The speech, part 2

David Gergen on CNN made perhaps the best comment about the speech; Obama spoke to us as adults. All other candidates speak to us as if to children. Obama addressed real concerns, real issues, and expected that we'd listen and respond as responsible, thinking human beings. That alone was remarkable.

I read and interview where he said he would have voted for the ban if there was an exception for the health of the mother, which has been a standard requirement from the Supreme Court for constitutionality.

threenineteennoheight: What has George W. asked of anyone that remotely smacks of sacrifice over the past 7 years, except for the brave men and women in uniform? What has he said or accomplished that would lead me -- or anyone else -- to believe that he cares for the least of these? You stand in judgment of Obama. But we all have poles in our eyes, don't we? You would never vote for Obama anyway, so your words carry little weight, except to the Rush Limbaugh and bigoted White Christian crowd.

A great speech. If only all the bigots in all races could adhere to it. Right wing radio talking heads should be taken off the air,because their messages are messages of terror. Obama will make a great President. He is not pro-war at the drop of a hat. Many anti-abortionist support war mongers. If only the world could see the love of Christ in all confessing Chriistians. Christians who take sides in evil politics,and try to equate it with Christ is a shame. Let us take the kingdom of God to the world. All born again believers are in the family of God. If we disagree with their polices,pray that the will of God be done in their lives. Let us began to trust God to be God.

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This is the only part of David's otherwise excellent commentary that deserves a deeper reading. Shame for not seeing more deeply into an otherwise passing comment. The difference between Barak Obama and George Bush playing the so-called "faith card" is this: Barak Obama is largely untested (though sufficient evidence suggests he may in fact dedicate, as president, his energy to helping "the least of these").

Whereas under eight years of W, we have had: secret meetings with powerful energy companies whose results we don't know (while gas hits $4 a gallon); record deficits where once a record surplus existed; a continued changeover of wealth from the poor to the rich; the FEMA head praised as doing a "helluva job" while New Orleans went to hell in a flood caused not by a hurricane, but underfunded levees; decimated environmental policy; torture of political prisoners; and an unprovoked war on foreign soil that has claimed more U.S. casualties than the incident (9/11) that allegedly provoked it--all while the U.S. military makes every effort to hide the number of innocent Iraqi women and children killed by our war machine. Which I suppose is OK, since they don't follow Jesus anyway.

God bless America and George W. Bush, the chosen one.

And by the way: Where's Osama?

I am also gravely concerned about the exploitation of faith for political ends. It is no more admirable in Barack Obama than it is in George W. Bush.

I see the mention of faith as being pretty organic and integral to the discussion as a whole.

First off, consider the fact that there's a whisper campaign going around that Obama is Muslim.

Second, given the context that this arose from, revelations that the pastor of his church said the things he said, a response to those revelations necessarily must tread into the realms of faith. Like you mention, Obama provides a not-easily sound-bite-able context for the church he attends.

And yes, I so agree. Finally! A politician who speaks as an adult to an adult! Who knew?

"I am, at the end of the day, a conservative and he is a liberal and there are lots of policies differences between us. I fail to understand, for instance, how a man who wants to unite could have been one of the few people to vote against banning partial-birth abortions."

david, you and a lot of other conservatives need to get over the abortion mania. it's been 40 years since the mania started, abortion remains legal everywhere, and majorities in the country have consistently favored one measure or another of abortion rights in poll after poll.

much as people find abortion anything from distasteful to evil, they dislike the prospect of state compelled pregnancy even worse, still, despite decades of preachers and celibate men telling people how they're going to hell for not voting against politicians who oppose state compelled pregnancy, despite decades of ad campaigns, protests, and even violence.

it's over. focus on reducing the need for abortion, because sending girls back to hangars, anti-fungal medications, and back alley butchers will not help matters and will likely have no palpable effect on the abortion rate in this country.

David, I agree that he gave a great speech. Well written with a skillful use of the teleprompter. Minimizing the size of the audience was a smart move as it eliminated any potential for "rah-rah" atmospherics.

However, there were several problems with the speech:

(1) It didn't answer the questions about his personal culpability involving Wright. He shifted the focus from his relationship with Wright to our society's collective responsiblity for race tensions. It was an artful dodge and it certainly moved the chattering class, including former speechwriters, to swoon over the speech. But the rest of us don't know care about the elegance of his speech or his analysis of America's racial problems. We don't need a politician to remind us.

What ordinary folks like me wanted to know included:
(a) Why he chose Wright in the first place (when he had so many other pastors/churches to chose from);
(b) Why he stuck with him (and was so financially generous to Wright) and for so long despite the obvious (hey, even Oprah Winfrey, who attended TUCC for a while, left the church a while back as she realized that Wright wasn't her cup of tea)?
(c) Why it took a drop in poll numbers and an obvious political crisis to finally prompt Obama to distance himself from Wright?

(2) The other thing that rankles is the way he gratuitously and literally "used" his white grandmother as a kind of book-end to balance the flaws of Wright. "I would never disown my grandmother any more than I would my pastor." Hold on, a second! The issue was never about his grandmother, who apparently is an 85-year old widow living in Hawaii and who never bothered a soul. Why hang out to dry her dirty laundry and her supposed racial sins (assuming what HE SAID about her is true -- the campaign won't let reporters get access to her to verify the story). I can't imagine ANYONE doing to their grandmother what he did in his speech to her. Gosh, "Barry", why drag her into this? Be a man, for crying out loud, and face the criticism without trying to hide behind Grandma's faded skirts.

eleanor,

if a woman, pregnant by whatever mechanism, no longer wants to be pregnant and does not want to carry it to term, and abortion is illegal, then the state is mandating her pregnancy. sorry, impressions of nazis(?) will get you nowhere here.

"The state is not forcing anyone to have sex."

whether you like it or not, women will continue to get pregnant and then seek to terminate the pregnancy. sorry. and if the state is forcing these women to complete such pregnancies, then they're being compelled by the state to continue to be pregnant.

i think that is a horrible, horrible, invasion of privacy even if you consider them skanks or that they were asking for it. and so do majorities of americans, again, whether you like it or not.

"So no, I won't get over it."

and that is why, rightly, america is doomed.

A good speech, and it seems to meet a nearly obsessional craving for someone who uses the language of compassion about race. But it doesn't rise above the therapeutic level.

Compassion is an excellent thing, but it requires a partner to attain fullness of realization- a grounded spirit of justice. Which is very feebly touched upon, fudged over with vague allusions to Christian values and indefinite uses of the term 'equality', really. For now Obama's supporters and admirers gloss over this and don't care, but this is persistent deficiency in his thinking and positions advocated relative to those of MLK or Desmond Tutu.

whattodo and recovering,

Its not just an unwanted pregnancy, its an unwanted baby. The state is prohibiting pregnant women from committing murder. Murder is a long-recognized moral and social evil. Just because the majority of Americans do not agree that abortion is murder, doesn't change that. The majority doesn't decide right/wrong, God does. The majority can legislate its will, but it can't change right/wrong. We, as a nation, have legistlated that it is okay to commit murder, rather than be responsible for the unintended outcome of our actions, even though we knew the outcome was possible. Murder for convenience is what we have legislated.

I could be in the situation of conceiving an unwanted pregnancy. I do not consider women who find themselves in that position "skanks", "asking for it", etc. I do consider that people, men and women, married or unmarried, must acknowledge that pregnancies are the result of our actions, be responsible for those actions, and not murder the unintended, but known, potential consequence of those actions, a baby.

I am not unrealistic about the fallen nature of mankind. Our administration's "abstinence only" policies is bound for failure, because most of us can't or won't live up to that standard, even if it is the only 100% effective means of preventing conception of a baby. I was not attempting to agree with the current administration and was purposeful in including prevention in my original comment. We need birth control, and it needs to be easily available and inexpensive or free. But we also need to teach that God designed sex not just to enjoy, but also to make babies. And it was well designed for both purposes. :)

We need to make it easier for these unwanted babies to find loving homes. How many families are adopting from foreign countries, because its faster and easier?

I know that we probably aren't going to convince each other to come to the other side of this issue.

I don't see how "America is doomed" because we disagree on the importance of this issue... This is important to me, and many others. It isn't an important issue to you. So it won't influence your choice of candidate, but it will influence mine....

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If I'm in foreclosure and the STATE won't bail me out, am I in State

eleanor,

i am sorry but your response is filled with hyperbole and inaccuracies (even if my unfortunate opining that america is doomed itself is quite a bit over-the-top).

"We, as a nation, have legistlated that it is okay to commit murder, rather than be responsible for the unintended outcome of our actions, even though we knew the outcome was possible. Murder for convenience is what we have legislated."

you see, it is hard for me to accept that your view is at all informed, rational, or useful in dealing with this issue because, right off the bat, you lied. roe v. wade and its progeny are the chief drivers of abortion rights in america, rather than legislation (even if a few states - including gov. reagan's california - had decriminalized abortion before 1973). so no, america has not legislated "murder for convenience."

second, on the "murder for convenience" trope, you miss the point entirely. even if you feel that it is murder, even if you feel the state should compel pregnancy to teach people some lesson about sex, the sad truth is that even after decades and decades and decades of the entire national conversation on abortion being utterly dominated by people with your attitudes, the majority of americans continue to state, in poll after poll, that they disagree with you. a moajority of americans continue to believe that the state should not be allowed to compel pregnancy against a woman's will.

"The majority doesn't decide right/wrong, God does." eleanor, a lot of my beliefs about God are quite likely to be at odds with your own, so i don't want to get into a huge theological debate with you, but your statement i quoted here leaves me with one thought - that is very, very, very much debatable.

"The state is prohibiting pregnant women from committing murder." right, by forcing them to take a pregnancy to full term. what you must accept is that even if you feel it is murder, a majority of americans continue to believe that the state compelling pregnancy against a woman's will is a bigger wrong than an abortion itself.

you have to understand this for there ever to be any reconciliation on the subject, even if you think abortion is horrible.

Am I the only person who is depressed over the events of the past week?

Is it hard to understand why a black person like Jeremiah Wright might be angry? Is it hard to understand why Michelle Obama might be less patriotic than past First Ladies? Are most of us really that incapable of stepping outside ourselves, even for a moment??

Is saying "God d--- America" worse than taking the Lord's name in vain? Is it worse than using Jn 1:5 ("the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness will not overcome it") to describe America, rather than Christ-- as GW Bush did on the first anniversary of 9/11?Put another way, is the flag more sacred to us than the cross?

"How far should we go to try and understand each other’s point of view? Maybe the distance grace covered on the cross is a clue.” - Bono

Beyond Obama's brilliant words, I see precious little evidence that we are interested in understanding one another.

Peace.

Not exactly. Subsistence farming is hardwork and allows no time for blogging! I would frame it as the world where truth was revealed by God, who is truth, vs. the modern world, where truth is subjective and unknowable.

"I would frame it as the world where truth was revealed by God, who is truth, vs. the modern world, where truth is subjective and unknowable."

At one time in our nation's past there were those who claimed that truth, as revealed by God, sanctioned slavery. Later on others claimed that the same truth, revealed by the same God, demanded that we abolish slavery.

Did God change, or did our understanding of God's revealed truth change? If the latter, what is to say that the understanding we claim to have today of God's truth will not, likewise, change over time?

whattodo,

I don't want to teach people a lesson about sex, but instead hold us (people) responsibile for our actions. Why not let your daughter carry the baby to term and then give it to someone who wants the baby? Why is abortion her only choice to you? I agree that God wouldn't want her to resort to the hanger or the drugs. I think he'd want her to find refuge in him, to trust in him, and to be willing to be inconvenienced for 9 months in deference to another life.

We may never rescind abortion rights, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to speak out against them, in favor of the rights of the unborn.

THere are more issues to look at than this one, when evaluating a candidate...poverty, homelessness, education, the war, etc. But I do also examine a candidate's position on abortion.

Ella, at the end of the day, politicians like Obama really do promote the things he is accused of. It is not right-wing hatred to say that sodomy and killing the unborn and marxism are very much OK to Obama. That is the truth. There is no way to unite to the horrible things that people like Obama really want to implement in this country. I don't hate him, I just will never agree to join him in what he believes in.

Oops, that last post was from me. Forgot to put in my name. Sorry.

"It didn't try and sound bite its way around dicey issues, it didn't try and spin its way out of trouble. Instead it paid tribute to its audience by treating the audience as grown men and women capable of understanding and appreciating a nuanced argument on a controversial and divisive issue."

I agree!! I've been looking for a candidate who will do this.

Also, I agree with Adam S. on the abortion issue. Obama did say he would have voted for the bill if it had included an exemption for the health mother. I've also read Obama's "Audacity of Hope" book where he discussed this . . . He seems to want to get legislation done that will be held up by the Supreme Court--this means accomplishing goals for the long term, step by step, not just score a small political victory for the short term.

"Why not let your daughter carry the baby to term and then give it to someone who wants the baby? Why is abortion her only choice to you? I agree that God wouldn't want her to resort to the hanger or the drugs. I think he'd want her to find refuge in him, to trust in him, and to be willing to be inconvenienced for 9 months in deference to another life."

why not let my daughter? now i am forcing her to have an abortion? what odd logic. i would never force a woman to have an abortion; that is as or more wrong than telling her she cannot have access to safe abortion services. reproductive freedom cuts both ways. so i strongly resent being told that i am giving anyone a "choice" - the "choice" isn't mine to give or take away. it's nice that you think women should just deal with being "inconvenienced", and it's fine that you would make such a choice or endeavor to convince others to do the same. but you cannot, cannot force someone.

this is the divide. and it will never, ever go away, eventually consuming america. and all because some people, gosh darn it, really, really, really, really love jesus. and that's it. and i think that's so sad.

I agree with previous posts on the Obama speech. If you are against Obama, and you hear this speech in its entirety, I am not saying it will change your mind. Nothing will change the mind that isn't open to change. What hearing this speech will do, is show you the audacity and courage that a man of Obama's character has at a bleak and crucial point in his campaign. Nine out of ten politicians wouldn't have dared to tackle such a politically dangerous issue, especially with his/her career hanging in the balance.This speech transcends partisan platitudes and political pandering. It was raw, honest, eloquent,and straight up brilliant. I am not sure what will happen with Obama now, but I can say for certain that people of all walks will be talking about this for years to come, and when history has had its say, Barack Obama's speech will join F. Roosevelt's "Fear", "Kennedy's Ask Not", and King's I Have a Dream", as one of the all time great speeches in American History.

Aquaman, you were right about not using scripture and about hijacking the thread. My apologies to all on that account. I will not apologize for really, really, really, really loving Jesus, gosh darn it.

It was not my intention to get into a debate about abortion, although I quickly let it devolve into that. The intent was to defend the legitimacy of examing a voter's key issues in a candidate's platform, abortion being one of them.

For me, and evidently for David (from the original post), a candidate's stance on abortion matters. I suspect whattodo votes pro-choice, and would NEVER vote for a candidate who was pro-life, no matter what other positions the candidate held. So,while it is okay for whattodo to use a candidate's abortion platform as a single-issue criteria for evaluating a candidate, it is not okay for me to do so.

To me, this was not a "safe" speech, this was a courageous and powerful speech. How many Americans could have gone to that podium on Tuesday after what this man had gone through all of his life, and at this moment in our country speak to all Americans to come together and try to make a positive and sincere change in our nation on race. I truly wondered were the many pundits really listening those 40 minutes? Senator Obama stood there with a heavy heart and asked us as people in our country to come together and listen, talk with each other about one of the most raw subjects in our country for decades our race relatons. He did his part, now let us do our part for our next generation. Maybe, the next generation will not be talking about this in the light of what we had to hear from "pundits" and the like last week. I pray not. Reach out and talk, and respect, and love each other more, Americans. We love our country, now let's show some "real" love for each other.