Democrats and Religion -- Obama Edition

Before I begin, I want to apologize for drifting off on tangents in this post. But I think it will all tie together nicely in the end. That good ol' shuck and jive meister, Charles Krauthammer, has a column up concerning Barak Obama. (For the record, I think it is about time we had a president with a curiously foreign-sounding name...) Let see what Chuckles has to say:

Wright's assertion from the pulpit that the U.S. government invented HIV "as a means of genocide against people of color"? Wright's claim that America was morally responsible for Sept. 11 -- "chickens coming home to roost" -- because of, among other crimes, Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Now first, we have this HIV myth. It has about all the merit of the rightwing myths of the banning of DDT or the fluoridation of our drinking water supply. In other words it is complete bunk so that can be written off by anyone with half a functioning brain (alas our poor Mr. Krauthammer does not measure up to this level of functionality.) But notice the second statement, that We, as Americans, deserved 9/11 becuase of our moral failings. Considering that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell said exactly the same thing, I don't see how this guy can be singled out for this "crime" of anti-Americanism. If Wright is guilty then so is the entire Religious right -- There is not one single conservative/fundamentalist preacher in existence that hasn't blamed America for its lax moral attitudes towards gays, abortion, and sex in general. But we will see this is the very thing our good buddy Krauthead focuses on..

Obama condemns such statements as wrong and divisive, then frames the next question: "There will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?"
But that is not the question. The question is why didn't he leave that church? Why didn't he leave -- why doesn't he leave even today -- a pastor who thundered not once but three times from the pulpit (on a DVD the church proudly sells) "God damn America"? Obama's 5,000-word speech, fawned over as a great meditation on race, is little more than an elegantly crafted, brilliantly sophistic justification of that scandalous dereliction.

God Damn America is the point that really gets Chuckles' panties in a bunch. But what is the difference between saying that God damned America using 9/11 as the tool, which is what the Religious Right did, and saying "God Damn America" which is what Wright did? But the sinkhole of illogic does not stop there. For the Religious Right never stops once it goes too far. That bottomless pit of a hole it digs can certainly be dug deeper. They go on to say the same thing about Katrina and New Orleans -- God punished Americans because of moral failings. They protest funerals of American soldiers because these soldiers are defending America, and America deserves any punishment it gets because of its moral failings; so says Pastor Fred Phelps.


The "blame America first" crowd is certainly the entire collective Religious Right. Yet who gets spanked for taking their religion too seriously? Barak Obama. Not McCain, not Bush, not any Republican leaders in Congress, and not a single Republican politician across our great nation. No, it is Obama.


I can only find one distinguishing factor, that pesky 'D' after Barak's name. Apparently only Republicans can subscribe to fire-and-brimstone Christianity. No Democrats allowed.


Unfortunately, I am just a wee bit sympathetic to that sentiment. I am a believer in seperation of Church and State. I would like to think that my party, the Democratic party, also wants to adhere strongly to the Constitution, as well. Let the Republicans piss all over our founding document while simultaneously describing it as honoring the Constitution by "showering it with gold."


Democrats can be religious, I have no problem with that (yet I will still mock their religion, but they are free to believe anything they want.) I just wish that they would make their religion a personal and private thing; not incorporate it into their political character they play on TV.


Krauthammer is a vile human who has contorted reality to such an extent that if one is a conservative Christian who claims God damned America because of America's morality, that is ok, because it is the strong Christian morals speaking, not hatred of America. But if a liberal Christian utters "God Damn America" forget all about the underlying Christain morals, focus on the hatred of America.


I can only surmise that if you make your bed with Christian morality, then wherever that morality leads is fine, no matter what the consequences (America deserved it). but if you make your bed with the Constitution and holding dear the idealism that is America, then Christian morals lead you to violate your first, true calling, that is America.


Democrats need to remember this. Leave religion, like sex, at home in their personal lives. Let the Republicans force their religious views and sexual appetites into the public. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Republican's sword is sex and religion. Democrats sword is the U.S. Constitution.

Thanks to Sadly, No! for the heads up.