Text 7322, 138 rader
Skriven 2008-08-23 05:13:00 av TIM RICHARDSON (1:123/140)
Ärende: Dumbocrats
==================
Jonah Goldberg on Barack Obama on National Review Online


August 20, 2008, 0:00 a.m.

Good and Evil and Obama
A meaningless wrestle.

By Jonah Goldberg


In the wake of the fascinating forum hosted by Pastor Rick Warren
athis Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., everyone is
focusingon the contrasts between presidential candidates John McCain and
Barack Obama. More interesting are the contrasts between the
intellectual-theologian Obama and the political Obama.


"Does evil exist?" Warren asked Obama. "And if it does, do we
ignore it, do we negotiate with it, do we contain it, or do we defeat
it?"


Obama the would-be moral philosopher replied, accurately, that
evil is everywhere, in Darfur, in our streets, in our own hearts. We
cannot "erase evil from the world. That is God’s task. But we can
be soldiers in that process, and we can confront (evil) when we see
it." (Imagine if President Bush called himself a soldier of God in
the battle against evil.)


When asked what America’s greatest moral failing was, theological
Obama said it was our collective failure to "abide by that basic
precept in (the Book of) Matthew that whatever you do for the
least of my brothers, you do for me."


For Obama the politician, such scriptural quotations often serve
as an all-inclusive writ to impose his religious views on others when
it comes to fighting poverty, global warming, racism, etc. But
when the question turns to abortion, political Obama insists on a
policy of moral agnosticism and political laissez-faire. Asked directly
when life begins as a legal matter, he punted, saying the answer
was "above my pay grade."


Obama, commendably, told Warren that he wants to reduce the number
of abortions. After all, he observed gravely, "we’ve had a
president who is opposed to abortions over the last eight years, and
abortions have not gone down." Unfortunately, Obama wasn’t telling the
truth. The abortion rate is the lowest it’s been since 1974, partly
because of pro-life policies under Bush, but also thanks to those
implemented at the state level since the 1990s.


At Saddleback, Obama offered the ritualistic support for Roe v.
Wade expected of all Democratic politicians, "not because I’m
pro-abortion," but because women "wrestle with these things in
profound ways."


This is surely true in many instances. But political Obama won’t
explain why "wrestling" with a serious moral question is an
adequate substitute for deciding it correctly. People wrestle with all
sorts of moral quandaries in "profound ways." Many slave owners wrestled
with whether they should free their slaves, but that did not
obviate the need for the Emancipation Proclamation.


Alas, when it comes to abortion, it’s probably silly to expect
anything but rote fealty to ideological pieties from a Democrat,
just as it’s naive to expect anything but the appropriate pro-life
talking points from a Republican. But for a self-styled champion
of nuance, political Obama’s rigidity is spectacular to behold.


In 2003, as chairman of the Illinois Senate Health and Human
Services Committee, Obama received a statement from Jill Stanek, a
registered nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill. She
testified that at her Chicago-area hospital, she’d seen a baby accidentally
delivered alive during an abortion and then "taken to the
soiled-utility room and left alone to die."


I’m no expert on the Christian Gospel, but something tells me that
Matthew might consider these wailing creatures the least of our
brothers.


Alas, the abandonment of babies to suffer and die on the modern
equivalent of a Spartan cliff did not require confronting evil
when Obama saw it. Indeed, Obama turned a blind eye, leading the battle
to defeat Illinois’ version of the federal Born-Alive Infants
Protection Act, which would have treated babies living, albeit
briefly, outside the womb as, well, babies. He opposed the bill in
2003 (as he had a similar one in 2001), saying it would undermine
Roe v. Wade. But even after Roe-neutral language was included
(wording good enough that it won support for the federal version of
the bill from abortion-rights stalwart Sen. Barbara Boxer) Obama
remained unmoved.


Until this week, Obama denied that he ever took such a position.


His campaign now admits that he was, in effect, lying when he said
pro-lifers were lying about his record. But simultaneously, Obama
defends a position that comes dismayingly close to the layman’s
understanding of infanticide while claiming any other position
would require him to play God.

"A lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we
were trying to confront evil," intellectual-theologian Obama said at
Saddleback. And "just because we think our intentions are good
doesn’t always mean that we’re going to be doing good."


Perhaps that theological Obama should wrestle a bit more with
political Obama.


Jonah Goldberg is the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret
History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of
Meaning.


Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online.








---
*Durango b301 #PE* 
 * Origin: Doc's Place BBS Fido Since 1991 docsplace.tzo.com (1:123/140)