Kmiec Endorses Obama:
Back when Mitt Romney was still in the Presidential race, Doug Kmiec was Co-Chair of the Romney Campaign's Committee for the Courts and the Constitution. Today, over at the Slate Convictions blog, Kmiec has a post endorsing Barack Obama for President. An excerpt:
No doubt some of my friends will see this as a matter of party or intellectual treachery. I regret that and I respect their disagreement. But they will readily agree that as Republicans, we are first Americans. As Americans, we must voice our concerns for the well-being of our nation without partisanship when decisions that have been made endanger the body politic. Our president has involved our nation in a military engagement without sufficient justification or clear objective. In so doing, he has incurred both tragic loss of life and extraordinary debt jeopardizing the economy and the well-being of the average American citizen. In pursuit of these fatally flawed purposes, the office of the presidency, which it was once my privilege to defend in public office formally, has been distorted beyond its constitutional assignment. Today, I do no more than raise the defense of that important office anew, but as private citizen.
However, Mr. Kmiec is being intellectually dishonest with himself by endorsing Barack Hussein Obama who is probably the most unpatriotic candidate for President since Aaron Burr and who is likely a closet Jihadist sympathizer. Furthermore, Barack Hussein Obama a/k/a "Nat Turner" has failed to disavow Reverend Wright's racist and hateful remarks toward our fellow Americans who happen to be Caucasion by accident of birth.
And don't forget that Aaron Burr was a closet Jihadist sympathizer, too, so it totally makes sense.
Furthermore, Barack Hussein Obama a/k/a "Nat Turner" has failed to disavow Reverend Wright's racist and hateful remarks toward our fellow Americans who happen to be Caucasion by accident of birth.
It's hard to be white in America, isn't it?
Bah!
1. Like JB says, if this was such an important issue to him -- to the point where he can't even endorse McCain -- why wasn't he with Obama, or another anti-war candidate, from the beginning? What was he doing with Romney?
2. If Obama is elected president, I certainly hope we hear nothing -- and I mean nothing -- out of Kmiec when Obama makes his nominations to the Supreme Court. It is almost doubtless that a President Obama would appoint Justices who have a fundamentally different view of constitutional law (and other aspects of judicial decisionmaking) than Kmiec. Is Kmiec prepared to defend such appointments when they are made -- or, conversely, is he prepared to abandon his legitimacy to speak out against them when they are made?
I am just floored by this. The Court is one nomination away from everything that Kmiec, and many others, have spent the last 25 years working for, at least in terms of judicial (as opposed to political) conservatism. There is no guarantee that a President McCain would appoint someone in that style, but it is almost certain that his appointments would come far closer than a President Obama, whose appointments -- especially given a Democratic-controlled Senate -- will be the polar opposite, further retarding, if not setting back entirely, all the progress that Kmiec and many others have made over the past generation.
I know that Kmiec has never been one to shy away from speaking his mind, and he has been a refreshing and welcome asset in that vein. But I honestly don't know if I can take him seriously after this. While I wouldn't go so far as to call it "treachery," the "betrayal" certainly comes to mind.
Don't follow the news much, do you Gaius? Or what would he have had to do to satisfy you, actually waterboard Wright?
Which candidate is most likely to face a hostile Congress? Gridlock is the best we can hope for--and usually, it's not so bad, witness '94-'01.
The guy's coming at it from the partisan political angle, where party is EVERYTHING. If your party wins, it's your ticket to appointments, power, etc.. So siding with the other party equals treachery.
As far as why was he with Romney to begin with, well, a lot of folks in politics are pretty much mercenaries. Dick Morris, who from what I can see hated just about everything the Clintons did, had no trouble becoming a major advisor to them, and generally giving sound advice on how to win and maximize popularity.
His liberty faculty buds at Pepperdine? The mind boggles.
Yes, that would explain why he worked for Romney's campaign. The faculty liberals just LOVED him.
As for the judicial nominations issue, it's politically much more useful for the Republican Party to keep Roe around, probably in a weakened form, than to see it overturned. If Roe were overturned they'd have to face demands for a wildly unpopular total national ban. People like to claim that overturning Roe would just return the issue to the states but a federal statute banning abortion by persons who have moved in interstate commerce, using implements that have traveled in interstate commerce, or in places of public accommodation would be indistinguishable from a total ban for all practical purposes. So politically there's no incentive for the Republicans to try to put another serious conservative on SCOTUS.
Were you indicating what you thought ought to be, in which case I'd agree, or are you actually surprised to see that treachery (or dishonesty or some other ill-motivated purpose) is indeed how many people who populate these threads see it?
I would note that Pepperdine University is NOT a Catholic university, but rather has ties with the Churches of Christ, including a requirement that a majority of its Regents be of that denomination.
I acknowledge that both the Catholic University of America and Notre Dame University (Kmiec taught at both prior to Pepperdine) are, in fact, Catholic. However, I know nothing of Kmiec's own religious beliefs though the Catholic University and Notre Dame ties do point toward Catholicism.
I agree with the other posters that if Professor Kmiec considers the Iraq War an overriding issue, his support of Mitt Romney earlier this campaign season seems rather odd.
both, because it is- even people who don't know you will.
GWB is almost old news by now and there's not a lot of point in defending him (if 'defending him' this is), but he hardly lacked a clear objective in invading Iraq. There was never any doubt that he intended to force political modernity on the Moslem world through both the threat and good example of our actions there: what he failed to have was any idea of how to do the job besides throwing a too-small military at it.
Because our lack of military resources forced us to stop with Iraq, the War Against Radical Islam has become the War in Iraq and we've totally lost sight of our reformist objective. But there was one, once.
I'd encourage anyone who's interested in more than knee-jerk reactions to actually read Kmiec's piece, and actually read The Audacity of Hope, and actually read Senator Obama's position summaries online; and seriously ask why a prominent, intelligent conservative would endorse Obama. I'd go so far as to suggest that, for those of us interested in forward-thinking conservativism, Senator Obama provides the best hope since Reagan. He's the only candidate that has the potential, and an expressed desire, to change the debate and actually face questions like: when should government intervene at all? when it does, how can it be useful and limited? We might not agree with all of Senator Obama's answers, but he's the only one that I've seen even express an interest in wrestling with the questions.
It's a presidential election folks, not a sundae bar -- you canot mix-and-match facets of the various parties &candidates to build your ideal president.
And don't forget Obama's church... Kmiec seems to endorse Obama based on his values and how they should be attractive to Catholics, but if his church is any indication, they seem pretty foreign to Catholic values: I happen to be a Catholic and cannot conceive of my church giving farrakahn a lifetime achievement award (and that is not a racial issue...there are plenty of black Catholics that attend the church I attend in Chicago)...nor do we have regular sermons on how the government created AIDS to kill black people (or anyone else for that matter).
Undoubtedly such opinions on the nature of the voters' preferred candidates would lead a lesser being to question his own sense of political balance.
Get used to it. McCain is running as a continuation of the Bush Administration's policies on just about every level -- including torture given his recent votes on the issue.
Since Kmiec presumably isn't that stupid, that leaves mendacity. Which could be understandable, if Kmiec is that desperate to be loved by his liberal faculty buds.
You obviously know nothing about Pepperdine's faculty.
CJ2, I don't understand this argument, unless "forward-thinking conservativism" is some sort of codeword I don't know. Can you summarize Obama's conservative positions? Or is your view that by asking questions, Obama leaves open the possibility that he may in the future adopt a position that is conservative? Or maybe that by asking these questions, conservative positions wil win out in the battle for ideas even if Obama rejects them?
I just read Obama's stances on the issues. As far as I can tell, he will increase taxes on the rich to pay for a large number of programs that the federal government arguably shouldn't be involved in, he will tighten trade and "re-negotiate" NAFTA. Can you please tell me where he takes any positions that are at all conservative?
BHO’s pastor and mentor Jeremiah Wright has come under much scrutiny lately, and he’s now in the damage control mode trying to deal with Wright’s published remarks. However the extreme focus on Wright misses the larger issue of what kind of Church has BHO regularly attended for the last 20 years. His Church subscribes to the doctrine of black liberation theology as advanced by the theological scholars James Cone and Dwight Hopkins. Their theology is of a most peculiar kind for Christians. Cone confidently asserts that Jesus was black and* With such a doctrinal foundation, Wright’s seemingly intemperate remarks should come as no surprise to anyone. They come from core beliefs, not a momentary flash of anger, or careless hyperbole. We must question the judgment of man who would closely align himself such an institution. His Church borders on the subversive.
BHO’s ardent supporters will of course say, no big deal. But they are a big deal because they give us additional facts to evaluate this man’s judgment.
*Credit for pointing this out goes to columnist “Spengler” at the Asia Times. He quotes from William R Jones, "Divine Racism: The Unacknowledged Threshold Issue for Black Theology", in African-American Religious Thought: An Anthology.
I must confess that when I first read this, my immediate reaction was:
He's the only candidate that has the potential, and an expressed desire, to change the debate and actually face questions like: when should government intervene at all? when it does, how can it be useful and limited? We might not agree with all of Comrade Stalin's answers, but he's the only one that I've seen even express an interest in wrestling with the questions.
(Note to the obtuse: I am not comparing Obama to Stalin, I am saying that the two statements are equally meaningful ... and equally meaningless.)
In that sense, the statement has positive semantic value (whether or not it is true is not at issue, of course) - to wit, that (in Kmiec's opinion) Obama is willing to confront these questions in a more complete and forthright manner than the other candidates.
Alright so as I understand it, if you are tolerant of homosexuals, you cannot be conservative. So, under your theory, conservatism equals bigotry. Whatever.
Can you articulate why you think Kmiec is a phony and a hack? Unlike Professor Kmiec, you didn't give any reasons for your position.
A top supporter and advisor of a con man RINO candidate who once ran his senate bid to the Left of none other than Ted "I don't swim with women" Kennedy is now supporting a freshman senator whose nonexistent qualifications and woeful inexperience for the highest office of the land is second only to the previous imposter of a First Lady ( whom apparently received her modicum of experience and qualifications through osmosis and illegal management of government entities. )
The voted most liberal senator/candidate speaks only in generalities and platitudes of overused and therefore meaningless political buzz words of 'hope' and 'change'...how positively humiliating for those without a clue who are supporting him on that mindless basis not also aware the vast majority are supporting him for only two other reasons; the fact that he's not Hildabeast which 50% of the base refused to vote for before Obama even became noticed and the other singular support due solely to the pigment of his skin. ( Isn't it also wonderful to realize how his parents nor Barack observed the simple custom of adopting an American name? )
To then hear his spouse drool sweet nothings of ludicrous disloyalty which later added to the further drivel of his self-declared 'mentor' in a bigoted racist who further spews in teaching ludicrous conspiracy theories.
Ofwhich none of them, including Kmeic, are worth the time it would take to waterboard for their outrageously unprincipled and treasonous ways.
* Obama Defends Rev. Wright, Blasts Imus
* Obama's Silver Tongue is Forked by Ken Blackwell
* Obama and the National Anthem
* Obama: Most Liberal Senator In 2007
* When Obama, Clinton and McCain Decisively Agreed By Terence Jeffrey
* Obama Minister's Hatred of America By: Ronald Kessler March 6, 2008
"At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child - miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill disciplined, despotic, and useless. Liberalism is the philosophy of sniveling brats." - P.J. O'Rourke
I'm looking for a palatable alternative explanation to the one that I suspect: that Kmiec, to use James Lileks' memorable phrase, has not only drunk the Kool-Aid but ordered up another gallon for a high colonic.
Kmeic has bought into the argument that the Ds have been pushing to get Catholics back--based on the social teachings of the Catholic Church that free markets produce injustices and it is our duty as christians to rectify these. What they gloss over is how this should be done, which isn't spelled out anywhere in these teachings. In the 30s Catholic thinkers were with the idea that it was the role for the state to do it. Gradually, even prominent radicals like Dorothy Day became disenchanted with this approach since creating welfare bureaucracies just seemed to perpetuate poverty. You had a whole wave of catholic thinkers (I am thinking of Catholic Conservatives like Michael Novak) who saw that the social message of the Gospel was a charge to invididuals using their free will to seek justice. Clearly though, the statist line of thought is making a comeback.
On abortion, Kmeic's argument is that we are at an impasse on that issue anyway--unlikely to outlaw it, unlikely be able to do anything to promote it at the federal level so that's a wash in deciding who to vote for in this office. I think he's wrong about the latter. For example, federal power could be used to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions, or not get federal money. It would end the idea of Catholic hospitals--either they would become like any other hospitals or they would have to close their doors.
Google Ron Paul
Perhaps you could give a more substantive definition of 'American Name' so I could better understand your point?
"As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality." General George Washington
dallasobserver.com/2008-02-28/news/obama-and-me/full
An Irishman!
I guess I just don't feel as strongly about Supreme Court appointments as many people around here. Suppose you had a chance to replace Ginsberg and Souter with a couple of Roberts clones, with the trade off being two terms of Barack Obama as President. Would you take that trade?
Yeah, Obama sure was vague on that point.
Wow. I ran out of breath reading that.
I'm not sure what McCain's qualifications are. He was a POW; he went after a bunch of stuff that shouldn't even be on a Senator's radar (mixed martial arts/ultimate fighting and steroids in baseball); and he enacted campaign finance "reform" legislation that makes it harder than ever to defeat an incumbent.
This is not a good election for the Republic.
Nonetheless, his thrust seems clear enough. He thinks responding well to radical islamic ideology is the overriding priority facing the country. And he views Senator Obama as more likely to get that right than Senators McCain or Clinton. He suspects that he and Obama may well disagree on lesser matters, but he'll count on goodwill all round to work those out.
Hardly radical ideas. So I'm amazed at the invective that Kmiec's drawn in the comments above ... some of which are guttter talk, and an embarrassment to a blog of this quality.
"As for the judicial nominations issue, it's politically much more useful for the Republican Party to keep Roe around, probably in a weakened form, than to see it overturned.
This is very true, and I don't think you'll run into too many thinking conservatives (sadly, a dwindling breed) who would disagree.
But it's Kmiec's shortsightedness and seeming betrayal of his own consititutional and judicial approach that is astounding here. He is a professor of constitutional law, not a political hack. For decades, he has continually advocated a judicially conservative approach that is fundamentally at odds with the one that Obama has gone on record espousing and will surely follow through on. This isn't a matter of judicial outcomes, be it abortion, gun rights, or what have you; it's a matter of judicial philosophies.
This is no slam against Obama or his supporters — reasonable minds can disagree about the proper role of the judiciary — but it is a slam against Kmiec and his seeming blindness to what he and so many other have worked for for years. Seriously, what is Kmiec going to say at a Federalist Society panel when he argues against the most recent decision by Justice Koh or Justice Tatel finding some unenumerated, "penumbral" right? Why should anyone in the audience respect his arguments against them and the "direction of the Court" when he himself has now facilitated that direction?
"Perhaps Kmiec would likewise prefer McCain's SCOTUS nominees but, on the balance, thinks Obama would be the better CiC.
This may be, but the only reason Kmiec's endorsement "matters" — and is not just the endorsement of some random guy on the street — is because of Kmiec's position as a prominent constitutional scholar and frequent commentator on the courts. And in those capacities, he has consistently stated a position that is the polar opposite of what Senator Obama, and most Democrats, have stated.
So it's mind-boggling to see that he's abandoning those principles — and the long-fought battle over judicial philosophies on the Court that he and his cohorts are literally on the verge of winning, given the pending likely vacancies on the Court — due to his belief that the Iraq War is misguided and that, apparently, nothing — not one thing — would change under another Republican, such that he cannot possibly vote for one and must endorse the likely opponent. (I realize there are many partisan hacks who buy into the "nothing-will-change-under-any-Republican-president" proposition. But Kmiec has never been a hack. What he is now, however, I just can't figure out.)
I remain utterly astounded by this. Professor Kerr, will you be offering your take on it in a forthcoming post?
Thanks for making every other comment on the thread appear temperate and well-reasoned.
I would absolutely take that trade. Presidencies come and go, and political winds shift all the time. But Court appointments last long after any presidential term of office is complete, and Court decisions -- unlike laws and executive orders -- are not easily, and seldom, undone.
As a Catholic fishing for votes for Obama from other Catholics Kmiec is engaged in sophistry. He conflates prudential matters with Catholic dogma in an effort to convince other Catholics that Obama is a like minded fellow.
All nonsense of course because Barack Obama has a voting record on abortion that violates every dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church.
Having read this endorsement and his recent article on "Reaganite for Obama", I can only sigh in frustration that such a learned man and self professed practicing Catholic can pull the wool over his own eyes.
I think that the problem is that we're examining the issues Professor Kmiec cited in that post looking for a reasonable explanation. We're ignoring an unspoken and decidedly unreasonable answer: Kmiec really dislikes McCain.
A man of Kmiec's intelligence can't just live with the cognitive dissonance. He has to attempt to reconcile his desire to vote against McCain with his conservative principles. The result is this weird post where all his explanations and excuses seem to ring false.
I think you have offered the best explanation for Professor Kmiec's cognitive dissonance, McCain Derangement Syndrome.
True. But March Madness reminds me that Pepperdine is the lone non-Catholic school in the West Coast Conference, so it has plenty of Catholic ties.
Elections are always the selection of the lesser/least of evils. Thus, abortion cannot be a litmus test for conservatism or acceptance by Catholics. As far as gun control goes, McCain-Feingold stifled the voice of the NRA, funded by individual supporters. Each of the candidates threaten gun owners' rights.
I can see no principled reason why it's acceptable to compromise on the death penalty or the war but not on abortion or abstinence education. If one is truly unwilling to compromise, it would seem the only alternative this round it not to vote at all.
(1) if you read the whole post, rather than just the excerpt above, it should be clear that the iraq war position was not dispositive of his endorsement, so those of you busting a spleen over some apparent inconsistency should calm down a bit.
(2) the people talking about pepperdine being full of liberal professors are funny. obviously you don't know the first thing about its reputation, and i'd love to .pdf you the letters that they send faculty recruits.
(3) uh, he's CATHOLIC. do you think the mindless courtship of hagee might play into this?
By the way, I may be willing to take an Obama Presidency (even two terms) in return for "three Roberts clones" to replace Stevens,Breyer, and Ginsburg.
I agree. Now if only you and I could agree on the efficacy of AEDPA.
Folks are too quick to equate the politics of the Dean's Suite with those of the faculty. It's a mistake.
Oren fails to understand the Catholic concept of dogma. According to the Catholic Church, ALL Catholics must be personally opposed to abortion and homosexuality to be Catholics in good standing. By contrast, Catholics are free to have their own views on things like the War in Iraq, waterboarding, the death penalty and fiscal issues; it just happens that at the moment the current Pope is liberal on these issues but there is nothing that says that Catholics in general are supposed to be liberal. Other than abortion and homosexuality, there are very few political issues on which Catholics are supposed to agree.
How does the MSM justify allowing a PRESIDENTIAL candidate to close off more than four years of his life from investigation?
Hah! I always come away from an AEDPA disagreement feeling over-exercised, but I don't mean anything personal by it.
I was tweeking you. We will have our disagreements in the future. Bask in the fact that we agree today.
This is unnecessary and imprecise moral equivalence. Lefty blogs unapologetically put Lieberman in photoshopped blackface. None of the discussion of Kmiec's unusual positions has even come close.
And the idea that Obama is the ONLY candidate to talk about whether gov.t should intervene? Role of government? Is someone cracking jokes here?? Fred Thompson, whom I didnt vote for, and as someone noted, Ron Paul, both hammered on this point repeatedly.
Obama's question isn't whether Government should intervene, thats a fait accompli, the only question is "To what extent?" Thats where were at. With all three remaining "viable" candidates. Paul is in it to the convention and no matter what happens, Ill just write him in. Consequences be damned. At least I will be able to sleep at night with my vote.
Oren, that's because you evidently don't understand the difference between prudential and dogmatic teachings as they apply to the Catholic Church and those who practice the Catholic faith.
However, I made it quite clear that any citizen can vote for whomever they please for whatever reason.
The problem is that Professor Kmiec is attempting to persuade Catholics that they can, in good conscience, vote for Obama which is sophistry because a man of Professor Kmiecs intelligence and experience understands full well that the War in Iraq is a prudential matter while opposition to abortion is a dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church.
I don't understand why he's not supporting Hillary, who is surely to Obama's right; but maybe he thinks Hillary's out.
I do think that McDS -- McCain Discernment Syndrome -- may be at play here. McCain can barely open his mouth without sounding like a warmongering ignoramus ... and we just had eight years of that.
Anyway, the Court is certainly going to tilt right for the next 20 to 30 years, no matter what liberal appointments Obama might make. And I think a prudent constitutionalist might see some structural concerns with a Court that was completely right-wing.
Next time I say "X", please try a more extensive refutation than simply saying, "well, [not] X." it will make for more thought-provoking discussion.
for instance, a number of comments on this thread, and on redstate - to name just two of several blogs i've read today - are downright hostile. i don't know what you mean by "moral equivalence." What am I equating morally - I am equating descriptive fervor. I suppose you read the term "moral equivalence" in the krauthammer piece this week, or something like that. I'm not sure what you're talking about.
what is it that you think results from white guilt? i mean, the endorsement is consistent with both a white guilty explanation and with an "earnest support" explanation, so what evidence do you have that it is the former rather than the latter? and you can't just say that the result is consistent with white guilt, because that's just to assume the conclusion.
Catechism 2309:
I told my Republican friend in Mississippi about Kmiec's shocker endorsement, and she said she would never ever vote for Obama. "Obama is Farrakhan," she told me.
I think that will keep us off the subject of politics for a few months.
(She's very upset about the "typical white person" comment. As Prof. Kerr notes about, it's so hard to be white in America.)
I am assuming. I can no more prove his real intentions than you can. However, having read his article, I find it hard to believe otherwise. Plus he is of the boomer generation. That says it all.
so if i'm reading you correctly, your argument is that you are assuming, contrary to the author's statements, that which you seek to prove, just because you can. i concede, that's a difficult position to argue with.
It not that it hard to be a white (rich) person in America, its not (or so I'm told), but it is a lot easier to be a black public official in America because until recently, you could get any with a lot more than white public officials. Whites had to live by the PC code where blacks did not because white liberals like to treat blacks with kid gloves and not as equals. To use a Rev. Wrightism, the chickens have come home to roost and the PC policies liberals have imposed have boomeranged into one of its own. But, if a man what to be the most powerful man in the world, he has to play by the rules like everyone else. Welcome to the PC world Barry!
Your refusal to see the salutary effect, on the other hand, is puzzling at best. Surely Christ preached the brotherhood of man to the exclusion of the racial hatred and prejudice born out of our history. That history is neither "mythological" nor does it show our actions to be particularly Christian.
Let me put it like this, everything Prof. Kmiec stated was important to him is antithetical to what Obama truly stands for (as the best I can tell anyway). Obama is a liberal or "progressive" democrat, nothing more, nothing less. Furthermore, how can Obama address extremism abroad when he is an adherent to a form of extremism at home, namely a pernicious form of theology that preaches hatred and does nothing but prolong the day when we actually become a post racial society. Kmiec is profoundly misguided and simply sees what he wants to see in Obama.
you seem to arguing that obama cannot address extremism abroad because he is himself an extremist.
i'm not sure even the hannity/oreilly axis would go so far as to say that obama is an extremist (they tend to stop at saying that he brooks extremism). i'm not really sure what a post racial society is, or what the road map to getting there looks like, but i'm guessing that it doesn't include pretending like racial resentment doesn't exist. i'm sure i'm not saying anything that you haven't heard before, and your "critique" is mind-numbingly familiar to me. we'll just have to agree to disagree on the merits of whether obama is an extremist.
but the extremity of obama's ideology seems irrelevant to the issue of whether kmiec's endorsement is animated by white guilt. you just seem bent on conflating the fact that you don't like obama with the "obvious" intellectual dishonesty of anybody that does. that's silly.
I don't know if you get this far into the comments, but I know you have friends at Chicago Law and in the school's Federalist Society. Recently they held a debate between Sunstein and Epstein re: why a conservative would support Obama. Not Sunstein's best performance, but it's available via podcast here:
http://federalist.uchicago.edu/conservativecaseforobama.mp3
good stuff,
Kmiec is free to support whoever he likes, of course. But to say that he gets there through some sort of Catholic path or conservative path , in my informed opinion, is ridiculous. I also have no illusions that i have put forth a solid critique on this board nor do I have the time or inclination to do so (I'm a drive by poster, so to speak).
As to Obama's faith, I am someone who spent time in a catholic seminary studying theology and I know a little about liberation theology ( I was in a Jesuit institution, some Jesuits are supporters of lib-theo and also borderline -to be nice-Marxist). It is hardly Christian in form on its most basic level for a very simple reason: it teaches hate, whether hate of the white man in black liberation theology or hate of the capitalist in liberation theology in the latin nations. The path to suicide bombing is very short once religion and hate are mixed. (for all the Obama apologist, I'm not saying Obama is a Muslim or a supporter of terrorist, I'm merely making the point that hate plus religion leads to some bad places)
I had a radical (ridiculous?) idea. Why don't you, you know, prove that - with like cites, authoritative sources, and stuff?
I am just shaking my head thinking about an anonymous commenter talking about his informed opinion. While I don't like appeals to authority, I am always willing to respect one's expertise. I also have no problem with anonymous speech.
Yet here you are, an anonymous guy or gal, appealing to your (anonymous) authority. It's truly laughable.
If you have an opinion, great. Prove it. There are widely-accepted ways of doing this. At the very least, some actual citations would be a great start. Relevant quotations would be even more helpful.
Thanks!
I have known quite a number of lib-theos and none of them come anywhere close to being hateful of anyone. Quite to the contrary, the vast majority seek to dismantle racism/capitalism/whatever by changing the hearts of the oppressor, which they consider to be a prisoner of the very same system. One can oppose racism or capitalism without hating the racist or capitalist -- we are instructed to love our enemies and to love the sinners.
My point is that your caricature of an entire religious movement based on the actions of the worst elements is both unfair and unhelpful. Imagine the same done to the worst elements of the Catholic Church and we might start to get on the same page.
You sure did bust Kmiec!
In exchange for the support of someone who can (not) move millions to vote a certain way, Obama has agreed to nominate an anti-Roe/pro-religion Doug Kmiec to the Supreme Court of the United States. The Senate will undoubtedly confirm his nomination.
I'm also told that Kmiec will fly into the White House on a black helicopter before his acceptance speech.
A fine example of Catholic teaching that requires prudential judgement.
Now the Catholic teaching on abortion:
2272 Formal co-operation in an abortion constitutes a grave offence. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. 'A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae' 'by the very commission of the offence', and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law . The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society.
You do understand the difference Oren?
While war can, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, be the commission of a grave offence it is Church dogma that abortion, the intentional killing of the unborn baby, is always a grave offence.
Conflating the two is sophistry.
(1) Abortion is always a grave offense.
(2) Entering a war can be a grave offense if you do not strictly justify it by all 4 criteria listed in 2309.
Therefore support for abortion is worse than support for an unjustified war because the latter could possibly be justified whereas the former cannot.
Do I understand that correctly?
I think invective is frowned upon here. I'm not sure if self inflicted invective is or isn't. Hopefully not because yours was good for a chuckle. And now to the heart of the matter.
Not only do you not understand, you have no no inclination to try to understand. Such is life.
You're of course right, the Catholic Church never would do such things. However, the Catholic Church was complicit in the slave trade and innumerable instances of genocide.
With that said, I will do you the courtesy of not judging you by your church.
Reasonable Catholics can disagree on when the criteria in 2309 have been satisfied and a particular war is permissible, but no Catholic can disagree on whether abortion is permissible.
This is a lawblog, but let's talk theology for a minute.
You accuse Oren of "conflating" matters of dogma and matters of prudence. Aren't you yourself conflating two very different things:
(1) participating in an abortion
(2) opposing, for reasons of prudence, legislating against abortion
Even if #1 were intrinsically sinful as a matter of Catholic dogma, surely #2 remains a matter of prudence.
Of course, you'll have to excuse a lesser mind such as myself from failing to see the obvious logic of this conclusion. I can only beseech you again to kindly explain the moral distinction between an act that is a grave offense per se and an act that is a grave offense by virtue of the facts surrounding it.
What reason is there to doubt Professor Kmiec's motives, or to take his words other than at face value, when he says:
?
I am surprised that no commenter has yet mentioned Senator McCain's goofy comment last week that it was "common knowledge . . . that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known." Apparently Senator "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" McCain can't tell the players without a scorecard.
This country can survive fifteen of the past twenty-seven years (1981—89 and 2001—present) with a doofus in the Oval Office, but why would anyone want four more?
Anecdotally, there is a perception among some unnamed faculty members at Notre Dame that being a Catholic measurably reduces your chances of being offered a job there. I have no statistics to back this up.
Were Kmiec to be Catholic, of course, his endorsement of an abortion extremist - Obama - would be all the more confounding. Either way, Obama's profile -- abortion extremist, socialist, radical social liberal, economic ignoramus, foreign policy ignoramus, ethically bereft Chicago pol, race hustler -- should be enough to scare away a Douglas Kmiec.
I invoke Occam's Razor, in that he must regard governance at this time to be a function of a single issue, just as Kmiec stated it: Iraq. How absurd.
Bluecollarguy seems to think that, because the war is a "conditionally" grave offense but abortion is "unconditionally" grave offense, the latter automatically gets more weight. I find that argument patently unpersuasive.
Roe v. Wade and the companion case of Doe v.Bolton were decided on January 22, 1973, with seven justices supporting the results thereof. One of these seven justices had been appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt (deceased since 1945). Two were appointed by President Eisenhower (deceased since 1969). One was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson, who died on the day of the decision.
Does Catholic doctrine hold these three presidents (all non-catholics) plus President Nixon, who appointed the other three justice who supported the Roe/Doe result but who was then still in office, spiritually culpable for the abortions that followed?
I don't ask this to be argumentative; I simply don't know the answer.
Smartest comment of the night.
I think this is unfair to Bluecollarguy, Oren. There are many teachings of the Catholic Church which are unconditional, such as abortion. OTOH, the Pope may issue a judgement which is "prudential" and with which one may disagree and still remain a Catholic in good standing. For example, it may seem illogical to *you* to disagree with the Pope on the Iraq War, but the fact remains that the Church does allow some latitude on certain political and philosophical matters. This is not Bluecollarguy's personal call--this is the way the Church works.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/03/020109.php
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/03/020109.php
And what's white guilt have to do with it? He's not a descendant of slaves. He's the son of a nonconformist white teenage girl named Stanley after her father, and an oversexed foreign exchange student who was married at the time.
Supposing that abortion is worse than the Iraq War, there is the obvious point that the President can do something directly about the war but has at best a remote power over abortion. Would this sort of consideration enter the decision?
Let me explain my logic a bit further. My reading of Catechism 2309 (and Augustine and Aquinas) can be broken into two parts, an unconditional part and a prudential part. The unconditional part is that unjust wars constitute a grave offense against both man and God. That much I venture is uncontroversial - no reasonable Christian can support an unjust war.
The prudential part comes in determining whether a particular war meets the definition of a just war. On this matter, as you stated, reasonable Catholics can disagree and remain in good standing with the Church.
If one accepts this partitioning of 2309 into the general, unconditional dogma and the specific, prudential judgment then the rest of my logic follows. Specifically, a Catholic that judges the war in Iraq to be unjust can rightly regard its continued commission as a grave offense on the same moral level as the continued commission of abortion.
Obama graduated magna from Harvard Law. That's top 10% in the class. Grading is blind. All professors saw while handing out grades was a randomly assigned number. Affirmative action had nothing to do with it.
You can dislike his policy positions, but don't pretend that he isn't intelligent or that he doesn't deserve his elite credentials.
On the political side, I disagree that the president cannot effect abortion in a profound way. Court appointments aside, executive and legislative policy have a huge effect. Clinton scored big with FACE, Bush with Mexico City and the PB&E ban. Roe v. Wade was not the end of the abortion debate.
What reason is there to sacrifice so much to have children? What reason is there for a wealthy person to keep working or a wealthy thief to keep stealing? What reason is there to listen to Pavarotti's La Bohème or read a great book?
Because these are things that give life meaning.
You have a dubious and (charitably) biased view of the history of the Church. At any rate, I assume you are referring to historical events and not the current, present-day views of the Church (as compared to the current, present-day views of Obama's pastor whom he refuses to "disown" and the current, present-day views of his church, which he continues to attend).
A lot of people could have done that if they could have gotten in. The question is whether he could have gotten in if he was not half black.
How many Columbia applicants with his grades and test scores got in?
Then it's the McCDS that did him in. A lot of Romney supporters were crushed.
But fear not, whether Hillary or Obama supporters will be the ones crushed, many of them will switch sides like Kmiec, or sit it out.
Well, Obama is taller than McCain. As for the rest, he's a sweet talkin' guy with no significant accomplishments, politically. McCain, in contrast, has actually done things.
When confronted with Obama's lack of accomplishments, fans fall back on temperament and intellect. Which is odd because McCain has a superior temperament, in most ways. I don't think there is any doubt, for instance, that McCain is far more courageous than Obama. And I would consider Obama's consistent fibbing a flaw in his temperament -- but that's just me. It is surprising to see just how many of his supporters hope that he is lying to us on one issue or another. (He probably is, but not in the ways they hope.)
As for intellect, when I read Obama's speeches, I find a mixture of the obvious, the nonsensical, and lawyerly cleverness, intended to deceive. If he is a great thinker, he is concealing it well.
Proof? Any evidence at all? For that matter, and relevance at all? It's possible I could have been first violin in the Boston Symphony Orchestra if I'd started playing at two years old, devoted every waking minute to it, and had a lot of talent. But we'll never know about the talent part (though I'll stipulate it's not there) because I never would have done those things, or I'd be a very different person. All that's relevant, if anything is relevant, is how many would have risen to the top ten percent of the class, but couldn't get into HLS in the first place. So, just how many such people do you have in mind when you say "a lot" would have, and what, if anything are you basing that on?
Nowhere did I see an explanation of why Obama is supposedly better than McCain -- especially given the fact that Kmiec previously endorsed Romney.
The whole thing really is inexplicable, and Kmiec did nothing to lessen the confusion.
It's getting weirder here! Pepperdine tripped over itself to get Kmiec. Before that, Pepperdine tripped over itself to get Robert Pushaw (a Catholic).
If you are smart enough to figure out how to read non-profit filings, just go see who among the faculty make the most money at Pepperdine Law - Catholics!
If. by some long shot. Clinton gets the nomination, will Kmiec switch to McCain?
Uh, he's very Catholic. You obviously know nothing of the man. And yet you judge him.
Amazing!
There are so many silly things there. I'll only point to one obvious (and non-controversial one).
I take it you've never heard of "just wage doctrine." It's a big part of Catholic doctrine. Big enough that the Pope has spoken about it. Study much?
Most ignore it. Just like most Christians ignore the prohibition against pre-martial sex. And the adage that it's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. We like sex and money, so let's just ignore it!
But it's there. And you don't even need to squint to find it.
Maybe you ought to study a bit more before pontificating?
Truth Seeker:
Obama graduated magna from Harvard Law.
A lot of people could have done that if they could have gotten in.
Proof? Any evidence at all? For that matter, and relevance at all? I could have been first violin in the Boston Symphony...
Well, some schools base it on grades so 1/2 or 1/4 of the class could get it. Anyone here know how Harvard Law School decides who gets it and what percentage of graduates get it?
Harvard's degree policy
Oh dear, such responsibility! Sorry to say, I'm not a Catholic, I just live with one. Beyond what I said, the Catholics here will have to fend for themselves. :-)
How on earth do you know that?
summa cum laude is awarded to anyone with a GPA of at least 7.x (bizarrely, you can't read the actual digit in the policy, but it's definitely at least 7.1).
magna cum laude is awarded to anyone in the top 10% (expanding upon ties) who doesn't qualify for summa cum laude.
cum laude is awarded to the next 30%.
Which part of the statement that the Catholic Church has been complicit in genocide &the slave trade isn't true?
Senator McCain has no doubt displayed physical courage (especially after being captured as a prisoner of war after having lost the fifth plane of his career). Political courage? That's another story.
The following transcript of an interview is taken from the March 16, 2007 edition of the New York Times. (Weaver is John Weaver, McCain's senior adviser, and Brian is Mr. Jones, his press secretary):
The reporter (Adam Nagourney) notes that "[t]his went on for a few more moments until a reporter from the Chicago Tribune broke in and asked Mr. McCain about the weight of a pig that he saw at the Iowa State Fair last year."
Remember that this was in March of last year--when the religious nutjob, sex control obsessed wing of the Republican Party was up for grabs. (McCain probably should be grateful that he wasn't asked about what he thinks Tinky Winky does with the genitalia that it doesn't have.) A candidate for office who claims to be "stumped" as to whether contraceptives help to stop the spread of HIV is either lying or is too ignorant (or disingenuous) to be making public policy.
I can tell how much class you have from this comment. Do you also have trouble reading?
Does anyone know if he would have gotten into Columbia or Harvard if he wasn't half black?
Dogma over inquiry.
Arrogance over reason.
The once well-respected Kmiec has learned that coming to a different conclusion from the mob will only earn derision.
Keep calling him names, questioning his motives, and treating dissent as treason, it should be good practice for playing the victim for the next 8 years.
Leaving the conservative movement is like leaving the Mafia. I find this peculiar, because I used to think that conservatives had greater respect for individualism -- including the conscience of the individual -- than liberals.
Ha! Not only is respectful disagreement uncommon in conservative quarters, it flat-out isn't allowed.
About this --
"Isn't it also wonderful to realize how his parents nor Barack observed the simple custom of adopting an American name?"
Who do you think you are? This isn't a custom, it is something that people used to do to avoid having to deal with people like you. Disgusting. Turning someone's name into a loyalty oath is reprehensible.
An outline of a commitment to undertake the formation of an entity? Hell, I think I could do that. It wouldn't work, but I could do it.
An honestly, I don't think Prof. Kmiec's ideas on "stemming radical Islam's threat" reflect the nature of radical Islam. Maybe Obama has a better idea. I sure hope so.
Did you really take RepublicansforObama's word that
but assume he was just making up
?
Which part of the statement that the Catholic Church has been complicit in genocide &the slave trade isn't true?
ALL OF IT
(my emphasis)
Obviously you assume facts not in evidence. If that doesn't explain it, then I too am at a loss.
A con man? You do realize, don't you, that in the absence of any evidence he's conned anyone, that's an actionable libel? And you don't present any evidence he's conned anyone.
Why should we take you seriously?
You may be entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts. I would strongly suggest you read a good history on the Church in the New World, its involvement in the African slave trade, its relationship with the Reich, as well as its more recent low-level involvement Rwanda where priests have been implicated of &convicted for genocide.
This is technically true, but since only something like 4 or 5 people have graduated with Summa in the past 25 years, Magna is exactly top 10% most years.
Those who have commented on his temperament are spot-on: it is what separates him from his remaining adversaries. That is why Shrillary's demagogic "3 AM" ad is so ironic. Obama's thoughtfulness and even-keel (he is preternaturally calm) make him the one I would trust most in a time of crisis. He is far more emotionally-mature than Clinton or McCain, whom I admire a great deal but whose temper is problematic.
A con man? You do realize, don't you, that in the absence of any evidence he's conned anyone, that's an actionable libel?
that's a ridiculous thing to say.
Anyone remember Mr. Reagan's second term? ("I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart tells me that's true, but the facts tell me it is not.")
Senator McCain has already demonstrated at least some degree of memory loss (or, in the alternative, a disturbing willingness to lie) about an important matter. When McCain was asked about a letter he wrote to the FCC on behalf of Paxson Communications (whose lobbyist was Vicki Iseman), the McCain campaign issued a statement declaring, "No representative of Paxson or Alcalde and Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC regarding this proceeding," according to the February 23, 2008 edition of the Washington Post.
Unfortunately for Senator McCain, that same article states:
More significantly, McCain had previously given sworn testimony in a deposition that contradicted his campaign statement. Newsweek reported on February 22, 2008:
I am unaware of Senator McCain's having squarely addressed this deposition testimony--he then focused on denying, in high dudgeon, that the relationship between him and Ms. Iseman had been sexual. As to whether McCain was lying, however, it doesn't matter whether he was seeing the Iseman Trophy Babe in her capacity as a wide receiver or merely as a tight end.
I do seem to recall that Senator McCain voted to remove a sitting president from office based on more trivial discrepancies.
Good for Prof. Kmiec if he actually believes that Barack Obama is the right choice for president. I disagree with him, but good for him for saying this.
Senator Obama is very intelligent and speaks well, but the thought of him making any actual decisions on things that matter frightens me. Also, having just done my taxes this weekend, I'm reminded of Ted Frank's analysis on Above the Law a few weeks back.
justice stevens is 87-and still asks shaarp questions and at least seems to write well thought out opinions (clerks?)
oliver wendell holmes was 90...and i dont think they even had clerks back then.
there is no evidence of that mcain's mental abilities are failing
A fair criticism to be sure. On the other side, however, if the dollar returns to anywhere near where it was when the Clinton administration left office, you will be in the black even considering the modest (but not insubstantial) tax increases.
I completely agree. And I am not a conservative. Indeed, I would go farther and say that there is nothing "conservative" about seeking to regulate private consensual sexual behavior between adults. However, I was responding to the commenter who seemed to be saying that to be a true conservative you had to be "personally opposed to . . . homosexuality."*
*In fairness, I have no idea what that really means. I guess I am "personally opposed to homosexuality" as I have never had any inclination whatsoever to engage in it. But somehow, I don't think that's what the commenter meant. I think it's quite obvious he meant that you had to be believe teh gayz are destroying America and destroying my marriage.
A con man? You do realize, don't you, that in the absence of any evidence he's conned anyone, that's an actionable libel?
You should really go back to studying your law. Trust me on this one: That ain't an "actionable liable" in any way at all. I am no Eugene Volokh, but I am pretty damn sure I am right (and that he'd agree).
How? I'm not buying German cars, French wine, or any more gold. Okay, gas will be $15 less a week. As an American buying American products, how does it affect me?
Imports are more expensive, exports are flying out the door.
(I know this is from another thread. I'm just sayin'.)
Fair enough.
I believe Professor Kmeic is profoundly wrong, and kidding himself, as to Obama's integrity, intelligence, and good will. And I think that his confidence in the Senator's willingness to cast a wide net in search of intellectual achievement and ideological diversity is breathtakingly naive.
Obama is nothing more than a doctrinaire left-wing hack who happens to be a gifted orator. For Kmeic to project conservative hopes onto him is nothing short of ludicrous.
So much "clarity and honesty", in fact, that he wants to have a national conversation on race conveniently timed to coincide with his ass being in a political sling over his 20-year association with a foaming-at-the-mouth hatemonger.
I fear Professor Kmeic has taken leave of his senses, perhaps the result of inadvertantly huffing ink fumes while grading papers.
What's odd is that someone who was Co-Chair of the Romney Campaign's Committee for the Courts and the Constitution can support Obama.
Cast your mind back to when Kmiec endorsed Romney. Imagine you were in his place. What must have been important to you that would make you endorse Romney over the other candidates? What must have been unimportant to you that would make you endorse Romney over the other candidates?
Now, think about today. Again, imagine you were in Kmiec's place. What must be important to you that would make you endorse Obama? What must be unimportant to you that would make you endorse Obama?
Now, compare the lists. It's really hard to find any overlap. Nor is Kmiec's post on Slate any help - he hints that he is endorsing Obama due to his support of limiting torture, withdrawing from Iraq, and limiting executive power.
Fair enough. While I share Kmiec's concerns, those aren't the most important issues to me. Still, I'd certainly not criticize Kmiec for ranking them so highly, and choosing to support candidates solely based on those factors. There's just one little problem - Romney holds diametrically opposed positions!
(Source)
So, do you suppose he endorsed Romney originally without knowing what Romney's positions were, or without caring what they were? And given how vague his endorsement of Obama is, what reason do we have to believe that his endorsement of Obama is any more grounded than his now-apparently-repudiated endorsement of Romney? It's really difficult to see how this doesn't call Kmiec's judgment into question.
Obviously, Professor Kmiec thinks that Senator Obama compares favorably to Senator McCain as to these qualities. It is not too great a stretch to surmise that he also regarded Governor Romney more highly as to each of these qualities than he regarded the phony panderer John S. McCain III.
For instance, it would have been courageous -- and would have shown integrity -- if he had told Jeremiah Wright that the minister was wrong in some of the accusations that he was making from the pulpit. But, in 20 years, Obama never found the courage to say something, even privately.
As for those who believe that Obama is a man of integrity, I urge them again to make the obvious check. Compare what Obama has said has said about his past life with what others have said, and what the records show. (The NYT article linked by A. Zarkov above is a good place to start, but there are other examples.) Whenever a newspaper does that simple kind of check, they find discrepancies, serious discrepancies, between what Obama says happened, and what actually happened.
Were you a party to all of those private conversations, or only a listener to the talk radio speculation masquerading as knowledge about such conversations? Just in case you care, Obama does say that before Wright's inflammatory words became part of the national conversation he had discussed with Wright his disagreement.
So, we're expected to believe that when it comes to politicians that will return the US to "that company of nations committed to human rights", Kmiec ranks Romney first, and Obama second.
This is the Romney who said during a debate: "Some people have said, we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo [...] And enhanced interrogation techniques have to be used -- not torture but enhanced interrogation techniques, yes."
And Kmiec apparently thinks Obama isn't quite as good at Romney on torture, Iraq, and executive power? Now there's an endorsement...
(Full disclosure: I am not, not have I ever been, a supporter of Hillary, Obama, Romney, or McCain, so I don't have a dog in this fight.)
I think Obama would have brought up his private conversations to Wright at his speech in order to defend himself, but he didn't. Also, Obama never would have mentioned Wright's comments if the news media didn't get hold of the videos.
Obama is not courageous and certainly did not want to start a national conversation on this topic. If Obama did, then is more foolish than I thought. The Wright scandal did nothing but hurt him. He is down in the polls since the scandal started.
And from what I can tell Obama has stopped the "national conversation" the minute his Monday speech ended. Not a word more from the Obama camp on "God Damn American" or the "KKKAmerica" or the government creating the Aids virus to kill black people. Boy, what a conversation we are having!
Of course, Obama will not have the opportunity to replace the liberal judges with more liberal judges.
Are the sins of Barack's father to be visited on his children? What are the criteria for being "oversexed"? How would I know if I were properly sexed, i.e. neither oversexed nor undersexed?
Barack's parents observed the simple American custom of naming a son after his father, as in James Earl Carter, Jr., or John Sidney McCain III.
ALL Catholics must be personally opposed to abortion and homosexuality to be Catholics in good standing.
Catholics distinguish between status and actions same as the criminal law does. Thus there is no sin in merely being homosexual. As far as abortion goes, remind me who the anti-abortion candidate is in this race.
For the reasons stated elsewhere, the invasion of Iraq violated traditional "just war" doctrine, which far, far predates the relatively modern prohibition of early abortion. If the objection to abortion is that all human life is sacred, surely the human lives of the Iraqi citizenry are equally sacred.
One may ask, surrounded by Hitler's Fascist allies as he was, responsible for the souls of millions of Catholics under a madman's rule in Europe, commanding zero battalions as Stalin pointed out, why the Pope did not do more to combat Hitler. However, in his book, Rom und die Juden, (Freiburg 1967) Israeli diplomat Pinchas Lapide wrote, "The Holy See did more to help the Jews than every other Western organization, including the Red Cross. During the war, Pius XII directly or indirectly saved the lives of some 860,000 Jews (Page 188).
I don't want another president who can't distinguish between Iran and Iraq, or between Shiite and Sunni. That's OK for a talk radio caller; not for the leader of the free world.
I really doubt that Harvard Law School arbitrarily, capriciously, or unfairly excludes a lot of applicants capable of graduating in the top ten percent of the class. After all, ninety percent of the ones that do matriculate can't make it. I suspect any capable candidates Harvard were to turn away content themselves with Yale or Stanford.
a pernicious form of theology that preaches hatred and does nothing but prolong the day when we actually become a post racial society.
In other words, now that whites have stopped enslaving blacks, and even let them drink from the same water fountains, blacks should just get over it. How have whites earned blacks' forgiveness?
Are you advocating for a concept of collective guilt even across generations? Who are these “white people” of whom you speak? Do they include Obama who is half white? Is he only half guilty? If you want to play the collective guilt grievance game, I don’t think you will like where that leads.
I move:
That today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.
We reflect on their past mistreatment.
We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations—this blemished chapter in our nation’s history.
The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.
We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.
We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.
For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.
To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.
And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.
We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.
For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.
We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.
A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.
A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.
A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.
A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.
13 February 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd
I guess nothing else in Tutins' fine post was noteworthy.
You maybe should ask "black people" to identify the white people, but as a historical matter I would say that Barack Obama, Eldrick Woods, Michelle Malkin and Vijay Singh would all be drinking from separate water fountains if this were the 1950s Mississippi, despite the portion of their ancestry that may have been white or Asian.
I agree collective guilt is a bad idea. Guilt by association works better for everyone.
I agreed with everything in your post except this last statement.
We are a nation of individuals, not a collection of tribes. I am a brown skinned immigrant, who comes from a country where collective religious, tribal and ethnic grievances have been nourished for hundreds of years and still flare up into violence. Believe me, we as a nation do not want to go down that path. A grievance should be entertained and addressed during the lifetime of the individual who was specifically wronged. After that, it has to end. As you yourself said, the sins of the fathers cannot be visited upon the sons.
Kevin Rudd's statement was mighty fine, except that it seemed to carry no compensation. I somehow doubt that some such speech is going to appease anyone with a grievance over here.
I agree that guilt dies with the wrongdoer. But as a nation, we have a continuing obligation to do what's necessary to level the playing field that prior generations used full Constitutional authority to make uneven. We can argue over what constitutes a level playing field and what methods are effective, and at what cost, to leveling it. But until it is indeed level, we shouldn't be griping if some of those struggling to climb out of the ditch are a little out of sorts.
Follow-on question - Considering Pastor Wright considers anyone not Black to be White, should I say the rest of us instead of Whites in the above question.
What Romney is doing is arguing over definitions. His view - shared by the Bush administration - is that techniques such as waterboarding aren't torture, but merely "enhanced interrogation".
If you are against the Bush admin's view of torture - as apparently Kmiec is - Romney's views are at least as bad.
Perhaps he ascribes to the quaint notion that his private conversations with his pastor are, you know, private.
And actually, while he WAS down in the polls, he's right back where he was before Fox News started the endless loop of Wright's most outrageous hits
Gallup, March 11:
Obama 47%
Clinton 45%
Gallup today:
Obama 47%
Clinton 46%
He and Clinton are both still down a little bit relative to McCain compared to two weeks ago, but it's all pretty close to the margin of error
Ok, that's fine. I'm not sure it's being done so "lightly," but regardless, why is it unfortunate? Iow, what is it that's terribly coherent, cogent or probative as pertains to Kmiec's opinion? It's certainly an opinion, but what is it about Kmiec's opinion, or set of opinions, that particularly persuades, that is particularly cogent, that reflects a depth of comprehension that is communicated as such?
I don't see it in the least. Nada.
Kmiec states that he believes in and has confidence in Obama, but those are barren assertions, not elucidations. Kmiec then goes on to characterize his endorsement as being of little value and as having been difficult to arrive at. Kmiec then goes on to characterize why he holds some of his most cherished conservative or "Republican" convictions, none of which Obama holds dearly. Kmiec then goes on to restate - yet again - his faith in Obama, all of it yet again stipulated upon nothing but his (intuitively held?) faith and belief. Kmiec then goes on to state that as Republican's "we are first Americans," which is nothing more than a truism, and a trite one, and perhaps is nothing more than a tautology. Kmiec then goes on to remark upon his view of Iraq while also underlining his view that the current conflict, broadly conceived, is a serious one. One opinion after another, one assertion after another, but what is it about such stated views that is particularly deserving of respect? Literally nothing is argued in anything that even approaches a cogent quality and everything, literally everything, is stated in the form of dogma-like assertions.
That pretty much summarizes Kmiec's six or seven paragraphs. Why is any of that to be respected in any very serious sense? It sounds far more like a set of rationalizations or rationales than anything that persuades in a genuinely cogent sense.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x279GNMwvY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKUTQJfJIfY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSasdw6-llk
Because he *quotes* Prof. Kmiec's newsworthy (on a generally-conservative legal blog) statement?
Yep. Just you.
More substantively, Orin or others, what impact, if any, do you think this will have?
You need to get out into reality more often. Obama's speech was on Tuesday, not Monday. After it he gave a few more interviews that touched on race, Wright, and Trinity UCC before he left on a brief Caribbean vacation. Beyond that, Obama does not constitute the nation, and a national conversation on race can continue, even intensify, while Obama is not talking.
That said, I think Kmiec is a natural fit for Obama in at least one non-substantive way, i.e., they seem to have similar temperaments. Kmiec is frequently the right half of legal discussions on KPCC, an LA area NPR affiliate. I hardly ever agree with him, but he's unfailingly respectful, not just of the other person, but of the opposing argument. I'm not suggesting that's unusual, but it is very Barack-like. It would be a lot harder for me to imagine someone with Kmiec's politics and a more ornery personality making this choice.
Firstly, while I agree with your general sentiment, it isn't merely "guilt by association" when it takes place over a lengthy, twenty year period. (By contrast, the McCain/Hagee equivocation is literally nothing but guilt by association. McCain is a Christian and Hagee is a Christian and McCain would prefer to have more votes rather than less votes, but beyond that they have no social or political relationship that comes remotely close to twenty years of mentoring.) Too, very few people have suggested Obama should leave Trinity church, a perfectly viable (and honorable) communion, fellowship and pastoral center in most respects - v. here.
Otoh, Obama is attempting to sell huge swaths of America on the idea - or rather the emotion - of "change," yet he hasn't been able to change - during a twenty year relationship - his own minister's cum personal friend's deeply held prejudices and outlooks, outlooks that include egregious conspiratorial and racialist outlooks such as AIDS as a genocidal conspiracy committed by whites against non-whites, and that's one example only. If you can't change such prejudices held by a self-described mentor, pastor, confidant and personal friend - over the course of twenty years - then what type of feel-good change is Obama - the most junior and the furthest left of center Senator by some prominent measures - considering for the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. in general? Even a singular and focused look at his 2nd amendment flim-flams and "varied" talking points is enough to cause more than merely a little concern and that's one central amendment only.
Those are the types of contrasts and questions that are relevant and they don't simply constitute guilt by association.
Btw, do you have a twenty year relationship with any of those pedophile priests (which numbers reflect somewhere in the area of 1% to 2% of all priests - if the figures I've read are correct), such that you would consider them friend, mentor, confidant and pastor over that twenty year period? It's a rhetorical question only as I assume you do not and would not. (I'm not saying a pedophile is equivalent to the racialist, conspiratorial and other benighted views of a Wright, it's an analogy and comparison only, not an exact parallel I'm forwarding.)
Some flys in the ointment are far worse than other flys in the ointment. When the ointment includes one or two terms as president of the U.S., CIC during a time of national and global crisis, likely a few Supreme Court picks, etc., questions are warranted and a protracted twenty year relationship that includes mentoring constitutes far more than guilt by association.
By negative implication you bring up a double standard I suspect a lot of people are applying to Obama's relationship with Wright. How many of the critics would cut off one of their own family for believing something objectionable? My guess is "few." I'm sure there's lots of arguing and plenty of angst, but outside of religious sects where it's the norm, I'd be surprised if there are many people casting out loved ones for their beliefs.
Not that I'm suggesting my situation is representative, but in my family I'm the voice of moderation in a pack of deranged wackos on both extremes. I'd be hard pressed to come up with much of anything they believe politically that I don't find objectionable. And you can imagine what they think of each other's opinions. But that doesn't diminish their love or respect for one another. In the end, it just convinces all of us that (certain other) smart, decent people can believe stuff that's totally batshit.
So as a threshold matter I'd propose that only people who would actually excommunicate a loved one for believing something that offended them personally should consider criticizing Obama for not rejecting his minister. Everyone else I'd suggest taking a closer look at themselves.
I watched the first link and Wright does come off as anti American. Listen carefully to his “faith footnote,” where he accuses the US of repeated war atrocities. Curiously Wright and similar critics of US war behavior fail to bring up inconvenient facts the like brutal Allied occupation of Germany after WWII. More German Civilians died in the five-year period after the war than during the war. But those victims were white, which I suppose doesn’t bother him and many others very much.
Wright also asserts the authority of black liberation theologians James Cone and Dwight Hopkins. You might want to read their doctrines before you jump to conclusions about Wright. Context does not bail him out.
I think you've pretty well managed to stretch logic to the breaking point here, Zarkov. And your argument threatens to double back on itself.
"Wright also asserts the authority of black liberation theologians James Cone and Dwight Hopkins. You might want to read their doctrines before you jump to conclusions about Wright."
Indeed, one might. Have you?
I am shocked by offensive nature of many of the comments and I can only hope for the good of the law and the honour of the profession that most are not purporting to teach in the field.
Teach, or practice. You and me both, sir.
"The essay stirred up a ruckus among my former Reagan administration colleagues (who thought I was abusing some substance, like a few other Malibuites who succumbed to their “last temptations” in recent years) and in church communities across the country (which just said they would pray for me)."
Does this guy need an editor, or what?
"Obama, with bemused annoyance, complied, but I thought, uh-oh, here we go, will Republicans dissatisfied with their default nominee be the next potential votes denounced and rejected??"
"Obama, with bemused annoyance, complied, but I thought, uh-oh, here we go, will Republicans dissatisfied with their default nominee be the next potential votes denounced and rejected??"
Tell me how?
"Indeed, one might. Have you?"
Not in detail, but others have. For more references and quotes see here.
When Cone write things like How can anyone take this as anything other than a purely racist statement? Suppose a white theologian said the reverse. Would he keep his job or tenured position? Since Wright says he subscribes to black liberation theology as advanced by Cone, how can we regard him as anything other than a racist?
Do I have to? Okay, you've basically set up a no-win situation for Wright. The *fewer* atrocities he mentions, the more likely he is to be anti-white. OTOH, the *more* atrocities he mentions, the likelier he is to be anti-American. Then again, the more atrocities *you* mention, the more likely it is that you yourself may be regarded as anti-American!
"Not in detail..."
Oh, bullshit, you haven't read a word, except the three controversial snips from his earliest books quoted ad nauseum. And you don't know anything about Hopkins' work.
"How can anyone take this as anything other than a purely racist statement?"
By reading it in context.
"Suppose a white theologian said the reverse. Would he keep his job or tenured position?"
As must pointed out time and time again, it's a basic principle of sociology that the minority must know the behavior and expectations of the majority to survive, while those in the majority may safely ignore minority expectations. How many books are there telling men to behave more like women to succeed? When women say "Proud to be a woman" or blacks say "Proud to be black," they are simply affirming the value of something the majority considers to be inferior. This is very different from saying "Proud to be white."
Now that's a good one.
(I hope none of my friends without the foresight to have rejected me before now was thinking of running for President of the ABA.)
I couldn't make this stuff up if I had the best comedy writers in town working for me.
Richard "my mother's maiden name was McFarlin; her mother's maiden name was Duran" Gould-Saltman
How about he stops with bogus atrocities, then he will be neither anti American or anti white?
“Oh, bullshit, you haven't read a word, except the three controversial snips from his earliest books quoted ad nauseum. And you don't know anything about Hopkins' work.”
So how many and how thoroughly have you read the works of Cone and Hopkins? Are you some kind of expert on black liberation theology and Cone and Hopkins?
"By reading it in context."
What is that context? If the excerpts mislead the reader then tell us what he actually says. It’s not enough to cry “out of context” over and over without providing us with evidence of the real context.
“ … while those in the majority may safely ignore minority expectations.”
Minorities can foment revolutions and terror. George Washington was in a minority. A third of the colonists were Tories while another third were indifferent. There’s nothing safe in ignoring minorities. I don’t know where you get such a preposterous idea.
“ … they are simply affirming the value of something the majority considers to be inferior. This is very different from saying Proud to be white."
You want to give minorities carte blanche to level any criticism they want no matter how outrageous and false. If Wright’s fulminations were actually true, he would only be guilty of being undiplomatic. You are comfortable with a double standard, most of us are not.
Has Cone repudiated his early writings? has he apologized for his extremeism? How about his 1997 (revising the 1975 edition) God of the Oppressed?
I fail to see how you can even regard Cone as Christian, unless you want to completely revise the basic tenets of the religion. Where is the forgiveness in Cone?
Where do you get that he wants to give minorities "carte blanche to level any criticism they want no matter how outrageous and false?" Should I take your comment as conceding nothing whatsoever to the greater historical basis for lingering resentment the average African American might have than the average white American, or do you think that might be putting words in your mouth?
"Context does not bail him out," you said. But you have no idea what the context is, because you've never read the books.
Who's bogus here?
Well? How about it? Have you read any of it, beyond the title?
Have you read any of his books? Have you even read any REVIEWS of any of his books? How about the comment sections on Amazon? ANYTHING?
This is from Benedict XVI, in his former capacity as Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. To answer Mr. Kerr's point from earlier, a person who believes a)that the Iraq War is an unjust war and b) that abortion is wrong could vote for neither Obama nor McCain.
Previous commentors are correct that opposition to abortion is required of every Catholic. If Prof. Kmiec is supporting Obama, he must confront this point, also from Benedict XVI as Prefect for the CDF.
"Proportionate reasons" is one of those phrases that can be twisted to no end, but in a basic sense means that the reasons given must be proportionate to the moral evil of abortions. In other words, Prof. Kmiec must have an argument like this: "Even though abortion is wrong, Obama does [a], [b], and [c], whose good is significant enough to balance out or overcome the evil of voting for Obama and 'remote[ly] material[ly] cooperating' in abortion."
My understanding from reading his articles is that Obama's stated commitment to bridge the political and religious divides, opposition to the war, and (if I remember correctly) some of his economic positions underlie Prof. Kmiec's support. No matter how important economic issues are, they cannot possibly trump abortion or similarly grave issues. The same goes for Obama's promises to "bridge the gap"; a mere possibility for better attitudes does not trump the absolute certainty of continued infanticide via abortion. Thus the war is left, which is a reason not to vote for McCain, given Prof. Kmiec's views. However:
This is because abortion and euthanasia and certain other acts are intrinsically wrong (i.e. wrong in their very nature), while capital punishment and war can be wrong. The Church has never explicitly condemned capital punishment in all cases as always wrong (even in the quote you referenced, Mr. Kerr) and just war theory states that war is morally right given certain conditions. Given this fact, I believe that opposition to an act (the Iraq War) which can be wrong (and in this case may in fact be wrong) does not give one license to vote for someone who supports an act that is always and everywhere wrong. Merely stacking issues together in aggregate will not necessarily create a proportionate reason, especially economically based issues. At most, Prof. Kmiec can do as I suggested above; vote for neither McCain nor Obama. For the source of some of this material and further reading, look at Prof. John O'Callaghan's article here.
No, I do not have a close personal relationship with any of the pedophile priests. Nevertheless, this comparison is irrelevant because it ignores the faith structure of the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church is a top-down organization. The entire church takes its lead from the pope. In fact, the central doctrine of the papacy, papal infallibility, assumes that a Catholic who follows the edicts of the Vatican can do no wrong because papal edicts are perfect. This was precisely the issue John Kennedy faced as a presidential candidate--he gave a speech unequivocally stating that he would not place the Vatican above the American people. Apparently, that was enough in those days.
The Vatican had the opportunity to do the right thing in terms of those 1-2% of the priesthood. It did not. The edicts that came from the post-Massachusetts meeting can only be seen as an apologia for the reprehensible acts of those 1-2%. The elevation of Ratzinger simply reinforced the idea that the Church was more interested in hewing to the past than moving into the present.
It may be that the offenses of the Catholic Church are more recent than the longstanding statements of Rev. Wright. I'm not entirely sure that we can impute the statements in the press over the entire 20 year relationship between Wright and Obama, so I don't know exactly how much longer his position has been outstanding. Nevertheless, I would argue that heat-of-sermon comments made on a random Sunday or two are far easier to shrug off than a specifically articulable policy position. Therefore, I still take offense to the notion that one should be judged by the political leanings of their spiritual leaders. They simply aren't relevant.
Your conception of papal infallibility is dead wrong. Papal infallibility has nothing to do with the actions of prelates or laymen. It merely states that the Pope, when speaking ex cathedra on matters of faith, cannot be wrong because the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit. It has been used only one time that I know of; declaration of Mary's Immaculate Conception. Even then, it is debated whether this dogma was proclaimed ex cathedra and thus infallibly.
One other thing. The Vatican, while it may have some responsibility, does not exercise absolute control over its bishops. There are certainly prelates who have done wrong and hurtful things, but not all, and Benedict XVI's election as Pope had nothing to do with a willful ignorance or a clinging to the past.
If the purpose of papal infallibility is not to give comfort to laypersons acting on directives of faith issued by the Pope, then I guess I don't get the point. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree entirely about your second paragraph.
Please, can you hacks stop with this ridiculous analogy. Wright is NOT A MEMBER OF HIS FAMILY. He's his pastor. The pastor he CHOSE to go to and remain with for 20 years. If Wright were in fact his uncle and not just "like" his uncle, then you'd have a point. If a white politician attended a church as radical as Wright's congregation, people would laugh hysterically at an excuse like "well, I know my racist and anti-American pastor is divisive but he's like an uncle and you can't expect me to disown an uncle." It's pathetic. Just stop.
“Should I take your comment as conceding nothing whatsoever to the greater historical basis for lingering resentment the average African American might have than the average white American, or do you think that might be putting words in your mouth?”
I do not believe in collective guilt, or resentment towards whole groups of people.
Grover Gardner:
All you do is pound the table. You provide no evidence. If you are such an expert on Cone, then tell us the context. Tell us what mitigates the statements ascribed from him by Spengler, and in Wikipedia article, or for that matter Wright’s inflammatory statements.
I'm not a Catholic but can't one "oppose abortion" while still being pro-choice? People were trying to get Romney on this saying his previous pro-choice position was incompatiable with Mormon teaching. He was adamant that all the Mormon church says is that one must not encourage individuals to have abortions. The minimalist pro-choice position of legalized abortion but not subsidization is compatible with opposition to abortion, is it not?
Let's say there is a candidate who makes clear he hates abortion and doesn't think it's a good choice, ever. He is against the use of any public funds going toward the procedure. But he also feels that enforcement of a criminal abortion statute would be impractical and that if women are to seek an abortion it should be a safe one. Would voting for somebody like this be against Catholic teaching lacking another proportionate reason?
Of course, somebody like Obama doesn't match this hypothetical person. Obama's about as far left on abortion as is possible. So I think you're right that Kmiec would have some accounting to do as a believing Catholic (e.g. that he would need some other proportionate justification).
You seem to assume here that politics and morality are mutually exclusive categories. They are not. One can hold a "political" opinion which is also morally repugnant or at the very least has moral implications. If McCain had visited a church and had a pastor who was also his "mentor" who preached often about what a mistake the 1964 Civil Rights Act was, do you think it'd be a non issue? If McCain's pastor and friend of 20 years was spouting loony conspiracy theories about minorities, would it be a non issue? Rev. Wright is an anti-American race hustler. The fact Obama so closely associated with this man and considers him a "mentor" and "like an uncle" raises serious questions about Obama's judgement and political leanings.
I have a staunchly conservative Burkian friend who swam upstream in an ivy university and is paying his dues and still swimming upstream as an ink stained wretch for the Union Leader in New Hampshire who has been drinking the same kool-aid as Kmiec.
While it isn't a compromise I would make, it is not necessarily irrational to favor the measure of stability promised by the nation's honeymoon with an inspirational figure -- however clay footed. Even on substance one sees this might be so where Obama epitomizes the refutation of the neo-con foreign policy adventures that overtook the Bush administration despite the fact that every indication is that Obama would use executive power largely to do the opposite in domestic policy of what these conservatives believe is proper.
I have to say that if Doug Kmiec was chosen by the 5 white guys running the world to infiltrate the Obama camp it was a very clever choice as I would never suspect him.
Brian
Since I never chose to be a hack, then I suppose I can't. But I'll worry about that later. Right now, somebody needs to get the word out that our wives, husbands and adopted children aren't members of our family.
Since Obama didn't say that, that wasn't my argument. Does that make it a "straw hack?"
Yes, I know I already quoted that once. I just like it.
Resentment isn't the multiplicative inverse of guilt. We can make factual and moral determinations of guilt. Resentment is a largely involuntary human response. Not believing in collective guilt can make sense. Not believing in resentment can't. It's going to happen whether you believe in it or not, and nobody in this country has been given more impetus for it than African Americans.
If what you mean is that you disapprove of it, then I'd want to know what that disapproval consists of. We'd probably agree that resentment is one of the less productive responses to one's ancestors having been enslaved and then systematically oppressed, but to disparage those who feel it, especially African-Americans of Wright's generation, for whom violent oppression was a formative part of their lives, is ugly and mean-spirited.
For someone who doesn't believe in it, you're pretty touchy about it.
To begin with, the quotes from Black Theology of Liberation are not accurate. Cone specifically refers to "white racists" not "white people," saying,
"If God is not for us and against white racist, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him."
That's rather a different statement. There are other significant differences as well. Now, this is the 1990 edition, so it's possible he revised his language in response to criticism or because he wanted to be clearer about what he meant. Regardless, the quotes in the Spengler article are not accurate. They are drawn from a second-hand source and do not reflect what Cone was saying as of 18 years ago. Furthermore, if you read these things in context you can also see that a lot of his more extreme statements are rhetorical in nature. The rhetoric is highly charged by any measure, but taken literally and out of context it sounds worse than it is. His point about "murdering" God is that, in his view, the white churches of the time had co-opted God in a manner that sought to justify racism. He argues that blacks have no use for a God who favors white racists over black people, and if that is the case, then blacks are better off finding their own God, a God who loves them. The passage is not dissimilar to the Old Testament laments of the Jews, who in times of great misfortune wondered if God was still on their side.
You might want to read this critique about black theology, by Ron Rhodes:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ronrhodes/BlackTheology.html
In the end he disagrees with much of what Cone is about, but he acknowledges the scriptural bases for Cone's beliefs and brings some perspective to black theology from a white POV.
Haberdash--
"If McCain had visited a church and had a pastor who was also his 'mentor' who preached often about what a mistake the 1964 Civil Rights Act was, do you think it'd be a non issue?"
First of all, I've read plenty of conservative commentary to the effect that the Civil Rights Act *was* a mistake, in terms of its actual (as opposed to intended) effect. Be that as it may, if McCain's pastor argued that blacks didn't *deserve* equal rights--yes, that would certainly be problematic. but that is not a direct inverse of Wright, so it's somewhat irrelevant, IMO.
"The fact Obama so closely associated with this man and considers him a 'mentor' and 'like an uncle' raises serious questions about Obama's judgement and political leanings."
IMO the questions it raises have less to do with Obama than they do with communication between the races in this country in general.
Oh so clever! I actually do hold people accountable for their choice in a spouse, at least significantly more so than who their blood relatives are. For example, while I generally like Obama as a person, his wife annoys me to no end. When she says she's never been proud of her country before now, I do think that reflects poorly on Barack. When she says that Barack could be targeted and murdered at a gas station just because he's black, I have to shake my head and wonder if Barack doesn't agree with her secretly about a lot of things he doesn't have the courage to be honest about.
As for children, no, we don't choose our children, unless you're into selective abortion or something (choosing to ahve children is different than choosing which children we get). Parents do raise their children and sometimes somethign stupid a kid does or says is reflective of a poor upbringing, and sometimes it's not. But, alas, we're not talking about any of that. Simple fact is Rev. Wright is not Obama's family and it's absolutely stupid to make the comparison. Wright isn't his crazy old uncle who we give him a pass on because Obama had no choice in associating with the man, he is his pastor who has mentored and guided his moral development. I'm not the only person in America that finds that rather scary.
And for what it's worth, I don't expect Obama to "disown" Wright. I just want him to cease being a member to such a ridiculous and radical organization. It's below the dignity of the presidency to attend church where the pastor rants hatefully about loony conspiracy theories.
"Since Obama didn't say that, that wasn't my argument."
Um, yes he did. He repeatedly compared him to an uncle. He compared the closeness to his bond to his GRANDMOTHER, who raised him through his high school years.
From Obama's speech: "I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother."
Firstly, it was a rhetorical question. Secondly, the comparision is not irrelevant due to the "faith structure" of the CC or for any other reason. It was a loose analogy and not intended to be a direct comparison or exact parallel. The point being emphasized is that Obama chose - for twenty years - this relationship and has shown no evidence whatsoever that he's been able to have a positive impact upon even Wright's more egregious racialist views and conspiracy theories.
(As far as the inadequacies, and worse, of how the Catholic Church has handled some notable aspects of the pedophile and scandal, certainly. Though too, I have never seen the public protest terribly much when a public school teacher is discovered to have engaged in sexual behavior with students, so that affords some perspective. And it happens with notable frequency in the public schools, ranging from pedophile cases to older student/teacher cases, such as some that have made headlines. E.g., I haven't heard a public outcry or even an outcry from advocate groups that millions of dollars from public coffers be awarded those harmed in such cases.)
I actually agree with you here. But you didn't answer my question. If McCain closely associated with somebody who held this view AND often preached about it passionately, even for ostensibly non-racist reasons, would it be a newsworthy and a legitimate criticism? Or would the Obama supporters here give him a pass because McCain's pastor is "like an uncle" who "sometimes says some offensive things." Wright holds some pretty offensive views. I don't doubt that he's got some good points and has done many good deeds. But if Obama isn't smart enough to realize he can't attend a church like that and be president, he's going to find out soon enough.
Newsworthy, perhaps, but open to legitimate criticism? I guess that would depend on the motive, as you say. But again, I don't think it's an apt comparison. If someone preaches that blacks don't deserve equal rights, what's the obverse? That whites don't deserve equal rights? That's not what Wright is saying. Nor is he saying that blacks deserve *better* than equal treatment. Wright, correctly or not, has spoken out against what he perceives as the white decision-making powers in America. To me, the obverse would be saying that blacks control the country, oppress white people and make evil decisions. Such an opinion would be laughed at, and not because of its potentially racist implications.
"But if Obama isn't smart enough to realize he can't attend a church like that and be president, he's going to find out soon enough."
In the article I linked to above, Ron Rhodes mentions a 1990 survey of 1550 black ministers. Over on third of them claimed to be influenced by James Cone and Black Liberation Theology. Rhodes uses the numbers to illustrate that BLT is not a dominating influence in black American churches. But that's still a pretty striking number. Over one third of the black ministers surveyed said they were influenced by or subscribed to BLT theories or writings. So while TUCC may be a more visible and aggressive proponent of BLT, the numbers would indicate that there are many more "like that" around the country. This is not a fringe, radical element. It's a remarkably influential movement. I suspect we're going to hear a lot more about it in the coming year, and the size of depth of its influence will probably come as a shock to a lot people.
But you're changing the subject. Of course we take candidates' spouses into account, intentionally or not, when we assess the candidate. The question is whether you think it would be his responsibility to divorce the wife that he chose, just like his preacher, if she made outrageous comments. Do you?
You're right. We're not. My comment was about adopted children. We do choose them. Should we apply a different standard of what we'll tolerate before casting them out than we would to a blood child?
No, the fact is that your standard of what binds us is fatuous. We do form relationships of choice that are as close as any blood relationship. To suggest they should be more expendable on ideological grounds is idiotic.
So which is it, the pastor or the church? Because if it's the church, pretending to define its entire character by cherry picking the most offensive comments its pastor made over a multi-decade period is even more tendentious than doing so for the pastor himself.
Um, no he didn't. Not the part of your original comment that you happened to leave out this time. You know Obama never referred to Wright as "my racist and anti-American pastor."
If she was as crazy as Wright, I'd expect him to divorce his wife if he wanted to be president.
"We do form relationships of choice that are as close as any blood relationship. To suggest they should be more expendable on ideological grounds is idiotic."
No, this is idiotic. Candidate x has a father who is a KKK member. Candidate y has a friend/pastor/business associate who is KKK member. You think the public should treat them as if they are the same just because the KKK member is a really good friend to the candidate? You are trolling or just aren't that bright. People would forgive a candidate more readily that had a crazy uncle spouting anti-American hate because Obama did not CHOOSE to associate himself with the uncle.
"Not the part of your original comment that you happened to leave out this time. You know Obama never referred to Wright as "my racist and anti-American pastor.""
So you are a troll.
It's not an apt comparison, Wright is in fact worse than the hypothetical McCain pastor. Believing passionately in freedom of association isn't necessarily racist. But it is extreme by today's political standards (that is, believing the 1964 Civil Rights Act should be repealed). If McCain associated as closely to such a person as Obama has to Wright, there would be legitimate questions about McCain's sympathy for the person's radical views. It shouldn't be assumed that Obama holds every wacky idea that Wright has ever spouted. But when somebody is as anti-American and radical as Wright, and Obama stays for 20 years, at the very least it's fair to surmise that Obama has a tolerance ans sympathy for Wright's radicalism, even if he differs on a lot of points.
"This is not a fringe, radical element. It's a remarkably influential movement."
Let's say I take your figures as accurate. Not fringe in the black Christian community doesn't translate to not fringe among the American electorate. Wright IS a wacko, are you really going to defend him as a sort of mainstream black preacher? Saying the CIA concocted AIDS to keep blacks down or that the CIA invented and distributed crack cocaine to the inner city to destroy black communities isn't mainstream, bro. It's a disgrace Obama has donated tens of thousands of dollars to this lunatic's ministry.
I thought that by posing a question you were interested in my opinion. I was mistaken.
I'm afraid that if you don't make up your mind soon whether I'm a hack or a troll or just not very bright, I may begin to lose respect for your arguments. Kidding aside, you've descended to a level of ad hominems that's not worth trying to cut through at this stage, so I'm bowing out. I regret taking your bait and calling one of your arguments idiotic, so my hands aren't as clean as I'd like either. Maybe if we meet again we can both do better.
Your post was sincere and thoughtful and I appreciate it. I guess we just have a fundamental disagreement about whether it's fair to hold Obama's relationship with Wright against his candidacy. It'd be more amenable to your view if this was his former pastor of 10 years ago and he long ago left the church. Obama's predicament might also be sympathetic to me if Wright wasn't obviously much more than just his pastor. Wright is his friend, his teacher, and his mentor. The guy is a disreputable figure, to be nice about it, in my eyes. The most charitable explanation is that Obama associated with Wright for political advantage. But that doesn't explain why he's still a member. The worst case scenario is that he actually believes Wright's craziness and sympathesizes with his hatemongering. Perhaps you have a more accurate approximation of what the American people will judge as wacky and fringe and hateful, and they won't consider Wright's sermons any of those things. I, however, couldn't disagree more strongly.
Can't you be all of the above? ;)
"I regret taking your bait and calling one of your arguments idiotic, so my hands aren't as clean as I'd like either. Maybe if we meet again we can both do better."
That's certainly true.
Last word on it. Obama attempting to elicit sympathy by relating Wright to a doddering uncle who occasionally says some wacky things strikes me as completely flawed. The reason most people don't hold wacky family members against individuals is that, as I said, they have no control over this association. You may dispise your racist uncle but he's still your uncle. Nothing you can do about it. That's guilt by association at its worst. However, judging somebody by the "company they keep" so to speak is different. If you have a friend that's a KKK member that's going to be held against you, no matter how far back your history goes and no matter how many good deeds he performs.
The best argument, I think, in defense of Obama's actions is that Wright's transgressions are not significant enough to require Obama to end his relationship. That's a lot different than saying "you wouldn't disown your uncle if he said these things, so I don't have to disown uncle Wright, either." And, as I said, I wouldn't advise Obama to necessarily "disown" Wright. I just think he should terminate his membership in the church and distance himself from the man. Nobody's asking Obama to promise to never speak to Wright again. But continuing to attend services and financially support an institution like TUCC is beneath a man seeking the presidency.
The only only unstated reason for Kmiec to endorse Obama, is that both have a Chicago background. I suspect that both have many mutual acquaintances that could be a source of information and explanation for Kmiecs high regard for Obama's integrity. Finally, Kmiec, being a republican insider is well aware of McCain's deficits that he is too polite to mention.
The only only unstated reason for Kmiec to endorse Obama, is that both have a Chicago background. I suspect that both have many mutual acquaintances that could be a source of information and explanation for Kmiecs high regard for Obama's integrity. Finally, Kmiec, being a republican insider is well aware of McCain's deficits that he is too polite to mention.