Barack Obama’s campaign theme has been “Change.” This sing-song of change has already mesmerized large portions of the electorate. If you read people write about Obama or if you listen to people interviewed you begin to notice there is real belief on their part in the idea of change for the sake of change. They don’t ask what Obama’s change is from and to. They don’t ask just exactly what change Obama has in mind. They don’t care if the change that is being proposed is realistic or possible. They don’t care what the implications of change might be. They only want change.

Most Americans, not being able to remember the last episode of their favorite television sitcom, don’t remember that this is not the first time that change has been a campaign theme. Jimmy Carter, in 1976 ran a campaign theme of change. America had just been through Watergate and Vietnam and Carter, a political neophyte, ran as an someone outside the beltway who could bring real change to Washington D.C. Again in 1992 Clinton & Gore ran on a change campaign promising to bring generational change to Washington D. C. Even as far back as 1952 in the Eisenhower campaign the idea of “change” was prevalent.

Now some of this is natural and inevitable. One way to move the party out of power into power is by accentuating the differences and calling for change. The problem though, is that in recent campaigns you don’t really get an explanation of the differences on a policy by policy basis but rather instead what one gets is an appeal to change that is based on change for changes sake. Since 1976 the appeal of change has been been on a more visceral, emotive and personal level. Change is now more about somebody’s charisma then it is about the policies by which they would govern.

This kind of change – a change for change sake – is the kind of change that one would expect of a people who are governed by an existentialist World and life view. For the existentialist the central motif is the idea of becoming or of always being in process. An existentialist world and life view thus automatically recoils against continuity and the status quo since existentialism is itself about always changing, always becoming, always remaking ones-self. Is it the case that Obama, with his campaign theme of “change” has tapped into the mother vein of American self-consciousness? Has he become the existenialist candidate for a existentialist people.

This cry for change is also reminiscent because in it we may hear echoes of pagan religion where the pursuit of chaos was seen as the means of social regeneration. This was a theme that R. J. Rushdoony mentioned frequently in his writings. An embrace of change merely for the sake of change as that is pursued by a functionally existentialist people communicates the irrational belief that order and social regeneration can arrive by the means of chaos. What else can a support for change merely for the sake of change be but a pursuit of the chaotic?

Also when we consider that to support change merely for the sake of change, with no ability to rationally articulate whey change is being supported is a prime example of existentialism where an irrational faith in irrational faith is all the reason one needs to have in order to believe in anything. If the American electorate, or any large portion of it, is going to vote for Obama merely on the “gut instinct” that the change he represents would be “good” then we must conclude that that portion of the electorate are functional existentialists.

Now, this is not to argue that change is always bad. A hard bitten allegiance to the status quo and to old paths represents its own set of unique problems. Change has its place, but there is a difference between notions of Biblical change and notions of pagan change. I see very little in the messianic attraction to Obama’s call for “change” that is representative of Biblical notions of “change.” What I see instead is a existentialist people prepared to vote for a existentialist candidate for existentialist reasons.

The American Conservative has a short blurb in its recent edition lamenting California’s judicially imposed recognition of homo marriage. They are concerned about the thorny legal issues that await religious entities who do not recognize gay unions.

The tension between freedom and coercion, however, is a necessity in any regime that empowers the state to punish purveyors of “discrimination.” What we have effectively is a clash of visions and a struggle to define civil rights. Sometimes a civil right is a freedom right or the right of a person to act free from coercion. Such an understanding demands restraint and forbearance on behalf of the state.

Other times and in other contexts civil rights become benefit rights, whereby a person is “entitled” to something from others, who have a corresponding obligation to put their hands up and allow their wallet to be taken. The alleged right of the elderly to tax receipts taken from the mouths of children would be one example.

Civil rights may also be clothed as nondiscrimination rights, whereby others are bound to disregard various characteristics of individuals when they are pursuing employment, housing, education, and public accommodation. For example, an employer or restaurant owner may not discriminate against an applicant or customer on the grounds of race or gender.

Advocates of “civil rights” in the second and third senses actually reduce “civil rights” in the first sense. So for instance an individual’s right to dispose of his private property as he wishes (a freedom right, properly understood) is contravened by the nondiscrimination rights of others. Advocates of nondiscrimination rights and policies therefore empower the state as an agent to level any and all institutions who “discriminate” or want to maintain their own freedom of action or character. Civil rights crusaders, despite their lionization in the press and culture at large, are not interested one wit in individual liberty but wield a doctrinaire egalitarianism designed to create homogenization.

As it pertains to the question of homosexuality, we see that cherished rights to religious liberty likewise are kicked aside and torn asunder by rampaging gangs of bureaucratic thugs. The editors of TAC cite the example of Catholic Charities in Massachusetts. Rather than complying with state law requiring mandating that gays be allowed to adopt children, Catholic Charities simply got out of the adoption business. A Methodist camp in New Jersey lost tax exempt status by refusing to allow its facilities in a lesbian “commitment ceremony.” Meanwhile, the “New Mexico Human Rights Commission” fined a photographer who refused to take snapshots for a lesbian couple on religious grounds.

In short, in the name of tolerance and pluralism Christians are to be deprived their right to shun moral perversion. In so doing it is the pink lobby and its willing accomplices in the organs of cultural power that are legislating their morality in the name of the false gods of pluralism, equality, and tolerance.

In 2006 B. Hussein Obama decided to display his brilliant knowledge of Biblical hermeneutics in the public square. Recently, James Dobson took issue with Obama.

Here I interact a little with the speech that Obama gave that Dobson criticized.

While I’ve already laid out some of the work that progressive leaders need to do, I want to talk a little bit about what conservative leaders need to do—some truths they need to acknowledge.

For one, they need to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn’t the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland who didn’t want the established churches to impose their views on folks who were getting happy out in the fields and teaching the scripture to slaves. It was the forbearers of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religion, because they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it.

First off B. Hussein Obama fails to tell us how he understands “the separation of church and state.” He seems to have the understanding that the First Amendment guaranteed that none of the states could have an established church. Quite to the contrary, the First Amendment only held that the federal government could not impose an established church on the states. The phrase “separation of church and state” is nowhere found in America’s founding documents. It was a phrase lifted from a letter by Thomas Jefferson that was largely forgotten until the mid-19th century, then only being appealed to as having some kind of nebulous force of law in a Supreme Court decision in the 20th century.

Second, B. Hussein Obama is correct in identifying the Baptists as the ones who introduced the heresy of putative religious neutrality into the American framework. Now we must admit that this putative religious neutrality had a sanguine effect in America for it allowed Protestant Christians (and a few Roman Catholics) to build a civilization and a culture in America without internecine religious warfare. What this 18th century thinking allowed was for a nation to be theologically Christian without being denominationally prescriptive. This innovative thinking worked for as long as it did in these United States in part due to the reason that there was so much room to spread out. Plenty of space goes a long way towards tolerating your wacky Methodist or Congregationalist or Presbyterian neighbors.

However, admitting that a Christian nation could work in the context of denominational pluralism is a far cry from admitting that a multi-cultural nation can work in the context of religious pluralism. It is one thing to build a Christian culture that is elastic and flexible enough to include Campbellites, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, Quakers, Dunkers, Congregationalists and other assorted denominational nuts and bolts; it is quite another thing to build a culture that can contain and survive Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and God only knows what else. The former arrangement allowed for a “sweet spot” where all of the different Christian faith traditions could find common ground and stand together. The latter arrangement will not and can not yield the same kind of “sweet spot,” because there is such an inherent anti-thesis in the varied religious expressions.

So B. Hussein Obama is right in his Baptist bit analysis but he is wrong for suggesting that the application still applies.

Third, note how B. Hussein Obama injects slavery into this argument. Is Obama subtly suggesting that those who disagree with him on this issue have a slave master mentality?

Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America’s population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

Unfortunately this is probably true. The implication of this, in my estimation, is that the nation will only be able to be held together by force. A multi-religious, multi-cultural nation can only be ruled in a strong-arm fashion since no natural bonds of commonality can be achieved. Where there is a multi-religious and multi-cultural nation there can be no common literature to bind people, no common music to bind people, no common worship to bind people, no common traditions to bind people, and no common worldview to bind people. All that is left is force of arms with the state becoming god.

The dangers of sectarianism are far greater than even B. Hussein Obama realizes, and his solution to fix sectarianism by feeding and coddling it will only increase the dangers.

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount—a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our Bibles. Folks haven’t been reading their Bibles.

Answers to the questions in order that they are asked above.

1) The Bible’s.
2) Neither.
3) All of them (I think Obama is implying the Bible contradicts itself here).
4) We could go with Ephesians or Philemon that teaches that slavery is ok. Obama hasn’t been reading his Bible.
5) The dietary laws were eclipsed in Acts 10. Obama hasn’t been reading his Bible.
6) Was God being cruel and unreasonable in requiring this?
7) Matthew 5-7 must be read against Romans 13. Obama hasn’t been reading his Bible.

Look, the obvious problem is that B. Hussein Obama hasn’t spent any time reading the Bible. All of these objections could have come from a bunch of high school sophomores. And all of them are reasonably answered with just a little work. But Obama doesn’t want answers. All he wants to do is throw dust in the air and try to confuse the issue. Confusion serves the Obama agenda by allowing him to suggest that since the Bible is unclear good Christian people can vote for him and support his interpretation of Scriptures since his interpretation is as good as anybody else’s.

This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

1) Why do the demands of democracy over-rule the demands of God? Who voted to make democracy God, so that its demands trump all other demands?

2) For biblical Christians all of their religion-specific values, are, by definition, universal values. Obama seems to assume that the gods have only parochial concerns that are constrained and limited to the faithful. When the God of the Bible communicates a value it is communicated as universal.

3) I quite agree that Christian arguments should be amenable to reason, but the question that infidels like Obama and McCain have to answer is, “What standard will be used to adjudicate ‘reason’?” The Christian is glad to subject his convictions to argument and to make them amenable to reason. The question really is whether or not the infidel will submit to arguments that are universal and reason that is accessible to all.

4) Christians must beware being snookered into accepting standards for reason that are amenable to pagans. The pagan will insist every time that his autonomous standards for what constitutes “reason” must be accepted unilaterally. We must remember that if we start with the infidel’s presuppositions we will end with their conclusions.

5) Obama is correct that we cannot simply “evoke God’s will,” as if that will settle an argument in a pagan culture. We must indeed show why abortion (to use his example) is a universal evil. But in the end we need to realize that it is precisely because God’s will is what it is that we argue the way that we argue, just as it is the case that when people like Obama argue that abortion is a universal good they are arguing the way they are arguing because their god’s will is what it is. All argumentation begins and ends with the will of some god.

6) The last sentence in the blockquote above is pure nonsense. In a multi-religious and multi-cultural society the ability to find a least common denominator consensus evaporates. Dobson was spot-on to bludgeon Obama on this score.

On this score, if Christians “have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all,” then why don’t infidels have to have to explain why abortion doesn’t violate some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all,” before it is implemented?

Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise, the art of what’s possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It’s the art of the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God’s edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one’s life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.

Again, Obama assumes that the standards of a pluralistic democracy trump the standards of the God of the Bible. What not-R2Kt infected Christian would say this?

Second, it is clear from the quote above that democracy, or some form of it, is Obama’s god. Democracy does not allow for compromise on his principle that traditional believers must compromise. When democracy speaks then followers are expected to live up to its edicts regardless of the consequences.

Dobson was right to attack Obama. If B. Hussein Obama’s interpretation of the Constitution partakes of a fruitcake quality, it is only because Obama himself is fruitcakey. Though Dobson was right to say that Obama is dragging Biblical understanding through the gutter he should be more concerned that this kind of ignorance actually convinces people.

In what is already old news, last week in Michigan, two Muslim women at Barack Obama’s rally  were barred from sitting behind the podium by campaign volunteers seeking to prevent the women’s head scarves from appearing in photographs or on television with the candidate. It seems the campaign was afraid of the image that such women would create for the Obama campaign.

We already know how all of political theater manages the ‘news.’ This is something done by Republicans and Democrats alike.  Images are arranged to communicate a particular spin. Language is chosen to leave just the right impression. The point that I want to develop here is that given how all of what we see and hear is micro-managed in order to produce a particular (I almost, and perhaps should have said, “theatrical) effect it should not be any surprised that people believe in conspiracy theories nor should is there any reason not to believe in conspiracy theories.

Look, when you are forced to ask how it is that the handlers are trying to manipulate you in  everything you see and hear in the media a person would be a fool to not believe that there always exists a real reality behind the psuedo reality that is being produced and manufactured on stage. If John Q. Public is cynical about what he is told its only because John Q. Media and John Q. Public Official has worked in such a way to make him so. After Lyndon “Gulf of Tonkin” Johnson, after Richard “I’m not a crook” Nixon, after Gerald “I didn’t promise Nixon a pardon in order to be president” Ford, after Ronald “You mean we were trading arms for hostages” Reagan, after Bill “I never had sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky” Clinton and after George “You mean there wasn’t weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” Bush we would be fools to not believe in conspiracy theories. We would be fools to not believe that things are other then what we see and what we are told. Barack Obama’s manufacturing and creating an alternate reality by manipulating the photo op image is just one small example why a wise person is always looking for the conspiracy.

So, no more lectures from the elites on the weakness of the American character for readily believing conspiracy theories. When people begin giving us the unvarnished truth I suppose people will quite looking for “the real truth.” If we are going to continued to be lied to then we should have the privilege of trying to discern the real reason why we are being told what we are being told.

For those who desire to see a film representation of what I am talking about I encourage you to go rent “Wag the Dog.” Certainly, it is fictitious and it is exaggerated but if anybody doubts the existence of the spinning and the spin-masters (i.e. — lying and liars) in Washington and in all Media that is represented in that movie you really need to lose your virginity on this issue. We are lied to, and we are spun so often by the chattering class and by everybody in the game one would have to believe in conspiracy theories in order to believe we were being told the truth.

Still, we must not get hung up on or consumed by conspiracy theories for in the end God is sovereign and His truth will win out.  Men can spin all they want but they will never be able to spin God and they will never be able to frustrate the truth He desires advanced. So, in the end we believe in conspiracies because we have good evidence that we are being manipulated but we don’t act as if God is being frustrated by the spin or the manipulation behind the conspiracy. We must remember that God is in heaven holding the spinners and conspirators in derision and is laughing at them (Psalm 2).

“Libertarian Presidential Candidate Bob Barr On God, Government, His Atheist Mentor Ayn Rand, Abortion, Homosexuality, Terri Schiavo — Not His Favorite Subjects”

You can hear John Lofton interview him here.

“Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said on Friday he expects Republicans to highlight the fact that he is black as part of an effort to make voters afraid of him.

‘They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?’”

Anybody who has ever worked in a affirmative action work environment has seen this Obama campaign technique a million times. A member of a minority community is caught in some kind of error or malfeasance and the immediate response on their part is the cry of ‘racism,’ thus seeking to shift the blame on the person who revealed their error. This premeditated technique moves the focus off of their error or malfeasance and makes the issue the motives of the one who revealed their error.
The ‘post-racial candidate’ who is supposed to take us beyond race has now officially introduced race into the campaign. With this injection of race we see how Obama and his handlers intend to use race to their advantage. You can be sure that each and every time a effective and legitimate criticism is raised against Obama that he is going to hang his blackness out on the American Media clothesline for all to see and scream that the opposition is being racist. And when he doesn’t scream it, he will imply it with all the subtlety of a meat grinder. For the next nineteen weeks we are going to hear more versions of affirmative actions cries of racism then there are versions of the Bible.

I believe the reason that the Obama campaign is pursuing this is threefold. First, Obama has some real problems on this front has as already been established by his associations and by some quotes, that if examined closely, and taken in conjunction with his black nationalism associations reveal his problems. By bringing up the race issue in the way he has, he theoretically de-fangs his opponents from going after him on this score. Second, by raising this issue Obama continues to frame himself as the victim and his opponents as the victimizers. In our culture the poor victim always has a political advantage and gets the powerful pity block vote. Third, by raising the issue Obama takes advantage not only of the politics of pity, but also of the politics of guilt. For several generations a large percentage of Americans have been manipulated by a false guilt about race relations. A large percentage of Americans, buying into the false race narrative of this country, seem to think they can atone for their sins of the past by voting for a black guy.

In this political climate Republicans would have to be brain dead to try and make Obama’s race a political issue. This reality reinforces the idea that Obama is the one injecting race into the campaign in order to try and take an issue away from Republicans (his associations with Black Nationalists and other radicals) and in order to smear his opponents with a charge in our culture that is worse than the charge of molesting children.

Will the Republicans meet this challenge directly? Will they call the racial bluff and tell Obama and his handlers to shove his race baiting plaints up his affirmative action post-racial sphincter? Will the Republicans turn the table and expose Obama’s racial campaign?

Only when hell freezes over, melts again, and refreezes.

No, instead what the Republicans will do out of fear of politically correct backlash will either stumble over themselves giving long and involved explanations insisting that they weren’t being racial, thus giving justification to the accusation, or failing that they will apologize for their insensitivity. Instead of saying that Obama is being racial by constantly injecting race they will roll over.

Having seen this technique successfully used frequently in the affirmative action workplace, I would say, from a tactical perspective, it is a brilliant move on the part of the Obama campaign.