 | |
| |
|
|
September 29, 2004 The effrontery of Obama's religious crusade
Andrew Longman In a wholly uninspired fit of glory we have seen, recently, some well-meaning and utterly befuddled opinions forwarded by conservatives saying that a political campaign ought not, under any circumstances, be a religious crusade. These confused are totally wrong, as we shall see in a moment, but they are a people harrassed, being pressed with titanic forces. I hope I here arrive with a cup of encouraging refreshment for the troops. The notion that a political campaign should be anything at all but a religious crusade is not only sorely lacking, it is totally unobservant. Barack Obama is conducting a religious crusade of simply terrifying proportions. He is a religious zealot hiding in the fiat-piety of his doctrine and not bothering to substantiate his dogmatic positions with any reference to a scripture. Now it's true his religion is liberal-naturalism, not Christianity, and as such he gains broad acceptability from the ruling patriarchal authority. But the contention that God approves of his decision to consistently and insistently support the callous death of infants born alive is to be taken by thinking people as a non-religious position? Tell me, if you can, why Obama's opinion that babies should be left for dead once born is permissible in the public square, whereas Alan Keyes' position, that they should be saved and cared for and defended to the last...is religious effrontery? Obama's god observes strict political indifference, but Keyes' God is blessedly politically incorrect. Obama says God is indifferent to the death of infants born alive - this is not a religious position. Keyes says that God cares perfectly for the defenseless infant - this is intolerable proselytizing. Oh, that makes sense. Be wise to the bait and switch folks. Religion in public is fine - they just don't happen to like your particular sect. You know, the sect where God moves the conscience of his followers when they see babies struggling for life in steel hospital basins. The popular silliness that liberal-naturalism is not a religion and so is therefore permissible as the court-enforced state-approved philosophy has bled over into shaping the thinking of Christians. And that is where we must absolutely stop and reverse it. It's of little consequence that pagans think that only naturalistic religions should be allowed in public. Of course they think that. They believe their dogma. But it is entirely another matter when we start having Christians agreeing that Christians are not allowed to persuade the public that Christianity is public truth. Isn't Obama and the pagan pro-abort trying with all their might to persuade Christendom that liberal-naturalism is the only permissible public opinion? Doesn't he and his ilk insist that variations on their politically correct mantras are the only ones really allowed? That all others are gauche, upstart, reactionary, neanderthal, not suited to the public arena? And doesn't that constitute an elitist, obnoxious, prosyletizing, religious crusade? Indeed it most emphatically does. And this is the crux: all political campaigns are religious crusades centered on winning the public to a general religious consensus. For religion is ultimate value, and ultimate value is the framer of morality. Obama's religion is that God shouldn't matter. Keyes' religion is that God is all that matters. Keyes gets censured, Obama gets praised. Do we see how this works yet? Historically the public at large has always known they were free to believe whatever they liked, and that public law in the United States was special and successful precisely because we based our social understanding on Christianity. That oldest and best, triedest and truest form of conduct for a mass of people created the most prosperous society in history. Was this vision of public understanding exclusionary? No, people from all over the world came to our shores happily as guests and neighbors. Did it protect the minority? Better than any system in any country in history ever. Yet in far off left Obamaland, the home of the lien and the slave, Christians are to be excluded from public life and innocent infants are to be excluded from the protective penumbra of law. And Obama's religious crusade is considered good? And publicly acceptable? Do we accept that our laws ought to be derived from something moral, since law is going to be derived from something? And if campaigns may permissibly focus on morality, isn't it more than a bit silly to require them to be areligious at the same time? That second is exactly what liberal-naturalists desire of the public: morality without religion or religion without morality. To them, either is acceptable; both are the soul of their religious agenda. Ah! Magnificent Keyes is out there doing the heretical: trying to persuade that a revival of intelligent Christian ideas ought form the basis for American public life just as they did for hundreds of years...usurping the ruling oligarchy of banal liberal naturalism and making Dan Rather mad! Oh, preach that sawdust trail, Dr. Keyes, and repent not of it. It boils down simply: which vision is best? Some cobbled together clap-trap invented by the courts, or the Rock of Our Salvation that built Western Civilization? Andrew Longman lived for 18 years in Chicago and now resides in northwest Indiana. Mr. Longman holds a BS and MS in Physics, teaches college, and has worked for several years as a Christian missionary. Published Sept. 27 in the Illinois Leader. |
