Conservatives And Obama

In a comment thread on the Volokh Conspiracy about Douglas Kmiec’s endorsement of Obama, there was the usual refrain of "obviously, Kmiec is nuts/dishonest/traitorous/stupid". Then there was this response:

I’d encourage anyone who’s interested in more than knee-jerk reactions to actually read Kmiec’s piece, and actually read The Audacity of Hope, and actually read Senator Obama’s position summaries online; and seriously ask why a prominent, intelligent conservative would endorse Obama. I’d go so far as to suggest that, for those of us interested in forward-thinking conservatism, Senator Obama provides the best hope since Reagan.

He’s the only candidate that has the potential, and an expressed desire, to change the debate and actually face questions like: when should government intervene at all? when it does, how can it be useful and limited? We might not agree with all of Senator Obama’s answers, but he’s the only one that I’ve seen even express an interest in wrestling with the questions.

A Dish reader comments:

I’m a liberal, but this captures for me the reason why my support of Obama is not just as a liberal supporting a liberal candidate, but as an American who wants to move our country forward, supporting a candidate who poses a better chance to do so than I’ve seen in my lifetime.

Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

Put this email in the dissent category if you wish, but this needs to be said.

No, I do not blame Obama for sticking with Wright. Nor do I blame you for sticking with the church. I am an agnostic at best, but I hold no contempt toward people of faith. None of us will know truly know until we meet (or not) our maker. However, I do take exception with your comment that you cannot disown. As a straight man, if the church had treated me in the same way they have treated gays, I would have walked. If I were gay, and anyone in my family told me that I would burn in hell for that, I would tell them where to get off, and that would be that. Let me also say that I have a relative who is in prison. He robbed my elderly grandmother, and his mother, and dealt drugs from the formers home. I have nor want any further relationship with him. He is, therefore, disowned. In sum, Wright never intentionally hurt Obama. But the church did and continues to hurt you. I could not, like you, continue to make peace with that.

I have not made peace with that. There is little peace to be made. But my faith says that sometimes we are it to make peace but to endure and hope tat by enduring, however inadequately and sometimes angrily and somtimes constructively, we can bear witness to something that the church will grow from. And my faith teaches forgiveness, which is not the same as exoneration. This is my home. Where else would I go?

Obama and The Black Family

Linda Chavez makes the vital point that a key to African-American advancement is the rebuilding of the black family. I think she’s right; and the lack of many fathers for black kids and poor parenting is central to the lack of advance of the next generation. And I think Obama needs to make an entire speech on this subject at some point. He had no real father in his life and was reared by his mother and grandparents. He did all right, obviously, but, as I have seen in my own urban neighborhood for too many years, too many others don’t.

Supporting marriage, defending marriage and insisting on responsible parenting are all key. I think he needs to do more; but it is not fair to say he has not addressed these issues. Here’s one of his more memorable campaign riffs directed at a primarily black audience. It gets very interesting half-way through so hang in there through the education stuff. Oddly, I think this kind of discussion, while seeming to define him again as a black candidate, also reassures white candidates that he gets what went wrong in the 1960s and 1970s. I should also add that his own marriage and parenting seems to be a great personal example of how an absent father need not perpetuate itself from generation to generation. So Linda is half-right on the facts and totally right on the analysis. But few politicians have the ability to get this message across. It is not John McCain’s fault that he cannot effectively talk about this to black audiences very well. Obama can. And must.

Yglesias Award Nominee

"Today I endorse Barack Obama for president of the United States.  I believe him to be a person of integrity, intelligence and genuine good will. I take him at his word that he wants to move the nation beyond its religious and racial divides and to return United States to that company of nations committed to human rights…

No doubt some of my friends will see this as a matter of party or intellectual treachery.  I regret that and I respect their disagreement.  But they will readily agree that as Republicans, we are first Americans.  As Americans, we must voice our concerns for the well-being of our nation without partisanship when decisions that have been made endanger the body politic.  Our president has involved our nation in a military engagement without sufficient justification or clear objective.  In so doing, he has incurred both tragic loss of life and extraordinary debt jeopardizing the economy and the well-being of the average American citizen. In pursuit of these fatally flawed purposes, the office of the presidency, which it was once my privilege to defend in public office formally, has been distorted beyond its constitutional assignment.  Today, I do no more than raise the defense of that important office anew, but as private citizen," – Douglas Kmiec, Slate.

To grasp the full integrity of this piece, check out Kmiec’s bio. This isn’t the first time that Kmiec has shown an open mind in this respect. He won an Yglesias Award nomination a month ago on the DIsh. What’s impressive to me is that he does not in any way recant his own theoconservative positions on marriage and abortion, while seeing that there is a lot at stake in this election, and a lot of competing issues to take into account.
 

Staying In A Church

A reader writes:

With reference to the Obama/Rev Wright controversy: As a practicing Catholic, It took me Holy Week to sort it all out. I went to church on  Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday Eve and Easter Sunday. I stopped counting how many times I heard references in the Gospel readings to "the Jews"  and how He was handed over to "The Jews." The name "Judas" translated literally  means "Jewish man", so that name is derogatory in itself. Not to mention that I was taught in High School religion that Judas was the Apostle who handled the money for Jesus and his followers (like they would only give that job to a "Jew"). And I heard twice this week that  the crowds yelled that they wanted Jesus dead and that his blood would be on them "And Their Children."  And all the priests and the  whole Sanhedrin sound like a bunch of manipulating sacrilegious liars. Yet, certain words of Matthew are not going to cause me to go out and hate the Jews, or to leave the Catholic Church. I wish those words were not said the way Matthew said them.   

I think Obama has a right to wish that Rev. Wright had not said things quite the way he said them. But I would caution any good Christian to think twice before criticizing the phraseology of any church liturgy or sermon. Because there is probably a lot of language in your own church’s liturgy and sermons that can be offensive to others.

Or as C.S. Lewis put it in the voice of two devils:

"… the search for a ‘suitable’ church makes the man a critic where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil.

What He wants of the layman in church is an attitude which may, indeed, be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful, but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise – does not waste time in thinking about what it rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going.   … There is hardly any sermon, or any book, which may not be dangerous to us if received in this temper."

God knows my own church has hurt me and others as deeply as anyone can be hurt. And I have felt very estranged and lost these past few years. But I cannot search for another church as if it were another club and I cannot and will not leave in my heart the church that taught me the greatest truths about human love and life, and that brought me the astonishing good news of Jesus. Church is like family. It heals and it wounds; goodness knows how it wounds. But it cannot and should not be disowned.

Goodbye To All That

A reader makes a point about the impact of last week that seems to me as powerful as it is relevant, and it resonates with Chris Caldwell’s point:

I worked four years as a teacher in the Black community in Oakland in the early 90’s and these ideas from Wright’s sermons were endemic. To me the remarkable thing about Obama is that he has positioned himself, and set as a goal for himself, to lead Black culture towards one of participation and non-victimization. You can’t do that if you’re not participating as a member of the Black community, whatever state you find it in.

How do we go forward? 3 percent of all Black men are in prison, and it’s 11 percent of black men aged 25-29. Mostly on drug charges. The community has been in crisis for decades. And here come many conservatives with a message to marginalize the Black community further. 

What is more helpful here? That, or putting into a position of leadership someone who has really heard and understood all these arguments in the Black community, disagrees with them and says so and yet is still respected there, and asks young Black men to take responsibility and shows how it’s possible to live a decent life in America?  It seems pretty obvious.

Block Those Metaphors

"We have two great candidates–one a hard working, never give up eager beaver, and one an inspiring, heart-leapingly brilliant stallion… The stallion makes heart-stopping speeches. And the beaver just beavers along. And the stallion is drunk on his own rhetoric. Why not? It’s great rhetoric. We need beavers and we need stallions. Beavers get the work done. Stallions inspire us. And they both have limitations. Stallions have fragile legs (think Barbaro). And beavers are nothing without their teeth," – Erica Jong.

Dreams And His Father

A reader writes:

As a practicing psychologist, I am struck that from what I have heard and read, none of the commentators or political pundits have speculated on the role of Obama’s fatherless upbringing on the strength of his attachment to Rev. Wright.  It is not uncommon for male children with absent fathers to develop strong, idealized relationships with male figures whom they perceive as being both powerful and caring.  I suspect this phenomenon transcends racial and ethnic categories.  Perhaps those who are critical of Obama’s commitment to his relationship with Wright would view it with more understanding and compassion from this perspective.  Oftentimes, the idealizer has blind spots about the idealized individual’s limitations and personality flaws.  Optimally, these blind spots need to be addressed and resolved.  Obama’s speech suggests that he has come to see Rev. Wright in more realistic terms – as an imperfect but emotionally significant figure in his life.  From a professional perspective as a therapist, that would represent a fairly successful resolution of the developmental circumstances which created the need for an idealized male figure.