All Will Be Made Clear
We have an anti-glare coating on many of our windows. It works very well at cutting the glare from the sun and has the added benefit of providing privacy, as people looking in are effectively looking into a mirror. However this is only during the daytime. At night the mirror effect is reversed. As a result, at breakfast we often start looking into mirror, but as the sunrises the mirror effect fades and the landscape behind our house becomes clear.
Obama is like our anti-glare coating. As a candidate, he was effectively a mirror. His campaign speeches were full of phrases like ‘hope’ and ‘change’ with little actual specifics. With virtually no record or accomplishments, Obama has been the quintessential empty suit, into which people poured their hopes and dreams. When he said, “change you can believe in” the emphasis was in reality on the word ‘you.’ Supporters believed the change he would bring would be the change they wanted. While they look to Obama, they saw themselves.
This continues even today, as it still remains a topic of great discussion on the nightly new programs exactly what Obama will do, as supporters and critics alike attempt to read the tea leaves of his various actions and statements looking for clues.
But the sun is now rising on the Obama presidency. As campaign rhetoric now changes to policy statements, the mirror effect will likewise begin to fade; who Obama is and what he will actually do will, for better or for worse, now be come clear. As this happens, a few will undoubtedly find that Obama is just what they thought he was all along. But no doubt the majority will find what the radical left has already discovered, that the change he brings is not exactly what they expected. How could it be otherwise? As a candidate he could be all things to all people. As a President, he must actually make decisions, and take actions. He can no longer vote present.
Critics, on the other hand will no longer be fighting the phantom of expectations and hope. While Obama has so far not turned out to be quite as bad as some feared, choosing, for example, a cabinet virtually indistinguishable for one Hillary Clinton might have chosen, he is still on the left. The tea leaves all point to a bigger, more powerful federal government, with the corresponding loss of liberty that this must entail. As these policies and programs are proposed and enacted, their pros and cons can be assessed.
We face difficult economic times, but despite the media hype, this is not the worst economy since the Great Depression. When Reagan took office the economic situation was far worse than it is now. Reagan saw government as the problem and sought to reduce government’s stranglehold on the economy.
I would hope that Obama would take the same approach, that his solutions will be based in a decentralized, market based programs that encourage choice and liberty. Historically such solutions have been demonstrated to be the most effective.
However, the tea leaves seem to indicate that Obama sees government as the solution, not the problem, and as such he will look to more centralized, command and control based solutions. Historically, such approaches have not only been ineffective, but have often only further exacerbated the very problems they seek to solve. In addition such approaches, by their very nature, come at the expense of liberty.
Another issue here will be the Congress. Based on the various tea leaves, it appears now that the Congress controlled by Reid and Pelosi is to the left of Obama, and certainly farther to left than the vast majority of Americans. They will also have a major say in what laws are actually passed, and thus how the public will ultimately view Obama’s presidency. Obama’s claims to unity seeking bipartisan support has already been dealt a blow by Pelosi’s new rules for the House that effectively lock Republicans out of the process.
So the sun is rising on the Obama presidency. As the literary detective Hercule Poirot often said ‘all will be made clear.’ and clarity is a good thing.
Hitchens – God Is Not Great XXIX
Listen to the MP3
I am continuing in my extended review of Christopher Hitchens book “God Is Not Great,” and his defense of atheism in chapter 17. As I pointed out last time, given how he has attempted to attack religion in the first sixteen chapters, this is pretty much a no win situation for Hitchens, as he has put himself into a box he cannot now escape. Still that does not deter him from trying, and what follows is a highly selective view of history, in which he attempts to justify his claim that these secular regime, hostile to at least traditional religions and boasting of their scientific foundations, were in fact actually religious rather than secular.
Much of Hitchens’ supporting evidence is inconsistent and is at best little better than “grand conspiracy theory ” type thinking that attempts to find the sinister hand of religion pulling the string behind these otherwise benign atheist fronts. But some of the problems that run throughout this chapter can be seen in a couple of revealing quotes. On page 241, Hitchens acknowledges that “Many Christians gave their lives to protect their fellow creatures in this midnight of the century, but the chances that they did so on orders from any priesthood is statistically almost negligible.”
This sentence alone is would be enough to fatally damage Hitchens claim. He attempts to write off these Christians who died to protect others, not to mention the many others who likewise risked their lives without dying, as acting “in accordance only with the dictates of conscience,” hoping thereby to exclude the influence of religion upon their actions. But does religion consist solely of following the orders of a priesthood?
It is just a fact that many Popes throughout history have condemned persecution of the Jews by Christians, and that within Christian Europe , the further a Jew lived from Rome, and thus the influence of the Church, the more they were at risk from persecution. This does not absolve Christianity from guilt when it comes to the persecution of the Jews, nor should it. But if Christians acting in direct contradiction to the dictates from the Rome, can still be seen as religious in their persecution of the Jews in the Middle Ages, how can Christians risking their lives to save Jews in the 20th century, be seen as secular, simply because they were nor explicitly ordered to do so by a priesthood? The double standard implicit in Hitchens’ argument is staggering.
Ultimately, Hitchens’ argument ignores the role of religion in shaping one’s conscience, and one’s sense of duty to our fellow creatures. Are we really to believe that these Christians who risked their lives to save others, did so completely independent of Biblical teaching such as Lev19:6’s, command not to stand idly by the blood of your neighbor, or Jesus’ teaching concerning the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).
And of course, in a nice little sleight of hand, Hitchens deftly diverts attention away from just whom these fellow creatures needed to be protected from. So what we have here is Christians risking, and in some cases sacrificing, their lives to save their fellow human being from atheist regimes that sought their extermination, and Hitchens wants us to conclude from this that atheism is free from blame and that religion was actually the culprit. Talk about turning things upside down.
From here Hitchens further attempts to make his case by claiming that “those who invoke ‘secular Tyranny in contrast to religion are hoping that we will forget two things: the connection between the Christian churches and fascism, and the capitulation of the churches to National Socialism.” (pg 242)
This is a classic example of a seemingly devastating point that is really quite meaningless. Fascism, in the mid-1930s was a large an popular movement with many supporters even in the United States. Given the size and popularity of Fascism and number of Christians in Europe, it is hardly surprising that there were some connection between some Christians and Fascism, and in fact there were some Christians who were strong supporters of the fascists. But that hardly makes fascism a religious movement or Christianity responsible. To put this in perspective it is also a fact the same could be said about Jews, but would anyone seriously claim that Fascism was therefore a Jewish movement?
The simple fact is that if you look the major leaders of fascism, and communism for that matter, they were atheists who were seeking to apply the principles of science to the governing of society. The intellectual roots of these movements were solidly grounded, not in religion, but in the dialectic materialism of Karl Marx, the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin, and philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, particularly on the death of God as an idea that should have any influence us. These leaders, both political and intellectual, saw religion at best as merely a tool to be exploited to achieve their aims, and at worst a competitor to be eliminated.
As for the capitulation of the churches, this sadly is true, and it is a major mark against the church that it did not do more to resist such evil. But however bad the churches failure, and it was bad, it was still a failure of omission. Thus Hitchens argument is in reality that the Christians, not atheist are responsible, because the Christians did not do enough to stop the atheists. A very strange argument indeed.
This is Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity: a Faith Based on Fact.
Looking Forward – Obama
We have a new President, and I wish him the best. As a solid conservative, many have questioned the sincerity of this statement. They do not believe that as a conservative I can be hoping for President Obama to succeed.
Now with my sense of justice, there is a part of me that desires to treat Obama exactly as the Left and Democratic leaders treated Bush. But I will resist such temptations. For me the wellbeing of the country comes first. I want the country do to well, even if it means Obama will get the credit which he undoubtedly would.
Perhaps the best way to explain this is to point the last campaign. I have been a strong critic of John McCain for years. Other than Ron Paul, he was last on my list of candidates in the primary, and I believed that if nominated he would go down to defeat. If elected, he would be worse than Bush. Yet when he won the nomination, I supported his candidacy and really hoped that he would win.
This was not because I was just being a loyal Republican. Frankly, from strictly a Republican party point of view, I believe that electing Obama will be better for the party than McCain, as McCain would have divided and split the party. I supported McCain and truly hoped that he would win, because, right or wrong, I believe he would be better for the country than Obama.
But now we have President Obama. So in the same line, I truly want him to succeed, at least in the sense that in four years the country is doing well, even though it would mean his almost certain reelection. That is my hope. But like McCain, my expectation is a lot different.
As for my expectation, what will the Obama presidency bring? The best I can say at the moment is: uncertain. I , like many others, am not at all sure what President Obama will actually do. Even during the campaign there was considerable uncertainty. Candidate Obama was very clear on such vagueries as ‘hope’ and ‘change’ but the closer he came to any sort of specificity the more likely his comments were to be followed by a string of caveats, exceptions, and nuances. In short, no matter what he does as president, his supporters can probably go back into the hours of sound clips and find statements that will allow them to claim “see, that is what he said he would do all along.” Still, it is telling, and reassuring, that since he won the election, those most upset with Obama have been those on the left who wanted the most radical change.
Still a few things seem can be gleaned. Despite all the campaign rhetoric, it currently seems that other than a few cosmetic changes, many of Bush’s policies on the war will remain in unchanged, and this is a good thing. One possible exception to this would be the patriot act and coerced interrogations, which have proved every effective in preventing terror attacks. Still once Bush is out of office the calls for their repeal will probably lessen, as much of this was driven more by an irrational hatred of Bush than any actual objective analysis of the policies themselves, so again this remains uncertain.
It seems certain that there will be at least some pullback, if only for show, and therein lies one the biggest gambles of the Obama presidency. Bush did what seemed impossible and prevented another attack on American soil after 9/11. In doing so he set a very high bar. Many still believe it is only a matter of time until we are hit again, and given the country’s growing complacency about the war on terror, they are probably correct. Thus Obama is taking a huge risk betting that he can back off on the war in some areas without another attack. I hope he is correct, for if we are hit again, he will not be able to say that he did everything possible.
On the domestic front, all the attacks we have heard from the democrats for the past eight years about the deficit and their calls for a balanced budget will now quietly be forgotten, though this was hardly unexpected. Candidate Obama looked to be a Big Government liberal, and the current financial crisis is showing that assessment to be correct. The size and scope of government will explode, with a corresponding loss of liberty to the people. One thing that most on the left simply do not understand is the simple fact that increased government always comes at the expense of liberty. The more government, the less liberty.
Obama is betting that the increase in government will do more good than harm. History is strongly against this idea. It is now pretty clear that Hoover’s attempts to use government to avoid the depression only ensured it, and that FDR’s use of government to end the depression only extended and deepened it. Thus we may be looking at a repeat of history where Bush’s massive bailouts serve as the pretext for Obama programs. I have heard Obama supporters claiming that we cannot look to the past because this crisis is new and unlike others, that we are in uncharted territory. Therefore Obama’s plans will work despite the evidence of the past. Again I hope he is correct.
On perhaps my biggest issue, judges, I can only hope that no Supreme Court judges leave the bench, particularly no judges who reject the concept of a living Constitution. One of the few areas where I heard Obama speak without hedging or caveats is on judges. He clearly supports the idea that judges should see the Constitution as a living document, one where judges are free to rule based on what they think is right, not limited to what the constitution actually says.
There are a lot of other areas, but the closer one gets to details, the more the uncertainty grows. These I will address in the coming years as the details become clear. But one big thing has changed. Obama can no longer vote present. He will have to make the tough decisions, and will have to take responsibility for the consequences. He is betting big that the war on terror will remain as it is now a secondary issue, and that his massive spending will improve the economy. I really hope he is right, just like I really hoped that McCain would win. But, deep down, I have a lot of nagging doubts.
Looking Back – Bush
We have come to the end of the Bush Presidency. There are many ways to think about the last eight years. Like all presidents, things were mixed. Bush did some things well, others badly. Overall, with the exception of the war on terror, things went pretty much as I expected, or rather as I feared. The defining issue of the Bush Presidency will be the war. In fact, there were almost three Bushes, Bush the Commander in Chief leading the war on terror, Bush the domestic President, and Bush the leader.
In the end, I believe that serious and objective historians will have a hard time faulting Bush the commander in chief. While his detractors quibble about various missteps here and there, more sober historians know that no serious war is fought without problems and missteps, and that the current one is no exception. Yet while the attacks of the critics are much louder, often to the point of hysteria, than in past conflicts, in comparison to past conflicts, this one has really gone amazingly well.
The big point of disagreement will be over the invasion of Iraq. But I believe that as time passes people will see that Bush was right, for the choice was really not, as it is so often portrayed a choice between removing Saddam or containing him. It is very clear now to any who care look, that the sanctions were not working as they had been thoroughly corrupted by the oil for food program. While it is true that Saddam had no large stockpiles of WMDs at the time of the invasion, it is likewise true that he did not need them, as he had plans and mechanisms in place to create them in a little as a few weeks, once the sanctions collapsed, which they were close to doing. So the belief that we could have simply contained Saddam was at best an illusion, and illusions do not make for good choices in history.
Most important, Bush was completely successful in preventing further attacks in the United States, something no one thought was even possible in the months following 9/11. So as commander in chief, Bush gets a B. The reason for B instead of an A, will be explained a little later.
This brings us to Bush the domestic President. Here the record is much more mixed. When Bush first started running in the primaries, I did not support him. While more of a conservative than his father, he still was at best moderately conservative. In addition, he kept talking about “compassionate conservatism.” This was a phrase I first heard from Pete Wilson when he was running for Governor of California. Wilson, a liberal Republican, who won the election, went on to massively increase state spending, and to destroyed the Republican Party in California.
Now I did not expect Bush to be as bad as Wilson. He did after all seem firmly committed to tax cuts. Still I believed that he would increase social spending. Looking back on the last eight years, one of the biggest problems of the Bush administration has been his lack of concern about spending. I would normally write this as a failure, but failure would imply that Bush had attempted to restrain spending and while he did this to some extent, it was too little too late. Instead he was active participant in much of the spending increases.
In fact on a whole range of domestic policy issues from spending to illegal immigration to education, Bush has been much more of a moderate standing in opposition to his party than anything else. The biggest successes have been his solid appointment of Judges, particularly to the supreme court, and his tax cuts which, despite the claims of his detractors, resulted in solid economic growth throughout most of his presidency.
The current economic problems are a major failure for his Presidency. The Bush administration early on saw the looming problems that were resulting from the sub-prime housing market pushed by Fannie-Mae and Freddie-Mac. But all his attempts to fix these problems were blocked by the Democrats, the last major effort being in 2005. When the Democrats won control of Congress in 2006, any possibility of averting the current crisis became impossible. So as domestic President gets a C-.
During the early primaries, I saw some of Bush’s father in him and this brings me to Bush the leader. The elder Bush struck me as a good executive but without vision. He was great when dealing with a particular problem once it landed on his desk, as Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait demonstrated, but did not really have any clear idea of where to lead the country. George W seemed to have a little more of this “vision thing”, but still was more of a manager than a leader, and ultimately seemed more geared for getting along, rather than leading.
This, I believe, is Bush’s most serious weakness as President. A President is not just a good executive, someone who can make tough decisions and see them through. The President is the leader of the nation, and in a democratic government it is incumbent on Presidents to not only say what they are doing but to present a case and argue for it in the public square. Bush did not do this.
That he could do it was demonstrated in the election of 2000, and 2004. But following the election Bush for the most part abandoned the public square to his opponents, leaving his supporters often puzzled as to why While House was not even attempting certain arguments, or presenting certain information, or in some cases saying anything at all. This was particularly true following the 2004 election. With no more elections to win, in many respects the Bush Presidency went AWOL from the public square, and his low approval rating are the results.
Now with no more elections to win, low approval rating may seem irrelevant, but again we live in a democracy, and a democracy that will go on after Bush leaves. Part of the process of governing as President in a democratic system is making the case for your policies before the people. Bush’s failure to lead on the war on terror, for example, has allowed his opponents to define our actions, resulting in a lessening of support for our current efforts and virtually precluding future ones.
As a result, the leaders of dangerous regimes such as Syria and Iran can relax, as Bush’s failure to lead on the war on terror in the public square has made it far more difficult that any real action would be taken to stop them. This is the reason for Bush getting only a B on the war, instead of an A, for this too is an important part of being Commander in Chief.
While of far lesser importance, but important never the less, Bush’s failure to lead and resulting low approval rating have translated to the Republicans as a whole. Bush is not only the President, he is the leader of the Republican party. But what can an organization do when its leader will not lead? Thus on leadership I give Bush a D.
Bush 41’s lack of the “vision thing” gave us Clinton. Pete Wilson’s “compassionate conservatism” destroyed the Republican party in California. So as I considered Bush the candidate back in 2000, while clearly for me better than Gore, I was concerned that whatever positives a Bush presidency would bring, they would be wiped out by a resurgent Democratic party resulting from the weakness I saw at the time. Sadly, these fears turned out to be correct.
Hitchens – God Is Not Great XXVIII
Listen to the MP3
In my extended review of Christopher Hitchens book “God Is Not Great,” I have finally reached chapter 17. At this chapter Hitchens has finished his main arguments against religion, the vast majority of which were examples of religious people behaving badly. Of course this leads to a natural question of what about atheists who have behaved badly. So here Hitchens attempts to show that same standard he has used to attack religion, somehow does not apply to atheism.
He sums up the situation writing, “When the worst has been said about the Inquisition and the witch trials and the Crusades and the Islamic imperial conquests and the horrors of the Old Testament, is it not true that secular and atheist regimes have committed crimes and massacres that are, in the scale of things, at least as bad if not worse?” (pg 229)
Hitchens begins his defense with one of his typically sarcastic and false, comments that “it is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists.” (pg 230). Hitchens “inexpensive observation” (pg 230) makes a number of errors key to this entire discussion. The first is that the argument against secularism is not that the crimes of the secular regimes equaled those of religion, but that in a single century they far exceed those of Christianity in 20 centuries. The Spanish Inquisition one the classic examples of the crimes of Christianity resulted in the deaths of about 2000 people. While a terrible crime these number hardly even compare to the 11 million dead in the concentration camps of Hitler, whose crimes don’t even compare to those of Stalin and Mao who were responsible for the deaths of well over 100 million people.
More importantly whereas the crimes of Christianity were the result a mixture of corruption in the church and barbaric nature of the past, the crimes of these secular movements occurred in the enlighten modern times, and were much more inherent to these regimes, than corruptions within them. So there is hardly any equating going on.
Primarily such arguments against secularism are aimed at showing the problems with atheist attacks in two ways. First, even if everything atheists said were true and characterized correctly, this would not argue in favor or secularism as secularism’s record is far worst. Second it shows the inconsistency, and thus illogical nature of the secular arguments, for the same reasoning can equally be used against them. Thus in reality it is not so much an attack against atheism per se, but rather atheist’s reasoning.
Following his initial remarks Hitchens proceeds with his main line of defense by first attempting to link these secular regimes to religion, writing, “For most of human history, the idea of the total or absolute state was intimately bound up with religion.” (pg 231) There are a whole range of problems here, not the least of which are historical. But there is more fundamental problem with this whole line of argument, for no matter how one attempts to make it there are tremendous problems.
First is the question of whether these secular movements were religious. If these secular regimes which were strongly anti-traditional religion were in fact religious, then one must have a definition of religion that is broader than just a belief in one or more Gods, a definition of religion that would include atheism.
Now, as I discuss in my book , Christianity and Secularism, I believe such a broader understanding of religion to be more accurate, and that atheism is at least fundamentally religious. But if this is the case, then atheists are either arguing against their own views, or their arguments must only apply to some religions, not all. Either way there are problems. The only other option would be to try and claim that their brand of atheism was not religious like these other types of atheism, but that would certainly involve special pleading.
On the other hand if these secular regimes were not religions, but only adopted a characteristic of religion, there are still major problems. For such characteristic to be found outside of religion would mean that these characteristics were not and of themselves religious but rather something that could be found in religious movements or non-religious movements, and thus could not be held against religion.
This in fact is a problem with most atheist arguments against religion, and is found throughout Hitchens’ book. That such evils can be found in religious people, in the end is little more than a confirmation of the biblical teaching that we live in a fallen world corrupted by sin, and that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Rom 3:23)
However if this latter line is taken, the argument against secularism remains, for while these evils can be found in both religious and secular people, the secular regimes of the 20th century rejecting religious morality, and instead looking to science as there guide committed the greatest evils the world has ever know.
Based on Hitchens’ discussion, he seem to fall into the latter category, ultimately arguing, not so much against religion, but against “the totalitarian mind-set” that has “‘total answers to all questions.” While it allows Hitchens to distinguish his view of atheism from these other type of atheism, it likewise excludes all traditional religions that do not share such views. In short, we find that most of his arguments against religion have really been again something else.
This is Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity: a Faith Based on Fact.
