Is God a Democrat?

Before the 2008 Democratic Convention, James Dobson and Focus On the Family promoted a prayer campaign asking God to rain on Barack Obama's open air convention speech in Denver. Well, it didn't come to pass; the weather was great that day, and the convention a resounding success. Instead, there cameth an economic meltdown near the end of the 2008 campaign season, convincing America that George W. Bush's economic policies were, in fact, horrible (and that John McCain had nothing helpful to say about the crisis), and catapulting Obama into the White House.

Now we have Hurricane Sandy, which altered the flow and tenor of the campaign by putting climate change squarely back on the political radar, and earning Obama an endorsement from New York's independent-minded mayor Michael Bloomberg.

So, do these uncannily-timed catastrophic events prove God is a Democrat? If you ask me, I'd say no, because I don't believe in a deity that sends plagues and murders first-born sons, much less chooses sides in an election. Even if I did, I would not presume, as do the supremely arrogant Dobson and his ilk, to have seen His yard sign. I instead draw a much more down-to-earth conclusion: real-world events favor the Democrats because that's what real-world events tend to do.

The modern Republican Party draws its fuel from myth: lone-wolf libertarianism, Randian capitalist utopianism, the inherently corrupt State (always teetering on the brink of Stalinism) and the Founding Fathers as pious prophets—not to mention a gaggle of conspiracy theories, demagoguery and hyperbolic histrionics. It's a nice way to avoid facing facts, such as global warming being real, evolution being true, taxes and regulation being necessary, the constitutional separation of church and state, and the like.

But facts, as William C. Redfield once said, have a way of substituting themselves for fancies. It's happened again and again in history as conservative stands have been dashed against the shores of reality. The Royalists did not prevail in the 1700s, nor the antebellum slave apologists and Know-Nothings, the Hooverites, the Isolationists, the John Birchers, the segregationists; and so it will be for today's Tea Party, as environmental crisis, science, economic necessity and 21st century realpolitik make these ideas irrelevant. Sorry, folks: history just aint on your side.

Meantime, we have events like Superstorm Sandy to remind us of why we should listen to those proffering data and expertise rather than claiming the mantle of righteousness—especially when of the divine sort.

An Open Letter to the Rev. William Owens

I received an abominable e-mail today about President Obama from a Rev. William Owens.  If you want to read the offending bit of tripe, click here. This is my response: 

I think you know that much of what you say in your recent press release, "Obama's Trajectory Leads to Tragedy," is lies. This makes you not an idiot, but a fool, for spreading such poison, insulting the majority of Americans who voted for Obama and undermining faith in both the office of the president and our tripartite system of government.

To your claims:

Obama "apologized for America"

Patently untrue. But humbly acknowledging past mistakes is surely the mature—and Christian—thing to do. To read what Obama actually said, check this article: http://nyti.ms/teugS8

An excerpt:

    Let’s start with the question of whether Mr. Obama has, in fact, apologized. In a series of speeches at the start of his tenure, the president acknowledged mistakes made by his predecessor, George W. Bush — which of course counts not as apology but as standard political critique — but also some that lay deeper in the past and were more systematic. In Cairo, for example, he admitted that “the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government” — that of Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. At the United Nations he acknowledged that the United States had “dragged its feet” on climate change.

    Do these and similar statements constitute “apologies”? More important, would it be bad if they did? Presidential apologies, or those delivered by senior government officials, are not unprecedented. In a major speech in Cairo in 2005, Condoleezza Rice, then Mr. Bush’s secretary of state, said that “for 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East — and we achieved neither.” What was she doing if not apologizing on behalf of the United States — and vowing to put an end to a pattern of misguided policy?

Undermining the Family

Supporting same-sex marriage means supporting the right of civil marriage for gay people. It does not mean that any church, anywhere, must perform same-sex marriages or accept such unions as a sacrament. The Democratic party platform makes this explicitly clear. No mainstream Democrat (or any Democrat I have ever heard) has stated they wish to force pastors to do or say anything in regards to gay marriage or civil unions. Your claim otherwise is pure demagoguery and fear-mongering, designed to inspire division and hatred. A fine Christian thing to do!


Godless

As I am sure you are aware, most Democrats—but not all—believe in God, just as most Republicans —but not all—do. Obama, as you are well aware, is a practicing Christian. It is our right as Americans to believe or not believe what we wish. Just as many of the founding fathers held religious views (such as Unitarianism) you, as a conservative Christian, would consider abhorrent, so today there are many millions of Americans who hold views you do not agree with. It is not the job of the government, today any more than in 1782, to endorse or condemn any of those views. It is, in fact, un-American and contrary to the spirit of the Constitution to expect a political party to align itself with any one religious viewpoint. Our country was built on the idea that religion is for the home and the community, not something to be codified in law or trumpeted from a political podium (hundreds of years of bloody European history had taught The Founders a valuable lesson about aligning politics and religious partisanship) .

Whether with gay marriage or a religious political platform, you try to make the argument that Obama wishes to inject an agenda into the private lives of citizens. In fact, it is your agenda that would do just this—forcing government-backed religious ideas into the doctor's office and churches that choose to endorse gay marriage, and delegitimizing as anti-American the practices of Muslims, Hindus and other faiths not following the "God of the Bible." It reminds me of what the Nazis once said about Jews being not "real Germans."


"He that hideth hatred with lying lips, and he that uttereth a slander, is a fool."
- Proverbs 10:18   

School Choice Advocates: Mailing it In

It's odd what school choice advocates will say to argue their point. Take, for instance, a recent suggestion that subsidized voucher systems would do for the schools what competition from Fed Ex and UPS has done for the United States Postal Service. The Postal Service was forced to introduce order tracking and other improvements, making it a much more businesslike, results-driven operation; a voucher system, the argument goes, would do the same for public schools.

The analogy is far more apt than I think was intended, because, as we all know, the USPS is staring at insolvency, with billions of dollars of losses. Why? Inefficiencies and labor costs are part of the reason, but what will doom the Postal Service in the long run is being stuck with the mail private carriers refuse to handle. "By cutting back on mailboxes, collections, stamp machines and window clerks they seem poised to get rid of first class," one commentator on periodicals industry blog Dead Tree Edition opined. "That will leave the PO with nothing but junk mail and whatever UPS and Fed-Ex don't want."

Add to this that the Postal Service has a federal mandate to deliver mail to every corner of the land, including those areas unprofitable for delivery. Private carriers have no such burden. They can pick and choose who gets the mail.

In other words, a public agency charged to provide universal, quality service is being gutted of its most profitable business by private entities with an unfair competitive advantage. Those who can choose the best product naturally have the best results; those who can't get whatever is left behind.

This reminds me of what is happening to our public schools.

Here in Philadelphia, as in many other U.S. cities, flight from public schools has created a self-reinforcing ghetto system, as kids with means and good home support continue to trickle away to independent and parochial schools. A federally-supported voucher system could make flight from public education the norm across America, not just in urban areas.

The fewer quality students there are, the worse schools will get, leading to even more abandonment. The smaller the constituency of public-school users, the smaller the appetite for paying taxes to support them. As public schools become mere dumping grounds for the impoverished, underprivileged and—yes—poorly raised, school choice advocates will call for specially equipped, very expensive, publicly-funded institutions to "handle" them. We might as well just merge the schools with the prisons at that point.

Is this the educational system we want for our children?

Three things need to happen to improve public education in the United States. First, activists need to put less emphasis on the idea that schools improve communities, and focus more on the notion that communities (students, parents, programs that teach respect for education and support families) improve schools. Second, our funding for public education must become more equitable, establishing a baseline for quality education across all districts nationwide. Third, we must recognize that subsidized school choice offers no solution to inequality and social decline—and may accomplish the exact opposite.

The first step requires courage from mostly liberal education advocates willing to abandon long-held policy assumptions (e.g. paying teachers more or purchasing computers for classrooms is not always the magic bullet). The third, similar gumption from mostly conservative advocates for school choice. The second step ought to be supported by everyone, but could never succeed on its own without a commitment across the political spectrum on the other two.

Following this model, perhaps we can bring real reform to education—all while keeping more children out of the dead letter office.