As I listened to NPR this afternoon I caught the end of a story about a speech given by Obama today. I didn’t hear who the audience was or what the topic was. All I heard was him saying, “…they’re usually working to help people of all faiths or of no faith at all.”
Wow, I thought. Almost brave of him to allude to non-believers, atheists and humanists. He nearly put us on equal footing with the theists. Don’t piss off the religious, Barack. Rationalists are far more forgiving and understanding. Unfortunately we’re also in the minority and represent too few votes to make a huge impact on the candidates or the party and their platform. So we’re safer to ignore than the faithful.
Non-believers are concerned with the issues that will affect all of humanity or that attempt to enslave the public forum to the rules and regulations (prejudices, phobias and myths) of a particular sect of theism.
You can trust a non-believer to give you straight information regarding issues of finance, foreign relations and military policy. Issues that require reasoning, logic and good old common sense best be left to those who determine their own agendas, rather than those who wish to inflict the agenda of their personal imaginary friend on the entire country.
In short, go ahead and pander to the religious to get their votes. But once you’re elected and if you are seriously concerned for not just the people of the country you now lead but for humanity everywhere, you would be well advised to seek council from those who do not put their allegiance to this country below their allegiance to a “higher power”.
So I got home a little while ago and thought I should blog about this and give the man a little credit.
First, though, I wanted to check out the whole story for some background.
July 1 (Bloomberg) — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said he would spend at least $500 million a year to promote community aid programs run by faith-based groups.
The proposal would expand an initiative put in place by President George W. Bush to aid religious organizations performing social service work, which Obama said “never fully completed its mission or fulfilled its promise.”
Obama, a former community organizer in Chicago, would create a new White House office for the President’s Council for Faith- Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Among other things, the council would help train faith-based groups on how to apply for federal grants and set up a program to provide summer educational opportunities for 1 million low-income children.
“While these groups are often made up of folks who’ve come together around a common faith, they’re usually working to help people of all faiths or of no faith at all,” Obama said today in Zanesville, Ohio. “Change comes not from the top down, but from the bottom up, and few are closer to the people than our churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques.” (Source: Bloomberg)
Damnit, Barack. Here I had all these positive thoughts about what I perceived as a small nod to the “community” of non-believers and I find out that your significant comment wasn’t exciting or brave. No one is grateful to the man who smuggles Cuban cigars by packing them in piles of manure.
Supporting faith-based programs with our tax dollars is a violation of the Constitution you want to swear to uphold. And if the requirements are written such that our money can’t be used in any way to pay for purely religious activities (no “busing people to mass in order to earn a dinner” type homeless shelters, for example), then why should faith even be a criteria? Why not use everyone’s money to support worthwhile social outreaches regardless of their motivation? Rev. Phelps is a faith-based organization. Can he apply for federal money to pay off his well-earned bankruptcy?
Barack, you’ve pissed me off. If I voted you’d be in danger of losing mine. As Carlin explains, since I don’t vote, I have every right to complain when our government, its representatives or its policies head toward the abyss of stupidity, illegality and/or theocracy.
I take back all the nice things I wrote above the quote.
fallingleaf says:
I’m very curious why you don’t vote. I have never heard a good rationale for this from people who don’t vote.
1st July 2008 at 7:33 am
librehombre says:
People who go after Obama on this point need to do more study. Before the corrupt Bush administration started using federal money to buy right wing Christian votes, which worked, by the way. Before Rove/Bush there were strict rules in place to determine eligibility and continued participation. Funding for community programs run by faith groups had a long history of valuable service to their communities and they were free of prejudice. There is nothing wrong with funding groups that want to help people if they are brought back to the pre-Bush conditions that he blithely, nay criminally waved aside.
1. You have to show results
2. You have to hire qualified people
3. You cannot discriminate in hiring or promotion
4. You cannot proselytize.
Note Obama’s plan includes education in how to apply for funds. You may be sure that education will stress the four points I call out. But, he is smart enough not to elaborate on this at this sensitive moment in time.
Why get all over him for being a politician? He is a politician. This is like blaming a robin for having a red breast.
1st July 2008 at 6:34 am
Jack Carlson says:
Fallingleaf, there’s a not-so-serious answer and a serious one.
The not-so-serious answer is that the very first time I voted, for various reasons I won’t go into, I voted for Richard Nixon. My humiliation is only deepened by the fact that he won that election. If someone’s learning to drive and on their first time out they crash the car into a building, perhaps they ought not to dive anymore. If you’re that bad at something, maybe you’d better not do it again. I obviously, by my own standards, suck at voting.
The serious answer is that I refuse to be hamstrung into voting for the lesser of two evils. In no election have I been convinced of the overall quality of any candidate. To have my choices limited by others and to be forced into deciding which of the candidates (I didn’t ask for) would be the least bad president is a violation of my freedom of choice (not a freedom assured by the Constitution or Bill of Rights, but still…).
As George Carlin has said, if you vote, you’re to blame for bad government. You elected those crooks, it’s the voter’s fault that they’re in that position. If you don’t vote, you have a clear conscience when criticizing the government.
1st July 2008 at 11:38 pm