This blog often defies characterization.  We seem liberal to the extent that we want to lessen religio-speak in campaigns, at least from their current levels, but we are rock solid conservative when it comes to our values.  To meet our mission we have even defended the right of Obama’s pastor to make his abysmal statements , even though he makes many purely political statements under the guise of religion.  But there are limits.

Those of us that remember the dark days of potential world-wide communist domination remember one of Marx’s fundamental maxims: “Religion is the opiate of the masses.”  Marx is long dead, as is communism in large part, but that idea survives today and defines the hard left.  Which means that Barak Obama defined himself yesterday when he said:

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

If that is not a restatement of the Marxist ideal, I do not know what is!  Worse yet, it is the antithesis of the America ideal for religion and politics.  In this statement Obama, literally sees government as the true savior and religion as the false substitute.  I need to take a deep breath here.

It is hard to know where to begin with something like this.  This statement is so charged, and so wrong on so many levels (philosophically, historically, theologically, constitutionally. . .) that I could go on for hours.   It is the weekend and I do not want to get that deep.  Fortunately, this mode of thought has been so analyzed over the last century precisely because of Marx that if you google around a bit, you will read everything you need and even more you don’t.

I will limit my brief comments to political.  We shall here discover whether Obama really is the press’ golden boy.  If this statement stays under-reported and does not reach the general public in overdoses, we can conclude that the media is in the bag for him.  You know all that stuff we have been looking at here over the last couple of years about liberal Evangelicals and Democrats wooing the religious vote, and so forth.  Well, that all should, at this point, be swirling the bowl.

Even the religious left believe their faith is real and valuable, not merely a substitute for government, not some construct designed to mollify an otherwise dissatisfied citizenry.

This statement is also fascinating on a social/cultural level and it ties in deeply with whole Oprah phenomena, but I don’t want to get into that right now.  Think about it though.

Spread the word on this one, dear reader.  A McCain presidency looks more likely every time you do.  And frankly, while Mr. McCain was not my personal choice in nominees, he is looking better and better by the minute with opposition like this.

Lowell adds:  The problem is, the majority of the legacy news media sees “the heartland” the same way Obama does.  It will be interesting to see how the story is played.
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