The Heart Of The Left’s Problem With Religion
It is already infamous. In the instant media age, it took seconds for Hillary Clinton’s utterance of “What difference does it make?” to rocket around the nation. I think any thought she may have had of 2016 should now be set aside. This clip, carefully crafted into ad after ad after ad will just kill her. In case you missed it, here’s the transcription:
“The fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest? Or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?”
I am putting the video up here to, just so you get the full impact. The first thought that went to through my mind was, “It makes a difference because it goes directly to the competency of the administration in which you serve.” The second thought was how utterly oxymoronic her continuing statement about trying to keep it from ever happening again was. Seems to me that know precisely what happened is a key part to stopping something from ever happening again.
The best take down I have seen so far is Jim Geraghty’s. He winds his way through several reactions to the testimony and then draws a line to film making (“Superman Returns” of all films, certainly catching my attention.) and then concludes this way:
When we look at how our government has responded to the night of September 11 in Benghazi, Libya, we see there are truly no standards any more.
If the decision making before, during, and after the Benghazi attack is insufficient to get anyone fired, what decision in government will ever warrant that consequence? If Democrats on Capitol Hill can’t take off their partisan blinders for one day to attempt to hold people accountable for decision-making that resulted in American deaths at the hands of extremists, and then lying to the public about it, then when will they ever? If Hillary Clinton can exclaim that it doesn’t matter that the administration spent five days talking about a video when the video had nothing to do with it, and everyone on her side applauds, why should she or anyone else ever respond to an accusation with anything but audacious defiance?
This is it, folks. This is the government we have, and the lack of a public outcry about Benghazi ensures this is the government we will have for the foreseeable future.
I think that is spot on, and I think it is illustrative of so much that we have been noting of the cultural changes that were reflected in the votes cast last November. Clinton’s “What difference does it make?” sounds as if the job of SOS is hers by divine right and that the rest of us, including Congress, are here to help her do her job better, not decide if she is meeting the standards of the job. It is completely reflective of that cartoon we put up a couple of weeks ago.
The more I think about it, the more I think that explains a lot of the so-called “low information” votes that gave us Obama redux. The voters did not feel it was their place to determine if he was doing the job well – it was simply his job.
From a purely sociological viewpoint, religion serves to maintain standards. When your government is a cultural mirror, as is the case in any democracy, religion and education are the institutions that maintain the cultural standards. Well, we all know what has happened with education and religion is rapidly joining the pile. From ordination of practicing homosexuals to same sex marriage to the “prosperity gospel” to a simply lack of emphasis on sin and its consequences and an over emphasis on “Jesus loves you just as you are,” churches everywhere no longer maintain standards. They hide them away.
Or, churches engage in misdirection. They point to Roe v Wade and say, “See – government is undermining us.” Well, dear religious friends, when the church started the government did a bit more than merely “undermine” Christianity – it actively persecuted and executed Christians. Not to mention that fact that as hedonistic as we have become we are pikers in that category compared to the Romans of Christ’s time. And yet, within 400 years, the empire that had once persecuted them was officially Christian.
The current state of affairs is symptomatic of a church that has much bigger problems than poor political action. Maybe if we took care of those bigger issues, the political action will follow?
Posted in Analyzing 2012, Religious Freedom, Social/Religious Trends, The Way Forward | 1 Comment » | 
Print this post
| 
Email This Post
CarlH on 24 Jan 2013 at 3:38 pm #
What problem with religion? These are the folks who now have a clergyman give a prayer at a press conference about their weapons ban, with a reference to a supposed “cross lobby” (which, obviously, must be different from “clingers,” “Israel’s amen corner,” and similar snarky, dismissive, and otherwise offensive designations so routinely used by the advocates of “civility” on the Left when referring to their ideological opponents). Or maybe they just “got religion”–with halleluiahs all around. As they say, you just can’t make this stuff up!
Just goes to show that the problem for the churches extends across party/ideological lines. More fundamentally, however, it is only the latest evidence that many progressive churches/church leaders/adherents gave up the distinction between the religious and the political long ago–sadly, IMO, with a total cave in to the notion that “everything is political” and the bending (or outright discarding) of religious principle in favor of progressive political positions. It should, indeed, be a warning to those from the right who seem a little to enthralled with the same temptation.