The Mad Prophet and the Media

Isaiah 30:8-11 (New Living Translation)
“Now go and write down these words. Write them in a book. They will stand until the end of time as a witness that these people are stubborn rebels who refuse to pay attention to the Lord’s instructions. They tell the seers, “Stop seeing visions!” They tell the prophets “Don’t tell us what is right. Tell us nice things. Tell us lies. Forget all this gloom. Get off your narrow path. Stop telling us about your ‘Holy One of Israel.’”

I’ve been steering clear of the goings on in the political arena for over a month, but events have overtaken me and I once again feel the stirring in my soul. As we Evangelicals put it, I feel the “unction.”

In the early days of his failed presidential campaign Mike Huckabee spoke to a gathering of Evangelicals, noting that he’d come to them as one speaking the language of Zion as a mother tongue, not as one who’d recently learned clever Christian catch phases so that he could benefit politically. As his campaign lurched between the giddiness of success to the inevitable defeat he became a center of media attention, often misunderstood, sometimes mocked, occasionally disdained. When it was all over the media never could fully understand what the point was. They failed to see that the real point of Mike Huckabee wasn’t about him. What his campaign revealed was that there really is a significant Evangelical culture or sub-culture, or perhaps even a counter-culture in this country, that there is real value in being a smooth stone or a widow’s mite.

I think the media must have breathed a collective sigh of relief when John McCain went over the top and secured the Republican Party’s nomination. The talk of Zion, smooth stones, and widow’s mites was past. It was time to settle in to politics as usual.

For a time things went according to the script. On the heels of Hillary’s tears in New Hampshire, we were treated to the endless math lessons and delegate counts. There was little talk of the issues, and that was alright. After all, that’s what political campaigns and the news business are all about: the shallow and meaningless. I think it was Will Rogers who once asked, “If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?” That was the operative doctrine in Rogers’ day, and it’s even truer today.

Then, Jeremiah Wright burst upon the scene. For the media, it was a godsend, a ratings bonanza. His sermons, or selected snippets of them, became fuel for the media wildfires. I’m not sure where they first appeared. I think it might have been on FOX. But once it all got started the talking heads from networks and cable outlets began to douse the flames with gasoline. It seemed to subside for a while, but the dying embers have been re-kindled in the past few days. Reverend Wright has decided to speak out and the flames are once again leaping across the airwaves.

I didn’t look too deeply into what Jeremiah Wright had said when this controversy began. Like most Americans I was furious. It was clear from the snippets that this man was unpatriotic, un-Christian, angry and bitter, a distorter of the truth, a megalomaniac. I didn’t need any more evidence; I’d seen enough. He was a guilty man and richly deserved the scorn being heaped upon him. I think my frame of mind back then was that if Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, or Joe Scarborough had given me the rope, I’d have hung the man.

But, when the controversy was re-ignited I decided to drop the rope and listen as carefully as possible to everything Jeremiah Wright had to say. Once I did, something in me changed. I didn’t become an apologist for him. I didn’t miraculously find myself nodding my head in agreement with everything he said. In fact, I still disagreed with a lot of his assertions and accusations. But, once I began to peer through the lens he was offering I began to see some of the things at the heart of his message. Once I saw my way past my personal distaste for the messenger I began to understand the context he said he was framing his remarks in.

Just what is that context?

It is, first and foremost, the tradition of the Biblical prophets. One of the things that becomes evident from Holy Writ is that God is the champion of the oppressed, the widow, the poor, the alien, the orphan, the grief stricken, the weary, the hungry, the thirsty, the captive, the blind, the lame, the infirm, the sinner desperately seeking absolution. It’s a rich tradition. It becomes clear early on when Moses, at God’s bidding, stands before pharaoh and proclaims the word of the Lord on behalf of a nation within a nation that is living in bondage. “Let my people go,” he declares. The tradition is powerfully evident when the prophet Nathan confronts Israel’s greatest king, David, when the king commits adultery and has an innocent man murdered in a vain attempt to hide his sin. The tradition carries through the nation’s history, from Isaiah to Ezekiel, from Amos to Micah to Joel. When Israel turned away from her mandate to be a “light to the nations,” the prophets spoke forcefully to the sins of commission and omission being committed. They spoke, as Jeremiah Wright said, the truth to power. They chastised the people for neglecting the poor and needy, for turning away from the widow in need, and profaning holy things. They warned the nation that God was going to use Israel’s enemies as an instrument of justice against them for the sins they refused to turn away from. They rebuked the princes and leaders who enriched themselves while tearing at the poor like a wolf tearing at its prey. They held nothing back. And, what was their reward for speaking the “word of the Lord?” For Moses it was exile and conflict, followed by years of leading an unbelieving nation through the wilderness. For Jeremiah it meant being thrown into a cold, dark well and later being placed in stocks. According the Jewish tradition Isaiah’s reward was being sawn in two. The Old Testament prophet’s lot for telling the truth was universal – scorn, ridicule, abandonment, isolation, and punishment.

The pattern continued in the New Testament as well. John the Baptist trudged up and down the Jordan River, crying out about the coming of a new kingdom. “The axe is laid to the root,” he said. “Let them man with two coats give one to the poor.” The religious leaders of the day followed him with great interest. He spoke a stinging “word of the Lord” to them. “You snakes, you vipers. Who warned you to flee the wrath that’s coming?” He railed against King Herod, only to be beheaded for exposing the king’s sin. Jesus himself came in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets and John the Baptist. He began his public ministry by declaring that he’d come to fulfill what the prophet Isaiah had said hundreds of years before – “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.” He held out wonderful promises to all in the Sermon on the Mount. Yet, in that same sermon he challenged those listening to see the world, and themselves, in a new light. “You have heard it said” was followed by “But I say unto you.” He equated murder with anger, adultery with a lustful eye. He said that a man who called his brother a fool was every bit as much in danger of the fires of hell as the man who committed murder. He spoke of turning the other cheek rather than exacting an eye for and eye or a tooth for a tooth. He called those following him to love their enemies and to bless those who persecuted them. The poor heard and embraced his message. The powerful very rarely did. In fact, the air almost always crackled with tension when Jesus and the religious authorities of His day interacted. They tried to trap him with clever questions only to be revealed as the fools they were when Jesus answered their questions with a question in return. His words to them weren’t soothing at all. In fact, He called them children of their father the devil. He overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple and said that the religious authorities had turned what should have been a house of prayer for all people into a den of thieves. When they’d had enough, the ecclesiastical leaders plotted to kill him, and succeeded. In order to kill the message and stabilize the nation, they reasoned, it was necessary to crucify the messenger.

And, so the history and the lot of prophets have proceeded unbroken throughout history. From the Old to the New Testaments, then the Church fathers to Luther and Wesley, from Wilberforce to the abolitionists, from Azusa Street to America’s storefront churches, from Dietrich Bonheoffer to Martin Luther King, the tradition has held. The prophets who came before us spoke forcefully to the evils of their times and paid a heavy price for being messengers of God’s truth

There’s another thread to this context. It's culture. Reverend Wright’s message has been greatly informed by his experience as an African-American. That’s the lens through which he sees the world. It’s a picture painted in part by the history of oppression and slavery his forbearers endured in this country. The pallet of his experience includes Jim Crow and lynching. It includes being segregated in the civilian sphere while being expected to die for all on the field of battle. While I try to look at that experience objectively, Reverend Wright looks through that experience subjectively. While I see it from a distance, it is close and personal for him. For those listening outside of that context it’s difficult to weave through the rhetoric to the message intended. As I listen I feel myself wanting to respond – “Haven’t things improved?” “Isn’t America a better place now for African-Americans than it was a generation ago?” “Why should I feel guilty about things I’ve never done?” But, as I read the words of the Sermon on the Mount or the prophets I realize that I must examine my own heart and ask the difficult questions. What is the lens through which I see the world? How do my feelings as an Irish-American toward the injustice of the British to my ancestors from ages past fit into my scheme of things? Why does the history of the potato famine play such a prominent role in my thinking? After all, I’ve never gone hungry a day in my life. Why is the diaspora that brought the Irish to this country so important to me? Why is it so embedded in my soul? When I ask these questions I begin to understand. While we all, African-American and Anglo-Saxon American, have a common history, we also bring the things long since woven into our genes by personal experience and history. We are who we are by the grace of God and each of us has an important story to contribute to the well being and advancement of the whole community.

Most often in life the rewards we receive come through great difficulty and trial, when we’re provoked into action. This, it seems to me, is the role of the prophet in our midst. It is his/her lot in life to say the things we’d rather not hear, to expose the darkness clinging to the unseen crevices of our hearts. This past Sunday I listened to a sermon that brought me to tears. Jannie Stubbs, our co-pastor, spoke about grace, comparing it to the impossible demands of the Old Testament law and oral tradition. She spoke of how we create self-righteous, legalistic dividing lines between ourselves and those we don’t approve of. The dividing lines may be between left and right, between the ugliness of someone else’s sin and our “righteousness,” or between those we disagree with and ourselves. Once we create these dividing lines we have the uncanny ability to create the highest wall we possibly can between us. It’s a wall of separation that reads “I’m good and you’re bad. I’m saved and you’re lost.” As I listened I found myself wanting to shout, “Stop! In the name of God, stop!” But, the more I listened the more the words pierced. I found myself recalling he words of the Sermon on the Mount, about the equality at the bar of God’s justice between the man who murders and the man who calls his brother a fool. I tried to find comfort in the fact that I hadn’t committed any great sins, but then the words of the Book of Common Prayer from my Episcopal roots came to mind – “We have done those things which we ought not to have done and we have left those things undone which we ought to have done and there is no health in us.” I realized that for every sin of commission I could find in someone else, I could in turn find a sin of omission in me.

What does this have to do with Jeremiah Wright? One of the things he spoke about yesterday was the possibility of reconciliation. While it might be easy to dismiss him as a hate filled fanatic, it’s not so easy to dismiss the reconciliation offered by the prophets and Jesus. While it’s true the message they brought was one seemingly laden with doom, it’s also true that they brought a message filled with hope. “Come let us reason together,” Isaiah said. Ezekiel railed against the sins of Israel, but he also saw the possibility of a valley of dry bones coming to life. Joel spoke of the devastation of the canker worm, but also saw the promise of a time when God would send His people corn, wine, and oil, and a time when God would “no more make you a reproach among the heathen.”

You see, it is the role of the prophet is to provoke and be provocative, of living and speaking in the tension between judgment and reconciliation. It’s a message whose context is, if we can hear it, love and grace.

In the end, the message I think we’ve had great difficulty hearing in all the media sound bytes these days is that message of reconciliation. As I said earlier, I’m not an apologist for Jeremiah Wright, but I do think the message hidden from us in the media’s rush for ratings and profits is that reconciliation is possible. This is the message from heaven, that God was/is in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself and wants us to reconcile ourselves to one another. At a time when the dividing lines and walls have been so skillfully drawn and erected and the airwaves are crackling with hate it’s almost impossible to hear. I think it’s understandable. The business of reconciliation is difficult. If it weren’t so, there would have been no reason for Jesus to die on the cross to open the door to grace and absolution to all of us.

I believe, then, that the task before us in the wake of Jeremiah Wright is to open that door and begin the long process of reconciliation and healing in our time.

Whither To, Iraq?

“In the presence of a relentless pageantry of hideous behavior, something in the moral imagination shuts down, or acquiesces, or else denies that all of this gaudily squalid awfulness should be described as evil at all. We absorb more horrors than our systems can tolerate. We overdose on horrors; eventually, inevitably, horrors begin to cease horrifying us. The moral system, and with it the capacity for outrage, shuts down.”
- Lance Morrow – Evil: An Investigation (Page 84)

Like no other writer I’ve read in the past five years, Lance Morrow described much of the thinking that gripped the world in 2003. The horrors of World War II were becoming ancient history. America had passed from Korea to the Cold War to Vietnam, from the Gulf War in 1991 to the Balkans, then to Rwanda, and, finally to the horror of September 11, 2001. By 2003, most of the world had had enough. Afghanistan was one thing, but Iraq was a step too far. Few doubted the evil going on in Iraq, but it seemed to be an acceptable level of evil. While the debate about weapons of mass destruction raged, fewer still asked whether the oppressed people of Iraq preferred a diplomat or a gunboat to come to their rescue. The brutalization of the Sunnis, the Marsh Arabs, and the Kurds was an evil the world had just come to accept. In fact, we’d come to the place where we could watch it all unfold casually while pitchmen sold us Pampers and the Dow soared into the stratosphere. In the face of all that, what argument could those being run through Saddam’s shredders make? Thus, when America and its coalition partners invaded and weapons of mass destruction weren’t found, international anger mounted. Then, as a brutal insurgency and terror attacks followed the liberation of Baghdad, fueled and perpetrated by Osama’s faithful, the moral question that should have been considered in the run-up to the war got turned on its head. America, and its coalition partners, became the embodiment of evil and the practitioners of terror began to gain cult hero status. From then, till now, George Bush and America haven’t been able to shed the mantle of the bad guy.

Earlier today I read a piece penned by E.J. Dionne on the heels of the testimony of Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus a few days ago. He’s an excellent writer, appropriately provocative. In the piece he posits the idea that it is the war’s supporters, and not its detractors, who are caught in the past, justifying a war that could never be justified.

Upon reading Mr. Dionne’s piece I decided to send him a response. In closing, that response follows.

Mr. Dionne

I just finished reading your op-ed.

I've been a supporter of our effort in Iraq from the beginning. My support wasn’t/isn't based on whether or not Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or geopolitics. It was based in the principle that Saddam's genocide had to be stopped. It was clear to me from the beginning that the United Nations wasn't going to act on behalf of the Kurds, the Marsh Arabs, or the Sunnis, and that someone had to.

While I don't believe I'm “stuck” in the past, I do think there is an element of truth in what you say. The past means something to me. The history of unchecked aggression and its consequences also means something to people in my generation. I was born a year after the Pearl Harbor attack. I remember nothing of the war and its consequences until the early fifties. My first encounter with that cost came one morning as I was walking. I noticed a window with a gold star placed on it. When I got home I asked my mother what the star meant. She explained that it was one of the country's ways of honoring a mother whose son had died in the battle to protect the world against fascism. As time passed I read about the war and its toll - hundreds of thousands of American lives lost, the millions lost on both sides, the millions of Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Russians, homosexuals, religious dissenters who had died in the concentration camps. Even at that young age questions occurred to me. Why didn't we just leave the fascists alone? Could this terrible war have been avoided through diplomacy and containment? After all, they weren't directly threatening us. Questions also came from the other side of my thought process. If what the fascists were doing was so terrible, why didn't someone stop them earlier? If we knew what was going on in the early thirties, why didn't we confront them when the human cost wouldn't have been so staggering?

I suppose they’re not fair questions to ask. We can't turn back the clock. The history has been written. The battles have been fought; the bombs have been dropped. The death toll has been calculated. The crosses, stars of David, etc mark the graves of the fallen. As they say in New York, “it is what it is.”

But those who lived through those days have passed on a great lesson to us - unchecked aggression has deadly consequences.

As I listened to the testimony the other day I thought one person, Barack Obama asked one half of the really important question - How much al Qaeda influence are we willing to accept in Iraq and how much Iranian influence? The senator assumed, correctly, that even in a best case scenario there would be some. I agree.

But, as I watch the Democrats, particularly Hillary Clinton, pull to the left, I realize more clearly that the Democratic plan will almost certainly be a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, and consequences would follow from that.

That brings me to my questions. How much al Qaeda influence are the Democrats willing to allow under a worst case scenario? What will the Democratic thinking be if we withdraw rapidly, al Qaeda and Iran then sweep in to fill the power vacuum, a new cycle of genocide in Iraq begins, the region is destabilized, and Israel is placed in real danger of annihilation? What do you suppose the next move might be on the international stage once all that takes place? What expectation will you and the Democratic president have of America's sons and daughters if/when that scenario plays out? What will our strategic, geopolitical, and moral obligations be in such a circumstance?

That scenario seems improbable right now, but I suspect that thinking is grounded in wishful thinking. I'm sure that in the early thirties Hitler's evils seemed containable through dialog. The world was so fearful of confrontation it was willing to cede sovereign nations to Germany. By the time all the compromising was done Hitler and his fascist allies were powerful beyond measure. The six years that followed Germany’s invasion of Poland were the bloodiest in human history.

I do think Senator Obama asked crucial questions. If we can't eliminate all the evil forces arrayed, how can we best contain them? Just how much are we willing to accept? How do we measure it? What is our best case scenario?

The questions are fair.

I also think it's fair to ask what the consequences of withdrawal would be in a worst case scenario. Would the eventual consequences of rapid withdrawal too terrible to imagine? What would the eventual cost of inaction be?

Neither you nor I nor anyone in power can fully answer those questions. In that regard, the lessons of history and our collective consciences are all we have to guide us.

In a few months the question of direction will be answered. I'm certain that a Democrat will be elected to the presidency, and that Democrats will gain enough seats in the Senate and House to form a filibuster-proof majority. That will mean, almost certainly, that we'll withdraw from Iraq unconditionally. When that happens I will hope and pray for the best. I'll do my utmost to support the decision. I'll even be there if the worst case scenario plays out. When the call comes to my sons and my grandson to stem the tide, I'll be loyal, as will they. If God forbid, they were to fall and my wife was given a gold star in the name of a Democratic president and a grateful nation, I'd say all the right things. But in the recesses of my aching heart I'd be asking, “Why did it have to come to this?” “Why didn't we act before it became so bad and the cost of purging the evil was so great?”

Under those circumstances, what would you, as a journalist, tell my wife and me that would soothe our grief?

So, I labor under the burden of history, as I see it. As you put it, I'm stuck in the past. I'm torn between the costs of current action and plagued by what history has taught me about the terrible cost of inaction. I've tried devising geopolitical and moral equations to come up with some certain, mathematical answers to the questions. Unfortunately, this is not a circumstance like calculating the time of convergence at point C if John leaves station A at 9:00 going east at 25 MPH and Sally leaves station B at 9:12 going west at 31 MPH.

I wish for all the world, as do our senators, congressmen, and journalists, that I could see the end with certainty. But, none of us can. In the end, this war's opponents will in all likelihood get their wish. I hope and pray that point C will be success. But if point C is disaster what would you ask of me, my sons, and my grandsons? What will you say to me when I ask the inevitable questions – “why did you let it come to this?” “Why are so many more going to have to die when we could/should have acted before the unthinkable happened?”

I've prattled on far longer than I originally intended to, wrenching words out of my gut. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to engage in this task daily as a journalist. I doubt that you'll have time to read this, but that's alright. It's been cathartic for me. The questions I've asked come from a sincere heart, much like Senator Obama's questions the other day. We all have a stake in the outcome in Iraq. I believe your thoughts come from a sincere heart as well. We're all grappling with the questions and a very uncertain future. Mine are rooted in the moral lessons passed on to me through history. Perhaps my thinking is archaic, with roots tangled in history that is slowly being choked out by weeds of “now.” I have no power to carve out our course. I leave that to generals, politicians, and journalists who do, and will. In the end, I'm going to go where the tide of history takes me. Unfortunately, I see disaster on that horizon. I hope and pray that I'm wrong.

Regards

Phil Dillon

Emporia, Kansas

Hillary's Last Stand?

“Since you have chosen to elect a man with a timber toe to succeed me, you may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.”
- Davy Crockett

Tradition has it that Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, was clubbed to death, then beheaded, early in the first century. Little is known about him in Evangelical circles, other than the fact that one New Testament book, Jude, originally penned as a letter of encouragement to fellow Christians, is now part of protestant canon.

The letter ends with these words – “Rescue any who need to be saved, as you would rescue someone from a fire. Then with fear in your own hearts, have mercy on everyone who needs it.”

If any politician is in desperate need of rescuing and mercy these days it’s Hillary Clinton. Not long ago she was cruising along, assuming that the presidency was hers as a matter of divine right. Then something happened. Actually, Barack Obama happened. Now her campaign house appears to be on fire and there may not be any fire extinguishers or firemen around to put out the flames. She’s lost eight primaries in a row, which in baseball parlance means that she’s had a long string of Golden Sombreros. In last night’s contests she was soundly trounced, by over twenty percent in each state. Even more ominous was the fact that Hillary lost significant ground in her core support groups, white men, women, Hispanics, blue collar workers, and older voters.

I don’t know if Hillary’s been clubbed to death yet,but she and her campaign have the look of someone who’s been badly battered and wants no more of the other guy.

This coming Tuesday the people of Wisconsin and Hawaii will cast their primary ballots, with a total of ninety-four delegates up for grabs. I’d have to say, based on what’s happened thus far, that it’s advantage Obama. Senator Clinton seems to be conceding as much. Rather than stay on the east coast to lick her wounds, she made her way to Texas, hoping that an overwhelming victory there will turn the tide in her favor.

Will the tide turn? It could, but I doubt it. The old Clinton baggage of crass conniving, lust for power, and dirty tricks won’t be able to put of the fires of hope and change that Obama has set in the bones of the Party faithful. She may win some delegates in Texas, but I think she’ll realize when all is said and done that Texas is the home of the Alamo and Davy Crockett’s last stand.

The Other Side of the Coin

“Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples’ money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other people's freedom and security.”
- William F. Buckley

While the Republican Party leadership is trying to rally the troops around John McCain, Hillary Clinton, who once assumed she was the Democrat’s “anointed one,” may just be getting obliterated by tidal wave of popular support that is increasingly mounting in favor of young Mr. Obama.

As reported by the New York Times this morning:

“Mrs. Clinton held a buck-up-the-troops conference call on Monday with donors, superdelegates and other supporters; several said afterward that she had sounded tired and a little down, but determined about Ohio and Texas.”

“They also said that they had not been especially soothed, and that they believed she might be on a losing streak that could jeopardize her competitiveness in those states.”

“She has to win both Ohio and Texas comfortably, or she’s out,” said one superdelegate who has endorsed Mrs. Clinton, and who spoke on condition of anonymity to share a candid assessment. “The campaign is starting to come to terms with that.” Campaign advisers, also speaking privately in order to speak plainly, confirmed this view.”

The Clinton camp is really getting nervous. Patti Solis Doyle is out; Maggie Williams is in. The talk of inevitability has evaporated, having given way to campaign conference calls about “firewalls.” Even Clinton bean counters are getting into the act. Hassan Nemazee, one of Hillary’s national finance chairmen is telling donors

“Not to get caught up in the headlines about Obama. “I’m telling donors and supporters: Don’t be overly concerned about what goes on in the remainder of the month of February because these are not states teed up well for us,” Mr. Nemazee said.”

Mr. Nemazee had better hope, for Hillary’s sake, that she’s teed up a bit better a month from now than she currently is in Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Wisconsin, or Hawaii. If she can’t do any better there than she did the other day in Washington, Louisiana, Nebraska, and the Virgin Islands, then she just might face the prospect of getting smacked around by the Tiger Woods sized driver Obama will be pulling out of his war chest in Texas and Ohio.

I’m a Huckabee supporter, so I do believe in miracles, as does my candidate. Hillary’s problem is that she has presented herself as the candidate of reality while Obama has been the messenger of change and hope. It’s no contest.

This morning, Governor Huckabee was asked by a group of reporters why Barack seems to be winning against Hillary. His response was one of those classic Huck-isms:

“The American people are not looking for someone who can fix a carburetor. They’re looking for someone who can drive the car.”

I’ve said from the start of this campaign that the issues of vision, hope, and change really matter. That’s why I’ve supported Mike Huckabee from the beginning and will till all the delegates are counted. I believe his message of vertical politics, hope, economic revitalization and populism, and strength in the face of international terror is right for America. It’s become his political currency. Fear and division have been replaced by hope and vertical politics as his coin of the realm.

In one sense, Barack Obama is the other side of that coin. One of the principle reasons so many Democrats seem to be flocking to him is that message of hope and change. His slogans ring true; they hit their mark. When he rails out against the influence of lobbyists in American politics and tells his followers that change is coming they all respond in unison, “Yes we can…Yes we can…Yes we can! When Hillary talks about the need for experience in the White House, Obama counters by reminded all who will listen that twenty years of experience and two political dynasties have gotten us to where we are.

In his victory speech after sweeping the primaries and caucuses on Saturday night, Senator Obama spoke to his younger supporters. He promised them help with what has become the huge financial burden of a college education. The crowd roared as he put forth the idea of a $4,000 college tuition credit that would be granted to America’s young. Years earlier Bill Clinton had made the same promise. I remember the drumbeat of those days. “I’ll give you a college education.” “It’ll be free.” “It’ll be free.” “It’ll be free.” But there was something different in the Obama appeal. Along with the promise of financial support, America’s young were told that they would have to agree to serve the nation in some capacity in order to get the financial aid.

Therein lies the difference between the two Democratic candidates. One panders to the baser elements of our nature; the other calls out to the noble and altruistic.

That stream of altruism flows deep within Obama’s veins. During his 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic convention he spoke eloquently to the sense of shared moral responsibility we Americans share with our fellow citizens:

“If there’s a child on the South side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it isn’t my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it isn’t my grandparent. If there’s an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It is that fundamental belief – I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper – that makes this country work.”

One doesn’t have to agree with the Senator’s rhetoric, but one should see that it comes from the heart. When compared to the other side of the coin, Hillary Clinton’s cold political calculations, it soars above the crass and mundane that has made Americans sick of the political process.

Odds are that John McCain will be the Republican nominee, and if the momentum keeps building Barack Obama will be his opponent. What then?

It’s well know that economics is not McCain’s strong suit. Bread and butter conservatives love his resistance to the profligate spending that has turned the surpluses of 2000 into the huge deficits of 2008. But, they are also well aware of his previous opposition to the Bush tax cuts that triggered the post 9-11 economic boom. His current promise to support them isn’t being received warmly. The level of trust in his pronouncements is low. By the time November rolls around he’ll be plagued with a mixed economic message, like the ancient mariner wearing an albatross around his neck, while Obama will be appealing to those caught in the grip of the mortgage meltdown and plant layoffs. In such a case, what is perceived to be Wall Street Republicanism will lose hands down to Obama’s message of “social justice and equity.”

Does this mean that an Obama presidency is inevitable? Certainly not. There is another side of the Obama coin which could easily be exploited to expose the glaring gap in his altruism. The issue would be national security, Iraq, and the War on Terror.

I’ve spent some time reading back through Senator Obama’s messages on Iraq and national security. The net result is mixed. Once the layers of the onion are peeled back one thing becomes clear – that the Senator’s message of hope and altruism ends at the water’s edge as he promises to begin what could be the long march of retreat in the face of international terror. While his constant reminders of the fact that he is the only Democratic candidate who was against our involvement in Iraq from the beginning play well to the Daily Kos set, they also reveal that his principles of domestic social justice and equity are less than a layer of the onion deep, if that deep at all. How can one so principled say that he cares about the children who can’t read, senior citizens facing difficult economic choices, the targets of religious bigotry, and the least of us, when he tosses the dreams, aspirations, and hopes of millions who’ve seen their loved ones run through Saddam’s shredders, seen their developmentally disabled children used as walking bombs, or have had an education denied them because they were women, as if they were little more than international flotsam and jetsam? How can he speak convincingly about the responsibility of the powerful to the weak and needy domestically when he demonstrates an alarming willingness for the strong to abandon the helpless in Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran and other victims of political violence crying out for help from the centers of violence and terror in the world?

If Barack Obama is to be true to his principles, he must be held to a standard of consistency. He can’t have it both ways. He can’t be a man of compassion because it plays well to the laid-off worker or single mother in Peoria and then ignore the cries of help from the veiled woman pleading for a new way of life in Baghdad or Kabul. He cannot be allowed to portray himself as a classic, caring Democratic liberal in America’s rust belt at the same time he practices a Nixon-like realpolitik and appeasement on the international scene. It’s not only inconstant, it’s also very dangerous. This inconsistency, this weakness in principle, would be no match for the twisted Vladimir Putins, Mahmud Ahmadinejads, or the Kim Jong-ils of this world. Obama’s rhetoric may soar in this campaign, but it will never convince Iran’s leaders to stop developing nuclear weapons, nor will it woo Osama from the cave where he hatches his evil plans. If Obama is elected, this will be America’s central problem in 2009 and beyond. As Thomas Sowell once said, “If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians will win.” .

Every coin has two sides. Obama’s problem in a general election is that his dollar of hope on the domestic side is worth little more than a penny when it’s turned over to the international side. If he can’t overcome that glaring inconsistency in his message, he might win against John McCain if he is the Republican nominee, but he would not win in November against the domestic and international consistency of Mike Huckabee if he becomes the Republican standard bearer.

Mathematics and Miracles

“Do not worry about your problems with mathematics; I assure you mine are far greater”
- Albert Einstein

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”
- C.S. Lewis

Mike Huckabee made the rounds this morning, flitting from FOX to CNN to MSNBC. When asked why he isn’t dropping out of the race he responded, in classic Huckabee style, “As long as my guys are waving their pompons, we'll stay on the field.”

Give ‘em hell, Mike!

The Republican powerful are saying that it’s over. In fact, they’re saying it over and over and over. It’s like watching a bunch of politicians singing the “Anvil Chorus.”

Mike Huckabee is well aware of the mathematics involved. So are his supporters. We all get it, but we’re not giving up. There’s no reason, nor is there any incentive to.

While winning eighty-five to ninety percent of the remaining delegates is a daunting task, winning less than fifty percent of the remaining delegates and then participating in a brokered convention is far from impossible. John McCain must win fifty percent, plus one, of the total delegates in order to secure the nomination. That hasn’t happened yet, and until it does I’m not going to relinquish my pompom. I like Mike!

Many Huckabee detractors have now begun to resort to fear tactics. They seem to delight in taking us back to 1976 when Ronald Reagan decided to take on a sitting president. When all the smoke cleared from that convention, Gerald Ford won a narrow victory, Ronald Reagan left with the support of the Party’s conservative/grass-roots wing, the Republican Party left divided/wounded, and Jimmy Carter won the presidency. Many of the powerful in the G.O.P never forgave Reagan, even though he was to four years later propel his Party into power and return the country to its natural, historic conservatism.

Governor Huckabee has also been accused of splitting Republican conservatives, thus enhancing the chances for a Democratic victory in the general election. Well, I don’t believe it, nor does history seem to validate that point of view.

I spent some time this morning re-reading chapter seven, titled “The Revolution of 1860,” of Jim McPherson’s The Battle Cry of Freedom. The chapter is all about the political upheaval taking place in America in 1860. It seems that one man, Abraham Lincoln, much like Mike Huckabee today, wasn’t nearly as interested in electoral mathematics back then as he was in miracles. The Illinois rail-splitter, and friend of the common man, knew he faced a daunting task. He well understood that William Seward had come to Chicago as the presumptive nominee of the Party. But Lincoln, who once said, “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing,” pressed the issue of the nomination to the convention floor. History has recorded the outcome of that convention. Lincoln won, the Union was preserved, and slavery was abolished. Many scholars now believe that Lincoln, in addition to being our greatest political poet, was our greatest President. Thank God that we don’t have to concern ourselves today with a different history, one that might have been written had Lincoln given in to the mathematics he faced.

Some quotes from McPherson follow for your edification and enlightenment. I believe they demonstrate that, while some make assumptions, a few chart their courses to the stars, swim against the collective tide of the naysayers, and then go on to make history:

“Coming into the convention with a large lead based on strength in upper-North states, Seward hoped for a first-ballot nomination. But Republicans were sure to win those states no matter whom they nominated.”

“This left Lincoln. By the time the convention’s opening gavel came down on May 16, Lincoln had emerged from a position as the darkest of horses to that of Seward’s main rival.”

“Yet so obscure was Lincoln in certain circles before his nomination that some pundits had not included his name on their lists of seven or a dozen or even twenty-one potential candidates. Several newspapers spelled his first name Abram.”

“The first ballot revealed Seward’s weakness and Lincoln’s surprising strength. With 233 votes needed to nominate, Seward fell sixty short at 173 ½ while Lincoln polled 102.”

“From then on, Lincoln the rail-splitter became the symbol of the frontier, farm, opportunity, hard work, rags to riches, and other components of the American dream embodied in the Republican self-image.”

“None of the forty thousand people in and around the wigwam ever forgot that moment. All except the diehard Seward delegates were convinced they had selected the strongest candidate.”

We now have the hindsight of history, so we know that Abraham Lincoln was the right candidate for the right time. Some day, when this generation is pushing up the daisies, the history of the 2008 campaign will be written. It may be about John McCain, Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton. And, improbable as it may seem now, it may be about a preacher from a small Arkansas town who was too stubborn to give in to the cackling voices around him calling for his surrender.

So, the campaign goes on. Mike Huckabee is still standing, reaching out to the grass-roots, continuing to make his stirring stump speeches. The shuffle of pompoms can still be heard across the land. It’s not over yet. As Mike has said so many times, the people, the voters, and not the pundits, will decide!

Irreduceable Simplicity

“We can say with confidence and a clear conscience that we have lived with a God-given holiness and sincerity in all our dealings. We have depended on God’s grace, not on our own human wisdom. That is how we have conducted ourselves before the world, and especially toward you.”
II Corinthians 1:12 (New Living Translation)

There’s been much talk about the impact “values voters” have had in Mike Huckabee’s success in these presidential primaries. Most media experts who dissect the Huckabee phenomenon assume that his appeal is to a small band of narrow minded religious fanatics. It’s been a consistent anti-Huckabee bias ever since he launched his campaign.

Nowhere is this bias more evident than in the line of questioning the governor has been subjected to – his skepticism about the scientific mantra of our time: evolution. He’s been asked to clarify his beliefs in this area more often than he has been asked his views about taxes, the War on Terror, or national defense. His answer has been as consistent as the question has been persistent. God created the heavens and the earth. He could have done it six billion years ago. He could have used whatever process He cared to. But, whatever the process, the governor is convinced that everything we see in creation is not a matter of time and blind chance.

So do I!

Like many of Mike Huckabee’s supporters I’ve been called a “values voter.” While I should be flattered by the designation, I’ve come to see that the term has become a 21sst century euphemism masking the vitriol behind the words. When the term is used these days the inner image being conveyed is all too often that of an unenlightened, uneducated buffoon. I think you understand what I’m trying to say. The current, trendy image of the “values voter” is the guy who believes the world is flat, was created six thousand years ago, eats squirrels for dinner, and walks around like a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal.

There was a time when I winced every time I heard the term, knowing the venom behind the words. But I don’t any more. I’ve been proven a fool by far better than my political and philosophical critics. Many times in my life I’ve had to utter these words in silence - “O God, you know how foolish I am; my sins cannot be hidden from you.” I’ve lived long enough to accept the fact that I have from time to time played the fool. I suspect that many of Governor Huckabee’s critics, and mine, are young and haven’t had the time to explore their own foolishness and vanity. Perhaps experience, and a reading or two of the second chapter of Ecclesiastes, might change that.

One of the things the pundits and critics fail to see is that we are all “values voters” at heart. Barack Obama supporters are “values voters.” So are Hillary Clinton’s. They tend to believe that we need a social order in which wealth is redistributed and class distinctions are broken down. That’s what makes issues like government funded health care and re-instituting higher tax rates on the wealthy so important to them. They believe we should be pulling our troops out of Iraq, not because they have no values, but precisely because they believe in the idea that America has become an international pariah because of our misadventures since the 2003 invasion.

I don’t share many of the values of the Democratic Party, but it would be foolish for me to believe that their views are value neutral.

The same holds true for John McCain, Mitt Romney, or Ron Paul supporters. They send money, make appeals to their friends and neighbors, or conduct water cooler debates on the merits of their candidate versus those of their work mates. They do so because they share common windows on the world.

These values, when calculated by individual, constitute a worldview, a prism through which we all view the world. Mike Huckabee’s prism is his Christian faith. So is mine. It is my window on the world. As C.S. Lewis, the Christian apologist and “apostle to the skeptics once said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

How does my worldview play itself out in practical terms? It begins, and ends, with my faith in God. So, for example, when a Darwinist tells me that everything I believe in is nothing more than blind chance plus time I look at the world around me. Each year, in the early fall for example, hundreds of monarch butterflies begin to congregate on the butterfly bush that clings to my back porch. They stay for a while, and my wife and I are treated to days and days of beauty floating around. The colors, the patterns, the delicate, gossamer wings are all cause for amazement. Then, at the appointed time, these wispy visitors take wing, traveling over a thousand miles to Mexico. Once their journeys are completed they congregate by the millions, casting a scene of incredible beauty across a grove of trees, lighting up the Mexican landscape. Each time I see the process begin to unfold as they depart from the Flint Hills of Kansas, I find it impossible to believe that their pilgrimages are just matters of time and chance. The Darwinists can explain it however they wish. I see it all as the hand of God, filled with beauty and mystery, revealing to me that neither I, nor the butterflies, are products of time plus chance. What possible survival instinct would be satisfied with such a long and arduous flight? Why would something so delicate do something so counter-intuitive? When did the first journey take place, and how many undertook it? I ask the questions and there are no scientific answers that satisfy.

Almost always when I consider the mysteries unfolding around me I’m also reminded of my own humanity and frailty. I am not the sum off all things, as humanists would have me believe. I see the mysteries and, like Job, I must conclude that the workings of this world are not dependent on my superior wisdom:

“Is it your wisdom that makes the hawk soar and spread its wings toward the south?Is it at your command that the eagle rises to the heights to make its nest?”

As I consider these things I also consider my place in the world. Where do I fit? What do I believe? What role should I play in this great drama?

I’ve answered that question in part at the introduction to this post. I am compelled by faith to conduct myself honorably in this world. I am, as much as is possible, to live in peace and harmony with all men. This is the core of who I am.

How does this faith play itself out in terms of political philosophy? I am a conservative.

In his masterwork, The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk outlined six basic tenants of conservative belief. There are two that are noteworthy for me as I consider how my religious faith works itself out in political terms. The first canon is “Belief in a transcendent order, or a body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems.” The second canon is “Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems.”

My thinking has changed over the years. I’ve had a long time to consider my life and what I believe. In my formative years I considered myself a New England liberal. While the roots of altruism still remain, my worldview has evolved over time. I am, today, a Kansas Flint Hills conservative. Winston Churchill once observed that if “you’re young and not liberal you have no heart; if you’re older and not conservative you have no mind.” I am living proof to the truth of that statement.

Do I live my faith out as consistently as I, or my critics, would like? No! Are there blind spots in my political philosophy? Without a doubt! I share these frailties with friend a foe alike.

It would do well for those who debase the public square with epithets and labels to examine their own lives and worldviews. Perhaps they’d discover that folks like Mike Huckabee and supporters like me are not as foolish as they’ve led others to believe.

Faith and Fire

“When the servant of the man of God got up early the next morning and went outside, there were troops, horses, and chariots everywhere. “Oh, sir, what will we do now?” the young man cried to Elisha. “Don’t be afraid!” Elisha told him. “For there are more on our side than on theirs!” Then Elisha prayed, “O Lord, open his eyes and let him see!” The Lord opened the young man’s eyes, and when he looked up, he saw that the hillside around Elisha was filled with horses and chariots of fire.
II Kings 6:15-17 (New Living Translation)



One of my favorite films is “Chariots of Fire.” It’s the story Eric Liddell and his approach to athletics and faith. It’s 1924, and the setting is the Olympic Games. Liddell is scheduled to run the 100 meters, in which he is favored. On the day before the race he finds out that his heat is to be run on Sunday - the Sabbath. Liddell tells the British team managers that he cannot run the heat. To do so, he asserts, would violate his Christian faith. Not even the Prince of Wales can persuade him to change his mind. He’s told that he has a duty to his king and country. He responds, “God makes kings…God makes nations.” Seeing that he is firm in his convictions, he is offered an opportunity to run the 400 meters, a race he has never run, on a different day. On the day of the race the manager of the American team tells one of Liddell’s competitors not to worry, that Riger mortis will set in for Liddell at three hundred yards. “He’ll die,” the American coach declares. Just before the race begins, Jackson Schultz, one of America’s greatest sprinters, slips a note into Liddell’s hand. It reads, “The old Book says, “He that honors me, him will I honor.”

Someone who had run and trained understood what dedication of running the race was all about! Liddell won that race. He went from the glory of the Olympics to spend his later years as a Christian missionary in China. He died there, serving the God he had done his utmost to honor in his life.

There are so many times in life that men of faith and conviction are misunderstood, so many times they are given up for dead, so many times that the ideals they live by are archaic.

The message of “Chariots of Fire” is clear. Principle matters. Faith matters. And, our course and lot in life does not have to be determined by experts or pollsters.

Yesterday I attended a Mike Huckabee rally in Olathe, Kansas, just south of downtown Kansas City. While Mike was staying on message, as he has since he began his campaign, the experts were writing and re-writing his political obituary.

My wife and I went to our local Republican caucus here in Emporia, Kansas this morning. Emporia is one of those small Kansas towns (about 25,000) that is at the epicenter of all that’s converging politically in America these days. About a hundred miles south of us, in Wichita, George Tiller continues to ply his grisly trade – providing late term abortions, violating the strong Kansas belief that life is something that has intrinsic value and moral worth. Here in Emporia, Tyson Foods has announced that almost 2000 of its 2400 workers are being laid off. That’s about twenty percent of this city’s workforce. Payday loan shops and ramshackle rentals, overseen by slumlord who prey on the poor, proliferate.

These are things that matter to Kansans. These are things that matter to Mike Huckabee.

I just spoke with one of our local media outlets to either confirm or deny reports from Fox News that Mike Huckabee has won the Kansas caucuses.

According to our outlet, with about 65% of the vote in, Huckabee has about 60% of the of the total ballots counted to this point. Here in Lyon County, Kansas, Mike won the caucus by 50% to 33% over John McCain. “Huckabee is rolling in Kansas,” said my source.

And, so, the race goes on. The pundits keep declaring that Riger mortis is going to set in, but Mike Keeps running. It’s the chariots of fire, the fire shut up in the bones, the abiding faith that keeps him going.

There are twenty-six states to go. I cannot say how it will all end, but I do know that Mike will continue the race. Faith and fire compel him.