Comments | phil_g: Another Dose of Obama

phil_g

Another Dose of Obama

Apr 21, 2008 08:18

In honor of the upcoming primary in Pennsylvania, I just wanted to mention this article about Obama: What Obama really stands for.

Selected excerpts:

Though still best known for his 2002 objections to the looming war in Iraq, Obama is no peacenik. He might not have made his Iraq views known so early had he not attended an anti-war rally in ( Read more... )

politics

Comments 8

wordmad April 21 2008, 14:51:32 UTC

Thank you for this. He said everything I needed to hear. There is hope for our nation. I believe it. Amen. Amen.

liritsvoice April 21 2008, 16:31:16 UTC

:-)

Still a Hillary supporter... anonymous April 21 2008, 16:57:48 UTC

But will certainly vote for Obama if he wins the primary, which seems likely.

Re: Still a Hillary supporter... phil_g April 21 2008, 18:50:08 UTC

I really don't think that Hillary would be a good choice for President.

Obama's approach to the campaign seems to be appealing to a wide variety of people; he's been incredibly successful at engaging a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise have been involved in the primary process. Hillary, on the other hand, seems to be trying for victory at all costs; consider the fact that she's been caught exaggerating the truth about her experiences as First Lady in places like Ireland (she claimed to have been part of the peace process in northern Ireland, but others who were there say she played no significant role) and Bosnia (she used an anecdote of landing under the threat of sniper fire that turned out to be ungrounded in fact).

A more important strike against her, in my opinion, is her treatment of the electoral process, especially with respect to Florida and Michigan. Here's a brief summary of events: In August, 2007, all of the candidates signed a letter pledging not to "campaign or participate in any state which schedules a ( ... )

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Re: Still a Hillary supporter... phil_g April 21 2008, 19:21:07 UTC

I think Hillary's burned too many bridges to be Obama's VP. Personally, I would have loved to see Obama/Edwards, but Edwards has already stated that he's not interested in running as VP.

Thread 5

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Re: Secularism phil_g April 21 2008, 19:19:19 UTC

I also don't agree entirely with his characterization of separation-of-church-and-state issues as "pointless", but I quoted it because it's connected with the next paragraph, where he calls for embracing religions rather than presenting an air of hostility and allowing others (e.g. the Republicans) to use that apparent rejection as a point of division ( ... )

Re: Secularism phil_g April 22 2008, 01:05:04 UTC

Follow-up:

The "pointless" was the wording of the article's author, not Obama's. The speech that they quote is quite good, actually. He spends the first half of the speech arguing that Democrats need to work with religions, not against them (with some personal details about his own experiences as a Christian). The second half, however, is about how to balance religion and secularism. He argues simultaneously that not all religious imagery is state-endorsed religion, giving Lincoln's and MLK's speeches as examples, and that society needs to accommodate people of all beliefs, including those of beliefs:

But what I am suggesting is this - secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men ( ... )