The general buzz is that passing this healthcare overhaul will be politically disastrous. It is the worst career moves they could make.

But they're still plowing ahead, either oblivious or bullheaded.

And while I think it's bad policy, and while I don't share their politics in general anyway, I kinda have to admire them for sticking to what they think is the right thing to do, consequences be danged.

I wish more politicians, including the ones actually doing the right thing, had that kind of stubbornness of conscience.

I know this event is old news now, but something happened there that deserved some reporting, I think...Did anyone else hear anything about this? In his hour-long discussion with Republicans Obama said:

The last thing I will say, though -- let me say this about health care and the health care debate, because I think it also bears on a whole lot of other issues. If you look at the package that we've presented -- and there's some stray cats and dogs that got in there that we were eliminating, we were in the process of eliminating. For example, we said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your -- if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, that you're not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge. [emphasis added]

Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics (owned by Time Magazine) said:

If we take this statement at face value, President Obama is admitting the the health care bills passed by either the House or Senate (or both) contained provisions which were "snuck in" - presumably by Democratic members and perhaps on behalf of certain lobbyists - that would have in fact prevented people from keeping their current insurance and/or choosing the doctor they want.

This was one of the core debates on health care throughout last year: Would President Obama and the Democrats' legislation allow government to come between citizens and their choice of doctors and insurers? Obama promised it wouldn't. Republicans said it would, and this was one of the aspects of the legislation that led them to characterize it as a government takeover of health care - the same characterization that Obama chastized the GOP for today.

So it's a bit of shock to find out now - from the President himself, no less - that one or both of the bills that passed Congress late last year (the House passed its version in late November, the Senate on Christmas Eve Day) contained language that would have violated this pledge.

What do you think? Bevan's post title was "Obama's Stunning Admission", I took out the middle word for my post title because I really wasn't all that shocked...well, maybe I was surprised he admitted it. :-)

This is just an inquisitive observation, but I wonder if we haven't traded a listener for a talker between our last and current presidents.

All politics aside, with no reference to who's "right" or "wrong" or what-have-you, I think George W. Bush was never better than when he was on the ground in Mississippi, Louisiana, Ground Zero in New York, listening and hugging and consoling. Genuinely. The guy was a real people person. But he was never worse than when he had to speak, especially when he had to speak extemporaneously. He just sounded too often like a dum-dum. (Which is not the same thing as being a dum-dum.)

On the other hand, President Obama is a fine and dandy speech giver (usually; I think he's somewhat overrated), never better than when he's talking, which he does a lot. But he is, in my estimation, practically tone deaf to the American people. He might care a great deal about us average schmucks, but he doesn't seem like he does (which, again, is not the same thing as not caring).

Did we trade a listener for a talker?

I thought this post by Mike Potemra on Scott Brown (Senator-elect from Massachusetts) was pretty interesting.

Brown is a member of a church affiliated with the Calvinist-rooted Christian Reformed Church in North America. If you go on the website of his congregation, New England Chapel in Franklin, Mass., you will read the following testimony from an attendee: “I have found a home, a family, friends, and most importantly, begun the journey to a REAL relationship with God. It is not one based on guilt or fear, but rather love, hope, and mercy.” The rest of the website has a similar tone. This is clearly not the Calvinism that lives on today chiefly in anti-Calvinist apologetics: the Calvinism of Salem and Hawthorne, that continues to haunt America’s dreams with a God who is best understood as a cruel despot. This new Calvinism is a development of the post-Great Awakening era, a religion that’s not afraid of sentimentality — yet it remains recognizably Calvinism, in its stress on the Bible and on the sovereignty of God.

And then one reads that Mr. Brown helped raise $5.5 million for the Cistercian nuns of Wrentham, who pray for him daily. (Brown himself is quoted: “When you have nuns praying for you three times a day and you’re not Catholic, anything that anybody can do or say about me, it’s Teflon. . . . It bounces right off.”) A couple of years ago, I happened to be in the Wrentham area shortly after having read about this abbey in a book by Thomas Merton, so I dropped by — and I can tell you that Mt. St. Mary’s is a genuine survival of faithful Catholicism, in a time and place generally considered less than hospitable to its values. A beautiful place and one that I long to visit again.

This is the America Scott Brown is from, a place where Calvinists are cheerful and conservative Cistercians pray for their Protestant benefactor. Some on the Internet are upset because Senator Brown is pro-choice, but most are wise enough to realize that he is a friend to life in many ways that will actually count over the next couple of years. Brown, like the rest of us, is what religious folk like to call a “work in progress” . . .

Let me lay my cards on the table:

1) If you put overturning Roe v. Wade to a popular vote, I'm in line early ready to vote in favor of protecting the near half a million unborn babies killed each year, and if you're a politician, the best way to lose my vote is to align with the pro-choice agenda.
2) Nevertheless, I don't believe laws -- or the protests and petitions and politicking that seek to achieve them -- are how we are going to eradicate abortion.

The emancipation of the slaves was necessary. But it didn't end racism.

I am not proposing an either/or. What I'm proposing is that evangelicals take the harder route, adopt the harder cause, that we aim for Spiritual change of hearts more than we aim for legal stay of hands.

Here are some thoughts on how we may do this:

1. Gospel-centered preaching. You knew I was going to go there. :-) Here's the thing: Pastors who preach culture war receive Amens from the already convinced and almost nothing from everybody else. At its worst a steady dose of this creates an unhealthy "us vs. them" mentality that has us thinking of our enemies in ways the Sermon on the Mount strictly forbids. But pastors who proclaim the freedom from sin and abundant life in Christ lay groundwork for zeal for life, not just for winning political battles. A gospel-driven pro-life agenda means hating abortion because we love women and we love the unborn. That sounds like a no-brainer but so many of our evangelical countrymen just sound like they hate abortion. And preaching isn't just for pastors. In general, more evangelicals need to talk Jesus more than they talk politics, or else we unintentionally communicate that our greatest treasure is "getting our country back" and that our chief message is political. We are great with the good news of the kingdom of the founding fathers. Let's return to the good news of the kingdom of God.

2. Reframing the abortion discussion. Lots of others have said this better than I can, but I think we've dropped the ball on how we frame the abortion issue. It is a matter of human rights, which is a perspective I first heard from my deeply pro-life friend who voted for Barack Obama. (I know, figure that one out.) But this is how we will best win in the political arena, I think. In many cases, this involves merely shifting from arguing against selfish moms (or whatever) and arguing for an appropriate definition of when life begins and becoming advocates for the voiceless unborn, exploited and commoditized. We can steer the discussion into the same rhetoric of the abolitionist and civil rights movements and end up stirring more hearts, I think.

3. Creating cultures of adoption and rescue. Human trafficking is the emerging danger. It's been going for a long time, but the Church is recently (and awesomely) stepping up efforts to combat it, even here in America. My friend Justin Holcomb and his wife lead efforts of Mars Hill Church in Seattle to rescue sex workers, sex abuse victims, and runaways in their city. Others are working hard to rescue young girls from the sex trade. On the other front, the Church is exponentially embracing the beauty of adoption. It has become a bona fide movement, thank God. The reactive culture of rhetoric and protests must give way to these proactive missionary movements. We will begin changing hearts and minds on these matters of life and death as we create cultures of adoption and rescue. But only communities can create cultures, so churches have to buy in corporately. More families adopting, more families serving and taking in pregnant teens, more churches helping families do those things, more churches loving families and kids, more churches finding ways to minister to the exploited and marginalized and to support missions and organizations that already are . . . these are the pro-active, missional steps to creating truly pro-life cultures.

4. Prophets, not pundits. I don't know how else to put this. We need an MLK for the pro-life movement, a unifying and prophetic voice. We need intellectually strong but charming, powerful, winsome statesmen. We need people who aren't just jockeying for time on FoxNews. I don't even know if this is possible today, given the nature of media exposure and the divide between political parties -- whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans marched with King; I wonder if we haven't so aligned the pro-life cause with conservative Republicanism that that kind of unity would be impossible for our cause -- but we need a peacemaker with a powerful voice. The only guy I can think of who has access to black, white, right, left, Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, Christian and non, U.S., European, and everywhere else -- and has the respect and listening ear of them all -- is Bono. And I think he's probably pro-choice.

5. Technology, technology, technology. Do you know why the abortion rate is going down? I think it's the increasing advances in technology, particularly ultrasound technology. Women are seeing their babies. Technology is catching up with abortion. Smart churches will support their local crisis pregnancy centers, which are often frontlines on the struggle for the unborn, and help them get ultrasound equipment. No, they're not cheap. But life isn't either.

6. Love. I'm coming full circle, here, but if we were to outlaw abortion tomorrow, we'd still have 500,000 women a year who didn't want their babies. You have probably already had unwed teenage girls get pregnant in your church, and if you haven't you probably will at some point, and besides all that, there are plenty in your community and city. Before and in addition to removing abortion as a legal option for them, we have to love them, welcome them, teach them, serve them. Only the love of God can change hearts. Let that be the ammunition of our war.

(Cross-posted at Gospel-Driven Church)

This MLK day please take some time to pray for LIFE!



Prayer makes a difference.

Pat Robertson says the earthquake in Haiti is just one more link on a chain begun when Haiti signed a pact with the devil to be free of the French. And he didn't mean "the devil" figuratively. He meant they literally signed a pact with Satan himself.
Not only is this untrue, it's silly.

But most of us have tuned Robertson out and did so long ago.

But I bet we still have plenty of Rush Limbaugh listeners. I don't mean to knock political radio or talk shows or what-have-you. But I do mean to knock Rush Limbaugh.

On his radio show yesterday Limbaugh said the earthquake in Haiti will play right into Obama's hands by allowing him to play up his "compassionate" and "humanitarian" credentials, and that the President will use this crisis to "boost his credibility with the black community."

As if that weren't enough, Limbaugh also pivoted off a caller who complained about Obama directing the public to the White House website to find charitable organizations operating in Haiti to promote a conspiracy theory that finding these charities via the White House website puts your money at risk of not reaching Haitians.

Limbaugh also seems to feel we've done enough already for Haiti: "We've already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax."

In terms of our attention, can we throw this guy under the bus yet?

It looks like the Senate is very close to passing a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system.

Before I launch into this post, a few caveats: I know that salvation does not come through politics or human government, and neither does eternal destruction. I know that, whatever your stance on this issue, as a country we'll probably be OK. I'm not riled up or anything. But I am concerned.

So, what do you think? I am not a supporter of this (at all), mainly because I don't believe (and history is on my side here) our representatives' rosy scenarios and promises regarding the financial and societal impact of the laws they pass, especially laws that are this big.

I'm disgusted with the political horsetrading, threats, bribes (can we call them anything else?) that the leadership in the house and the senate have engaged in to bring along reluctant votes. I understand that compromise has to happen, and there's give and take in politics, but blatant pork-lading (bribes, again) should have no place in our process. I'm not so naive to think these things don't happen. I just wonder why we put up with them.

I also think the Democrats are just out to pass . . . anything, no matter how bad. Because once this is passed, it will never be repealed and can be tweaked and shaped at will.

I also think debt is really, really irresponsible. And our country is swimming in it. This will add lots more.

So, what do you think? Are you excited/hopeful about this coming legislation? Concerned? Those of you who voted for the Democratic party in the last election, are you happy with how things are turning out? Are we heading in a better direction now? Are ther better alternatives? These are not loaded questions . . . I really am interested.

Thoughts in the comments, please.

I am currently getting my first exposure to Glenn Beck.

He reminds me of the guy in classes at high school that we all didn't necessarily disagree with but we rolled our eyes when he started talking anyway. I think the word insufferable comes to mind.

I sort of want to punch him. (In the love of Jesus, of course.)

He's apparently about to tell us where god is. (Lower-case because his god used to be a man, and my God -- the real one -- did not.)

Update:
He's now talking about putting God back into whatever, and is saying that God told the Israelites if they'd only follow the Ten Commandments, they'd be free.

This is not only wrong, it leads to damnation.

But I'm willing to bet, that as he's appealing to the concerns about the Ten Commandments being taken out of national monuments, etc., that a lot of his evangelical viewers agree with him.

I'm not sure where on the spectrum most of our (small) readership finds itself. This post is a rare political one and I'd like to make clear up front that I don't speak for all the Thinklings, only for myself. I also don't believe that salvation will ever happen through politics. Neither do I believe that one political party is perfect while the other one is evil, and I'm not heartless: I understand that living without health insurance is not a good thing and it's not my goal to deprive others of insurance.

With those caveats out of the way, a short back-story: I started my professional career working for a governmental agency. After four years of demoralizing (but easy!) work and an eye-opening baptism into the inefficiency, unexcellence and non-productivity of government-work, I got a job at a private company. The difference couldn't have been more stark. Things in the new company I worked at actually . . . worked (and I had to work hard to do my part). This experience has shaped many of my attitudes, rightly or wrongly.

In other words, my tourettes starts acting up anytime I'm assured that the Government can take on a large, complicated public service and that they will keep costs and debt under control while doing so. I don't hate the government. I just wish it would stick to what it does well, as enumerated in the Constitution. I don't distrust the government. I just don't think that it's very good at taking on large projects such as health-care. But I'd be willing to give it a shot if, like a business, failure to perform meant the ending of the activity. But that's not how government works.

As he often does, Mark Steyn is astute in his assessment of the 220 to 215 vote passage of a 1900+ page health care bill in the House of Representatives last night:

I don't like to say I told you so, but I've been saying for months now that the trick is to drag this thing across the finish line with 50.0000000000001 percent of the vote as soon as possible. From my "Happy Warrior" column in NR back in July:

Obama believes in “the fierce urgency of now”, and fierce it is. That’s where all the poor befuddled sober centrists who can’t understand why the Democrats keep passing incoherent 1,200-page bills every week are missing the point. If “health care” were about health care, the devil would be in the details. But it’s not about health or costs or coverage; it’s about getting over the river and burning the bridge. It doesn’t matter what form of governmentalized health care gets passed as long as it passes. Once it’s in place, it will be “reformed”, endlessly, but it will never be undone.

Right now, they can trade anything — abortion, death panels, whatever. The trick is to plant the seed and let the ratchet effect of Big Government take care of the rest. I said on Rush's show on Friday that if Barack Obama had been Bill Clinton he'd have woken up on Wednesday morning and begun triangulating. Instead, Obama woke up and figured that he needed more fierce urgency, and right now. The short-term hit in 2010 is worth it for the long-term benefits: Obscure congressmen will be just as happy as obscure ambassadors or obscure chairmen of obscure agencies. And the prize of permanent irreversible statist annexation merits the risk: Governmentalized "health care" puts us on the fast track to Euro-sclerosis and redefines the relationship between citizen and state in ways that make genuine conservative politics all but impossible.

Will the Senate stop it? And, if they don't, will a post-2010 GOP Congress reverse it? The way they reversed, say, the federal Department of Education?

Yesterday was a tragedy for America.

Jon Stewart parodies Glenn Beck.



HT: BHT

It ought to be well-known that one of the reasons that the Pilgrims came to this country was for religious freedom. After much persecution, they came to this country to worship according to their conscience and interpretation of Scripture.

What is not well-known however is that those first colonies sought freedom for themselves only. They instituted their own “state churches”. Residents of those colonies were required to practice the Puritan version of Christianity.
Even in this country there was not true religious freedom. One of the primary victims of this were the Baptists. Baptists in England in 1614 had declared, "The magistrate is not by virtue of his office to meddle with religion, this or that form of religion, or doctrine; but to leave Christian religion free, to every man's conscience, and to handle only civil transgressions."

Meanwhile a boy named Roger Williams grew up near the plaza where Puritans, who were seeking to reform the Church of England were burned, pilloried, mutilated, whipped and imprisoned. In Europe, some Baptists were drowned for their belief in believer’s baptism by immersion, the method being intentionally ironic.
Roger Williams followed the Puritans to the Massachusetts Bay Colony to minister among those who had themselves been persecuted. But when he was called to be a pastor at a church in Salem he discovered that people were not free to worship God as they chose there either. His preaching against this got him in trouble. He also argued that Indians should be paid for their land. This kind of talk made him a heretic and a threat.

Williams preached that “there was never civil state in the world that ever did or ever shall make good work of it, with a civil sword in spiritual matters.” He was labeled a rebel. Williams quoted the teachings of Jesus who said, “My Kingdom is not of this world,” and “Give to Caesar what is Caesar and to God what is God’s.” Williams argued that the Government should stay out of religion completely.

Authorities in Boston made a law declaring that everyone must swear an oath affirming the right of the magistrates to rule in religion. Williams was convicted of holding dangerous opinions. When Williams got word that the Governor had ordered that 15 soldiers kidnap Williams and ship him back to England, Williams said goodbye to his wife and newborn child and fled into the wilderness. He found refuge with the Indians.

Along with other persecuted Christians, Williams purchased land from the Indians and named it “Providence.” Those who believed in baptism of believers as opposed to infants were banished by the Massachusetts Government in 1644. The Baptists fled from Massachusetts to Providence, Rhode Island. There Roger Williams founded the first Baptist church in America. People with different beliefs than his also fled there and he protected their right to worship as they chose.

Williams’ colony was an experiment in Religious Liberty. He opposed forcing anyone to comply with Christianity or any form of state religion. He believed that people should profess faith in Christ according to their own conscience and will, not by force.

For More Info - Of course, you can always Google "Roger Williams". I would also encourage you to google "Baptists" and "persecution". You'll find that Baptists endured much persecution in this country. This is part of the reason they were such staunch advocates of the seperation of church and state.

Williams' own words

We have Roger Williams and Baptists to thank for the ideas that led to the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom for religion.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

There will be more to come...

Apparently Joe Wilson is bringing down South Carolina's tourism industry because scores of people are canceling their planned trips to Myrtle Beach due to last week's public emotional outburst ("You lie!") directed at President Obama.

While his meltdown certainly wasn't laudable, perhaps Democrats and Republicans are making too big a deal of this whole thing? Is the follow-up brouhaha really necessary?

Here's the deal:

Wilson yelled at Obama.

The world gasped.

Wilson apologized.

Obama accepted.

Let's move on.

From one of my favorite novelists - Sigmund Brouwer.

Recently, nearly 5,000 evangelicals gathered in Washington, D.C. at a conference called Christians United For Israel. The essential message to politicians: don’t pressure Israel into peace deals or giving up any land. The essential reason: it’s against God’s will.

Unfortunately, this view is backed by a large percentage of 70 million evangelicals, willing to exert significant political pressure against a two-state solution in the Middle East and the peace it might bring.
It’s a long and unfortunate tradition.

“The Christian fundamentalists were vehemently opposed to the peace process,” says Itamar Rabinovich, Israeli ambassador to the U.S. from 1993-1996. “They believed that the land belonged to Israel as a matter of divine right. So they immediately became part of a campaign by the Israeli right to undermine the peace process.”

In 1998, evangelical leader Jerry Falwell threatened to mobilize thousands of pastors if U.S. President Bill Clinton pressured Israel into peace efforts; Clinton quickly backed down. High-profile evangelical John Hagee is continuing this pressure through CUFI.

Much of the Arab world’s shared outrage against the United States began and continues over the Palestinian land claims conflict. Without questioning in any way Israel’s right to exist, crucial geo-political decisions ought not to be affected by a theology that needs critical examination, especially since orthodox Christians disagree markedly among themselves on Israel’s divine right to the land. During his time on earth, Christ stated his mission was to establish a heavenly kingdom, not an earthly one. Furthermore, the apostle Paul tells us that the true Israel includes all of those with faith in the divine Christ – Jews or non-Jews. In short, God is not a land broker.

What’s truly frightening is a broad evangelical belief behind the support for Israel, that God wants a rebuilt temple on the site of the Muslim Dome of the Rock. If there ever was the potential to trigger Armageddon, this is it.

For millions in comfortable evangelical church pews across the United States, the conflict is merely an abstract consequence of a holy battle. To them, violent and indiscriminate deaths in Palestine or Israel are mere headlines, and the process for peace takes second place to a supposed Biblical mandate.

Forgotten in this are the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children in the shadow of Israel’s wealth, living far below poverty. One report showed that up to 75% suffer from malnutrition. If this were any other place in the world, American Christians would flood it with relief efforts instead of relying on the few groups already there.

Let’s allow Washington to help Israel work towards peace without interference from racist theology that discriminates against Arabs. In the meantime, given the immense suffering of an entire lost generation of Palestinian children, evangelicals could serve the process much better by uniting in Palestine under the directive Christ left his followers: feed the hungry and cloth the poor.

If this shift were made and the Arab world saw a different crusade by American evangelicals, the world truly would be a better place.

I found this blog post here - I think he wrote it in conjunction with the release of his novel "Fuse." (It's an old post by now.)

I was surprised by his use of the term "racist" but now I think I understand why he's using it. It's the first time that I've heard an evangelical Christian call Zionism racist. Or because he calls it theology, he could even be referring to dispensationalism!

President Obama has some of the lowest approval ratings in recent history. He is currently a lame duck. The sheen is gone. He has "um"'d and "uh"'d his way out of darling status. And his catastrophic policies aren't helping. By all indications, he will be a one term president.

But this is irritating.

Keep it up, folks. If anyone can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory it will be Republicans.

(How's everybody doing detoxing kids from socialism this week?)

If you follow this blog, you know that our resident novelist has weighed in on this subject. Now, listen to another novelist with a similar message.

It’s disturbing reflection of evangelical America that diversely different political figures like Reverend Wright and Pat Robertson both take up huge chunks of media time under the same banner of Christianity.

Even a casual comparison between their political views and the recorded words of Jesus shows they certainly are not speaking on his behalf. Where the Reverend Wright calls upon God to damn America, Jesus did not request the same for the oppressive Roman overlords. Unlike Pat Roberston’s solution for Hugo Chavez, Jesus never advocated the assassination of leaders of foreign nations.

This problem begins with the unspoken assumption that American evangelicals must be of one political stripe to make a difference. Gather as many blacks under Reverend Wright as you can, or as many whites under Pat Robertson or the Moral Majority, and let the best army win. In this landscape, conservatives are Christians. Liberals are the anti-Christ.

The gospel accounts, however predominately show Jesus as a person who lived intentionally concerned with the common good of all people. As for politics, Jesus pointedly refused to lead his people against their overlords. Yet in rejecting the leadership mantle offered to him, Jesus showed a great understanding of politics. Especially when it comes to faith.

Living in a land where cross-shaped shadows of history’s most infamous torture instrument were a constant reminder of Roman rule, Jesus well knew that on the kingdom of earth, power is gained by the sword. He knew too, the pitfalls of grasping that sword, used so literally in his name during the Crusades, and metaphorically in recent presidential elections through the leverage of votes.

In contrast to the Christian right, Jesus, who knew God best, did not invoke his Father’s name to impose moral imperatives on the secular society around him — Greeks and Romans who lived far more hedonistically and with far less regard for human life than today’s ‘Hollywood’. Unlike Christian boycotters, Jesus did not expect a secular world to live by biblical standards. The irony is that the institution Jesus did criticize and hold to those standards was the religious establishment that eventually slaughtered him. Why? For asserting that it had failed God miserably in pursuit of politics and power.

Few who argue the divinity of Jesus will dispute that because of Jesus, western civilization was changed. Yet he transformed society by transforming individuals, not by transforming legislation. He offered hope and inner peace, leaving his followers a simple directive to feed the hungry and cloth the poor, asking them to give love and to accept suffering and sacrifice.

In this sense, yes, Jesus was a leader. By example. He rejected the power of the sword for the powerlessness and suffering and sacrifice of the cross. But Jesus and his teachings continue to transform individuals, while Rome is an ancient fallen empire, and the leaders of his day are dust, forgotten except as history lessons.

This is not to imply that Christians, as individuals, should remove themselves from the democratic process, in voting or running for office or even in leading groups with a common political cause. But marching beneath a Christian banner begins to set up an exclusionary group — ‘either you’re Christian and you’re on our side, or you oppose us, thus you can’t be a Christian’ — with results readily seen in the polarization of American politics. There are liberal Christians who want to help the poor and fight for justice.

The Christian banner hurts effectiveness too. Leaders of Christian coalitions who claim the moral high ground in the name of God are often viewed with the suspicion accorded to an invading crusader, and are correspondingly hampered by this suspicion, no matter how positive or well intentioned their efforts.

The greatest danger in the politicalization of faith awaits for the day it might have total success, a danger that America’s founding fathers foresaw by establishing the separation of church and state. Horrible and godless as a democracy might appear at times to the religious right in America, it is still far more inviting than the reign of the Christian Inquisition or the current theocracy in Iran.

I wish I'd written that. :)

Remind your people to submit to the government and its officers. They should be obedient, always ready to do what is good. They must not speak evil of anyone, and they must avoid quarreling. Instead, they should be gentle and show true humility to everyone.
-- Titus 3:1 & 2 (NLT)

At the risk of beating a dead horse -- and PLEASE read this post with a huge honkin' smiley face superimposed over it -- I believe I have discovered why there's been such pushback to Obama's planned speech to school children.

A few of us have known that Obama's speech is not unprecedented. Both Reagan and Bush Sr. presented nationally televised speeches to school children during class time.
But only the truly inquisitive have seen the insidious nature of these speeches.

I was only a snotnosed kid at the time, but apparently Reagan pushed the "goodness" of his policies.
And take a look at this directive from George H.W. Bush's address:

"Let me know how you're doing. Write me a letter. I'm serious about this one. Write me a letter about ways you can help us achieve our goals."

Holy cow. I'm pretty sure Kim Jong Il asks for letters too. And did you catch the whiff of totalitarianism in the phrase "help us achieve our goals"?

More from the Coke Classic of conservative blogging, Eugene Volokh.

So now I see what's really happening. All the parents upset about our president's speech were subliminally indoctrinated as children toward conservatism.

I keed, I keed!

John Piper on why he hopes his daughter hears the President's speech.

It only takes about 15 comments before someone compares Obama to Hitler.

Nothing has pushed me more toward committing not to vote again than this stuff lately. I've never seriously considered not voting before, but all this reaction to this thing will do it, I think. I don't know how else to express it, but it just grieves me. And 8 years ago, I think I'd be yelling and blogging and arguing right along with everybody.

Fear and worry are the affections of the idolatrous. I don't mean to over-spiritualize this stuff, but I am utterly convinced that the more awake to the gospel we become, the less pressing all this stuff seems. And I don't think in good conscience I can help my brothers and sisters who are acting like this win an election.

You probably don't care. But I'm just gonna put that out there, because I don't think I'm alone in feeling this way.
You might be losing the political capital you think you've gained now that the president is pretty much a lame duck for the time being. If this is the continuing face of Christian conservatism, I'm out.
---

UPDATE: The President's prepared remarks are now published online.
I hope it indoctrinates a bunch of kids.

You've heard the President plans to speak to school children via video in the class room. They will then emerge socialist zombies who turn on their parents and want to give free medical treatment to hobos. Or something. It's hard to tell over the hysteria.

Seriously, people: pick your battles.

I think the best way to see either political party at its most unhinged is to take them out of power. We saw it with the liberals during Bush's presidency and now we get to play the same game.

The President plans to talk about hard work, making good grades, and being a conscientious citizen. He is not giving a policy speech to kids. President Obama is a boring and milquetoast head of state (seriously, Barack? Bud Light for the Beer Summit?), but he isn't that tone deaf.

I am already hearing about how this little talk (and the "activities" suggested for teachers after it -- which I've read) is going to indoctrinate our children into socialism.
Really?

I didn't vote for the man, and I don't plan to in 2012, but here's my question to my fellow conservatives: Do we really want to give the impression that working hard, taking education seriously, and being a conscientious citizen are all "socialist" (or even liberal) virtues?

Remember when we were the ones who cared about patriotism and hard work? Now we're being a bunch of babies b/c the guy we didn't vote for is talking about the same stuff we love when someone we agree with is talking about them.

People are really being ridiculous about this.

"As far as I am concerned, this is not civics education — it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality," said Oklahoma state Sen. Steve Russell. "This is something you'd expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein's Iraq."

This is asinine. And it's an insult to all who suffered under Hussein's Iraq or presently suffer under North Korean oppression. It's just as stupid as when the unhinged left called Bush "Hitler."

The President of the United States wants to speak to school children about working hard and getting good grades. I think that's awesome. If President Bush was doing it, most of the people whining right now would think it was awesome too. (In fact, the first President Bush did it in his term but I don't remember conservative concern about Big Brother indoctrinating our kids.)

This is why I HATE politics. And American evangelicals, on both the right and the left, are idolaters about this stuff.
Honestly, if Obama got another term and then was succeeded by decades of Democratic presidents, the damage done would be totally worth it if it got this nation's believers to look to the Lord of the Universe more than they do who's in the White House. And I mean that.