone else’s different brand of compartmentalization. You don’t want to justify X on the basis of ‘faith’, but if someone else does, what can you say, once you’ve made ‘faith’ a central principle?
Mr. Obama is proposing $500 million per year to provide summer learning for 1 million poor children to help close achievement gaps for students. He proposes elevating the program to the “moral center” of his administration, calling it the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
Thus implying that ‘faith’ and morality are necessarily linked. Thanks a lot.
Joshua DuBois, director of religious affairs for the Obama campaign, said that the campaign expected resistance from a large part of the evangelical community, but that millions of faith voters were persuadable. “We’re not going to convince everybody,” said Mr. DuBois, 25, a former associate pastor of a Pentecostal Assemblies of God church in Massachusetts…”But others will be open to him because they see he’s a man of integrity, a person of faith who listens to and understands people of all religious backgrounds.”
Thus, again, implying that ‘faith’ and integrity are more or less the same thing. Thanks.
In a brief video shown at the beginning of meetings with religious voters, Mr. Obama says he is “blessed” to help lead a conversation about the role of religious people in changing the world.
Now, see, that I have no problem with (apart from ‘blessed,’ of course). Just welcoming religious people into projects to change the world (for the better, one hopes, and then one has to decide what that means) is sensible, inclusive, and compatible with the separation of church and state. But giving government money to religious institutions is quite another thing, and so is making a virtue of faith. It’s perfectly possible to include and welcome religious people without even discussing ‘faith,’ much less making a totem of it. Apparently that’s too much to expect; that’s a pity.
Kool-Aid, anybody?
Is this Obama, or is this campaign management? After all, it is quite clear that some religious voices have already been rejected by him, that of Jeremiah Wright in particular. This sounds like the voice of his handlers.
Eric,
I think we can pretty safely assume it’s Obama.
C’mon, he’s a presidential candidate, who knows that the last couple of times the strongly supernaturalist tendency have provided enough votes for his opposition to win (I know, I know, Florida, “hanging chads”,etc,etc – that’s by the by now, and anyone who’s still hurting should put their anger to good use by campaigning this time around!)
What else can we seriously expect except religious ass-kissin’ (and policy-shifting, and…well, you know…)??
The day an openly non-theistic candidate gets elected POTUS…
:-)
Andy, no doubt what you say is true, but he never said it so clearly before. He’s playing to a different audience this time. Spin doctors have a say in what gets said and is left unsaid. It may be Obama, but the message as a new spin now. I share Ophelia’s dismay. I guess I simply do not understand America. Tony Blair couldn’t ‘do God’ until he resigned, although he did God on the sly while in power. But to have to do God right up front, and so fulsomely too! Good grief! :-(
Well, I’m sure it’s Obama (I don’t think he’s the passive in the hands of his minders type), but I’m also pretty sure it’s Obama doing what it takes to get elected. But I wish he would avoid saying certain things – and for that matter I wish he would draw the line at actually expanding the ‘faith-based’ crap. I badly want him to win, but I also badly want all this faith-mongering to go the fuck away.
Ophelia, you’re probably right. You are more likely to be right than I. Here in Canada this kind of crap just would not fly! We sometimes look southward with concern.
Obama’s open and sincere religiosity is not a trait that endears him to me, personally – but it does make him more electable in my woefully god-bothered country. If this is the rhetoric and these are the policies that will get him elected, Obama is so infinitely preferable to McCain on every policy front – including religion-related policies – that I’ll just have to suck it up.
I also think that Obama’s approach to the intersection of religion and government has two features that Bush in specific and the American Christian right in general completely lack: A clear respect for the Constitution, and a clear understanding that personal convictions do not and should not have the same status in public policy debates as evidence and reason – both of which he makes very clear in this 2006 speech. This is the very speech, incidentally, that sparked the frothing-at-the-mouth quotes from James Dobson in the NYT article.
What really concerns me here is that the policies which permit federal funding for religious charities are likely to survive past Obama’s presidency, and even if I have reason to think Obama will respect the Constitution, what about the next president? There’s no good reason to believe that in the future it won’t turn right back into the sort of loathsome vote-seeking piggy bank that it has been under Bush.
Yeah, the very thing he said in that 2006 speech that Dobson considered a ‘fruitcake’ reading of the Constitution (never mind that Obama taught Constitutional law at that piddly little school in Chicago and was editor of that obscure little law journal at Hahavahd while Dobson…didn’t and wasn’t) has been moderating my despair all day.
For me it’s not just that Obama is so infinitely preferable to McCain, it’s also that he’s so infinitely preferable to any candidate we’ve had in almost 40 years, and also that in some quite important ways he’s in a class all by himself.
But. He shouldn’t be promising or planning to give public money to religious institutions. No, Barack, nasty, put it down.
Friendlyatheist has been keeping tabs on this story and has a useful round-up of key facts, interesting distortions and misconceptions, and responses to date.
Oh, yeah, I’m with you there. Taking tax money and putting it in the hands of any religious institution is bad bad very bad!
I’ve been listening to the whole five-part Obama speech I linked to above. (Originally, I watched an edited version that hit the highlights.) For those of you with less time on your hands, the central ideas dear to secularists are addressed in parts 4 & 5.
:-)
G
You seem to imply there is something wrong if a babykilling abortion mill is burned or bomb. What do you prefer, dead babies or a pile of bricks? Innocent unborn babies deserve to be protected just as born children deserve to be protected. You would have no problem protecting born children if they were about to be murdered.
SAY THIS PRAYER: Dear Jesus, I am a sinner and am headed to eternal hell because of my sins. I believe you died on the cross to take away my sins and to take me to heaven. Jesus, I ask you now to come into my heart and take away my sins and give me eternal life.
Don, I can’t tell whether you’re a nutjob troll with a familiar-seeming moniker or just a smart-ass deliberately flirting with Poe’s Law. Either way, it’s not particularly endearing. Cut it out.
G. the faith base programs that you seem to dislike so much are only for delivering servces not spreading the gospel.
And giving money to those programs certainly doesn’t free up money they already had, which would then be used to spread the gospel, right? I’m sure that never ever happens.
Richard: Your claim that the programs funded by the Bush administration’s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives have only delivered services and not proselytized is simply false. Not only have many programs been funded that overtly and directly proselytize under the cover of providing social services, many corruptions of the process of deciding which organizations get funded has been thoroughly and repeatedly exposed. Why do you persist in making factual claims from a basis of total ignorance? And no, I’m not going to waste my time correcting your ignorance. That is your burden, not mine.
“Now, I know there are some who bristle at the notion that faith has a place in the public square,” Mr. Obama intends to say. “But the fact is, leaders in both parties have recognized the value of a partnership between the White House and faith-based groups.”
“Now, I know there are some who bristle at the notion that bribery has a place in the public square,” Mr. Obama intends to say. “But the fact is, leaders in both parties have recognized the value of a partnership between the White House and wealthy lobby groups.”
See! It works on other things too! Impeccable political logic; I think I’ll file it under ‘begging the question’.
Needless to say, I’m not Don S.
Yeah we really thought you were, Don!
:- )
“We need all hands on deck.”
Aye, all ‘faith healing hands’ will surely solve all problems.
Evangelical “uplifted” hands’ voters rule Okay!
I’ll hold my nose when I touch the screen on the (D) side come November, because it’s still better than a hundred years in Iraq.
Well, as I said, I don’t mind the ‘all hands on deck.’ I think it’s fine and obviously necessary for a candidate to include religious people. I just don’t think that does or should entail giving money to religious institutions.
I’m nowhere near having to hold my nose though.
“In scripture, having a dog as a pet is considered forbidden, as they are considered unclean animals, and you must wash and clean after handling them”
Is this for real? Are dogs not kept as domestic pets in Islamic countries?
This little snippet taken from B&W News is barking dog-boggling indeed!
You would never guess any of this from the few Pathan families I became acquainted with many years ago when living in east London. They kept dogs as pets – and though eastenders, their favourite dogtrack was New Cross.
http://www.afghan-network.net/Culture/afghan-hound.html
_
I know this is still off topic… but you have seen the latest from Scotland, haven’t you (linked on Dawkins.net):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1030798/Muslim-outrage-police-advert-featuring-cute-puppy-sitting-policemans-hat.html
Is this what capitulation looks like? Perhaps Mark Steyn is right, after all.
‘Perhaps Mark Steyn is right, after all.’
No.
Yup, a different one is in News. But to be fair, it was apparently just one chump in the council, and others said it was all nonsense. The pathetic thing is the way the police fell all over themselves apologizing for not asking the diversity officer first. About a puppy. Give me a break.
The doggy thing is not in the Koran. But is promulgated by many imams. Then again, we aren’t allowed to slaughter horsies for food, but we can beat them with whips for money!
But then again again, we don’t recoil in revulsion at pictures of horsies.
Speak for yourself! Foul equus fiends!
Who was recoiling in horror at the doggy picture? That tale seems like a beat-up (and Mr Asif is a fool)
Well I never! I could have sworn that was you Don. Why is Mark Styne wrong then?
Richard,
I guess I just assume that someone who speaks approvingly of ‘culling’ ‘sheepshaggers’ is pretty much wrong from then on in.
Mmmm, horsies!! [drool]
Anyway, it comes from the Daily Mail so it’s by definition wrong or inflated out of all proportion. This is a paper that still dine out on that “Winterval” nonsense of 11 years ago. Compare their take with the article OB linked to in the news…
And Don, which “sheepshaggers” are we talking about here? The Aussies just beat the French 37 to 13 last week-end. Maybe a bit of culling could be useful…
arnaud,
Sheepshaggers is Steynes urbane way of refering to moslems. The ‘cull’ he mentions was in Bosnia.
And on the dog thing:
http://www.thecourier.co.uk/output/2008/07/03/newsstory11597077t0.asp
Once again, a total non-issue.
Don, while I haven’t checked everything Steyn has written, I call BULLSHIT. There is no way he “speaks approvingly of ‘culling’ ‘sheepshaggers'”.
Firstly Steyn is right-wingish but not feral and having read some of his output I believe that is a mis-characterisation.
Secondly, sheepshaggers are not considered shorthand for Muslims; the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa advising that the man who keeps a GOAT for sexual purposes should not slaughter and eat its offspring (from memory, the guy has been dead a while).
Sheepshaggers, according to Kinsey, are American farm boys – and out here in Australia we don’t use the term to denigrate other races, but New Zealanders. Culling is good sheep farming practice, as I know from personal experience. Culling the people who blow up innocents in marketplaces, THAT is a cause we can all believe in.
As for Obama, he has a track record of using these ‘faith-based’ groups as governmetn get-out-the-vote drives to register Democrats and help develop the base. A number of unethical political practices have been associated with these groups in Chicago politics, all funded by taxpayer dollars.
So muslims are a different race? And Kiwis aren’t…hmmm.
Arnaud,
I was waiting for a comment like that! Only eaten cheval twice. Once in Portoguaro – cured horsey. And once in Java – a stew, chewy and tough as hell
Don although I wouldnt go as far as Chris, I think you may be judging Steyn by a rather ill considered bad joke. I have read a fair amount of his stuff and like Chris I would say he is right wing but in no way extreme although that is probably in the eye of the beholder.
“Why did Bosnia collapse into the worst slaughter in Europe since World War Two? In the thirty years before the meltdown, Bosnian Serbs had declined from 43 percent to 31 percent of the population, while Bosnian Muslims had increased from 26 percent to 44 percent. In a democratic age, you can’t buck demography—except through civil war. The Serbs figured that out—as other Continentals will in the years ahead: if you can’t outbreed the enemy, cull ’em. The problem that Europe faces is that Bosnia’s demographic profile is now the model for the entire continent.”
Mark Steyn
Arnaud Steyn is speaking about the mind set of the Bosnian Serbs at that time and expresing the fear that that would spread into the rest of Europe because of large demographic changes,also have you just taken that one paragraph out of an article or book or is that a stand on its own statement?
Hmm. Difficult. I googled and found the passage in google books so was able to read the context – and I don’t think he was endorsing the culling, I think Richard’s right that he was ventriloquizing the Serbs. I can’t swear to it though.
The whole subject is of course a very thin ice one.
‘The Serbs figured that out—as other Continentals will in the years ahead: if you can’t outbreed the enemy, cull ’em.’
Yes, he later claimed that he was ventriloquizing, as you say, OB. But that turn of phrase does not to me speak of fear. If you figure something out that, in general parlance, means you have found the solution to a problem. That tone is consistent with his frequent, swaggering use of wog, gook, chink, jap etc.
And even in his explanation of the comment there was (my interpretation based on his use of language) a regret that this culling would be insufficient.
Richard described it as a ‘bad joke’ and he is probably right, in the sense that Coulter makes bad jokes about forcibly converting moslems to christianity after invading their countries and executing their leaders. Or maybe that wasn’t a joke. Either way it provides an insight into how the jokers think.
Don, yeah, I know, that’s why I can’t swear to it. I don’t like the whole passage. Way too Coulteresque.
Don That doesnt fly bad jokes only tell you that Steyn tells bad jokes nothing more, you seem to want to dismiss what this guy says so you are making excuses to do that. I have read the piece that comes from and O.B is right he is ventriloquizing the Serbs(I had to cut and paste that word)I would also agree with her statement that he is to Coulteresque he makes it far to easy for people to dismiss him.
As you can see this is a constant theme that he often writes about, this is an opion piece on a bi cultural Europe where he says the same thing but uses less imflamatory language. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/11/15/do1502.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2005/11/15/ixopinion.html
I will concede that again he skates on thin ice, but I just dont see any malice or hint that he is endorsing culling.
Richard,
‘…bad jokes only tell you that Steyn tells bad jokes nothing more…’
We’ll have to agree to disagree. You are right, I have already concluded that Steyn speaks in bad faith, that he is indeed a feral right-wing bigot and that his contributions to any debate are tainted. I dislike the guy intensely and make no bones of it.
Don the dangers Steyn writes about are very real, there is a posibility that step by step Europe will loose its hard won freedoms,I wouldnt be so quick to dismiss him (or others that are saying the same sort of thing) just because he differs from you politically, also just because someone is right wing does not make them a bigot.
What also seems odd to me is that freedoms enemies are united while freedom lovers are divided.
As for Steyn, the problem with that quotation is not that he is advocating the culling of muslims, it is that he makes a direct correlation between the growth of the muslim population in Bosnia and the slaughter. If you read the text he effectively put the responsibility for the slaughter into the muslim camp.
I will not even talk here of the repellent stupidity of this whole “demographic” approach: breeding, outbreeding, culling, all words designed specifically to present the victims as animals and to play on western myths of the arab (as, in other occurrences, the black man) as a sexual “breeding” machine, akin to a rabbit.
‘…just because someone is right wing does not make them a bigot.’
I know. That’s why I opined that he is both. I don’t care for either.
And to return to ‘…bad jokes only tell you that Steyn tells bad jokes nothing more…’, Are you seriously contending that if a new acquaintance starts making bad jokes about niggers, pakis and yids, that that only tells you about their sense of humour? I would draw more far-reaching conclusions.
So where is Steyn and his ilk going with this? What action is he proposing? What practical solutions are down that road? What has he figured out?
His monolithic, simplistic approach can only lead to defining moslems per se as enemies of freedom and decency who must be dealt with for the greater good. Which in turn means that friends, neighbours and colleagues of mine are on his (and your?) shit-list.
Not going to sit back and accept that.
And you want to unite ‘freedom lovers’? Try herding cats.
Also, what Arnaud said.
It just seems to me Don that you atomaticly equate right wing and bigot. Moslems are not on my s it list as you call it or Steyns for that matter either, to recognise a problem does not mean you are making a s it list. Also I would look at the context before making judgements about someones use of a bad joke rather like I look at the context of your use of the n word.
Arnaud in case you missed it Steyns point is that no society has survived masive demographic shifts without civil conflict,like northen Irerland, fiji and Bosnia for example.
Or America, or Australia…for example.