{"id":4124,"date":"2006-12-04T17:29:38","date_gmt":"2006-12-05T00:29:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/2006\/12\/04\/barack-obama\/"},"modified":"2006-12-04T17:29:38","modified_gmt":"2006-12-05T00:29:38","slug":"barack-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2006\/12\/04\/barack-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"Barack Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tNew York Magazine has an has an interesting little piece on Barack Obama:<\/a><\/p>\n

\nA woman stands up and tosses Obama what I assume she thinks is a bit of red meat. What, she asks, does the senator think of the pervasiveness of religion in public discourse these days? Obama doesn\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdt take the bait.<\/p>\n

\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdNo one would say that Dr. King should leave his moral vision at the door before getting involved in public-policy debate,\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd he answers. \u00ef\u00bf\u00bdHe says, \u00ef\u00bf\u00bdAll God\u00ef\u00bf\u00bds children.\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd \u00ef\u00bf\u00bdBlack man and white man, Jew and Gentile, Protestant and Catholic.\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd He was speaking religiously. So we have to remember that not every mention of God is automatically threatening a theocracy.<\/p>\n

\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdOn the other hand,\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd he continues, \u00ef\u00bf\u00bdreligious folks need to understand that separation of church and state isn\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdt there just to protect the state from religion, but religion from the state.\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd He points out that, historically speaking, the most ardent American supporters of the separation between church and state were Evangelicals\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdand Jefferson and Franklin. \u00ef\u00bf\u00bdWho were Deists, by the way,\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd he adds, \u00ef\u00bf\u00bdbut challenged all kinds of aspects of Christianity. They didn\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdt even necessarily believe in the divinity of Christ, which is not something that gets talked about a lot.\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s good, but it’s not the cool part; this is:<\/p>\n

\nObama\u00ef\u00bf\u00bds first year in office, he voted for cloture on the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court (though not for the nomination itself), earning dozens of angry posts on Daily Kos, a hugely well-trafficked liberal blog. Obama responded with a polite but stern four-page note.<\/p>\n

\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdOne good test as to whether folks are doing interesting work is, Can they surprise me?\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd he tells me. \u00ef\u00bf\u00bdAnd increasingly, when I read Daily Kos, it doesn\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdt surprise me. It\u00ef\u00bf\u00bds all just exactly what I would expect.\u00ef\u00bf\u00bd <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now that’s a Democrat who can see straight.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York Magazine has an has an interesting little piece on Barack Obama: A woman stands up and tosses Obama what I assume she thinks is a bit of red meat. What, she asks, does the senator think of the pervasiveness of religion in public discourse these days? Obama doesn\u00ef\u00bf\u00bdt take the bait. \u00ef\u00bf\u00bdNo one … Continue reading “Barack Obama”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-14w","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}