Monday, July 21, 2008
Audacity, Hope, Etc. (Chapters 6 and 7)
Chapter 6 is titled “Faith”.
I got my wish – a fluff chapter.
The first third can be summarized as “I’m a Christian.” Congratulations. My gut feeling is that he is Christian only because it is convenient to be so, but that’s just a gut feeling.
The middle third - we need religious people to act on their own outside of government… as long as they work toward progressive goals.
I agree completely with the first part, though I wouldn’t restrict it to religious people. The good functioning of our nation and our government requires a moral and upright citizenry that will do the right thing with the freedom they have, regardless of whether those actions are motivated by religion or something else. However, that’s only part of what Obama is talking about. One specific example he uses is mega-churches organizing fund-raising and lobbying campaigns to prevent cuts in anti-poverty programs. There is something fundamentally disturbing to me about that.
Churches running soup kitchens and food pantries? Great.
Churches organizing campaigns to prevent failed wealth transfer programs from being cut, thus becoming just another nucleation point for people that want to live off the backs of others? Not so great.
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The last third is about the separation of church and state. Though unsurprisingly he’s got the establishment clause all wrong, and he goes into quite a bit of detail about it, he is not a fanatic on the issue. He does not support removal of references to God from all public venues, and he does not support preventing religious groups from using public facilities like schools for meetings. He does however imply that local communities should not be allowed to choose a religious curriculum if they so choose.
Other tidbits:
He’s opposed to gay marriage, though it appears that it is more of a practical opposition rather than a principled one - “...in the absence of any meaningful consensus, the heightened focus on marriage was a distraction from other, attainable measures to prevent discrimination against gays and lesbians.”
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Chapter 7 is titled “Race”.
This chapter appears to be fluff as well. Racism is bad, mmmmkay. Yeah, that didn’t need to take 30 pages.
It starts to get disturbing when he asserts that since 30% of the people employed in my office park are not black, there is clear evidence of pervasive racism. I don’t understand how he can say that, and two paragraphs later talk about the “lack of emphasis on educational achievement” in the black community. I will not contend that racism is completely gone in America – that’s obviously false. But to claim that salary inequality and lack of minorities getting hard science PhDs is evidence of racism, while acknowledging the very real and severe cultural problems that play a leading role in keeping the black community down, is just strange.
Even worse – he thinks forcing private companies to hire minorities on a quota basis is a perfectly acceptable solution to the problem.
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Then there is a big chunk on immigration. Typically, there were lots of words and little to say. The gist of it seems to be that immigrants are not a threat, we should welcome them, our borders should not be completely open, he’s sympathetic to the threat that a glut of low-wage workers pose to the unions, and increased economic inequality caused by a massive influx of immigrants is to be avoided at all costs. Lots of middle of the road non-committal rhetoric, but that last part I find just odd. America has a long history of taking in immigrants and giving them opportunities to build wealth that don’t exist elsewhere. This so-called increasing economic inequality is merely an artifact of a constant stream of people entering the economic spectrum at the low end and working their way up. Longitudinal studies of individuals have proven that increasing economic inequality is a myth.
Let’s assume for a moment that Obama’s assertion is true – that we need to avoid bringing in a perpetual “servant underclass”. How would he suggest we avoid this? Welfare for the newly arrived? Some other economic handout? Immediate access to our welfare state for newly arrived immigrants is a recipe for disaster, and most European countries as well as Australia and New Zealand have recognized that. Obama doesn’t say what he wants to do. Really, we should do what we’ve always done – get government out of the way and give people the economic freedom to lift themselves up. THAT is the core of American values, and THAT is why people come here.
