Article VI Blog

Beck, King, Rallies…

I am entirely unsure how to untangle this mess.  Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech may very well be one of the finest pieces of oratory in our nation’s history.  That King and many of his supporters of all colors were motivated by their faith is unquestionable.  That speech serves as the pinnacle of one of the shining moments of religiously motivated activism in our nation’s history.  However, make no mistake: Oratory and demonstrations are stirring and exciting, but there are limits to what they can accomplish.  It took legislation to break Jim Crow and segregation.

In part because of the religious motivation of so many of the players; in part because of the religious cadences and structure of the speech itself; and in part because the issue tugs at us so viscerally, the speech is viewed more as sermon than political rhetoric – and in many ways it was.  But that creates a ball of semi-religious fervor around the issues of civil rights that spreads out with a force that, as religion itself, often defies reason and does not tolerate disagreement.

This past weekend has seen that speech raised in the context of the Ground Zero Mosque (GZM) controversy.  But it is Glenn Beck’s rally that has really pushed the hot buttons on this one.   There is analysis of all sorts, some of it reasonable if left-leaning, and some just flat-out conspiratorial.

But now that the rally is over, here is the space to watch:  CNN’s “belief blog”:

On Friday night, Beck held a religion-focused event at the Kennedy Center that was billed as Glenn Beck’s Divine Destiny.

Beck’s speech Saturday also evoked the feel of a religious revival.

“Look forward. Look West. Look to the heavens. Look to God and make your choice,” he said.

Beck has also begun organizing top conservative religious leaders – mostly evangelicals – into a fledgling group called the Black Robed Regiment.

The organization, whose charter members convened in Washington this weekend, takes its name from American clergy sympathetic to the Revolution during the 1700s.

Beck’s emerging role as a national leader for Christian conservatives is surprising not only because he has until recently stressed a libertarian ideology that is sometimes at odds with so-called family values conservatism, but also because Beck is a Mormon.

The need to organize Evangelicals and Mormons together politically has been noted on this blog for a long time.  But Beck’s penchant for  self-promotion built on controversy makes me wonder if this will really work.  I am sure there will be some push-back from religious/political figures that stand to lose in a deal like this, and of course the Mormon-haters out there, but will it have traction?

My advice to Beck would be this:  Work to solidify the coalition that is emerging and then step aside and let more serious people run with the ball.  I am not, however, at all sure that Beck has the discipline to do that.  In which case it is my hope that something useful can arise from the smouldering mess he will leave behind.

Watch this space.

Obama’s Faith

This has got to stop – we are supposed to be the nation that has figured out religion and politics, and yet we seem to be sinking into a morass of religious identity bickering that it unbecoming to say the least.  The policies of this administration that I support can be numbered on a single hand, so rising to Obama’s defense is not something I do easily, but this really does have to stop.  The policies are the problem, not the religion.  Now, we are arguing over how to even identify someone as a Christian.  (I say we take them at their word and let their pastor call them to account if they are not quite cutting it.)

Now, we are polling about it, and analyzing the polls.  It’s gotten so bad, Christian leadership is trying to quell the tide.

Bottom line is this.  Obama is deeply unpopular at this point in his administration and people, many of them who don’t pay much attention, are saying all sorts of ugly things to try and justify their general unhappiness and distaste for the man.  There are ALWAYS such undercurrents in our nation.  We as a nation – and especially the press – have a choice: fan the heat in hopes that it will turn into a conflagration, or leave it be.

The tradition in this nation has been to leave it be, because anything else will only tear us to shreds.  The forces at play here are not to be messed with.  That’s the great compromise that is America.  Freedom means there will be ignorance and distrust just as much as there is  goodness and light.  We try to keep the ugliness in a corner – bringing it to light does not destroy it – it turns it loose.

Romney On The Road…

He’s going to 25 states, but everybody is talking New Hampshire and pick-up trucks!?!?!  You know, it may just be possible he is genuinely interested in helping Republican candidates in the states he is visiting.  Yes, he’s gonna punt Iowa, if it took until now to figure that out then you weren’t paying attention.  And as to imitating Scott Brown with the whole pick-up truck thing – where do you think Brown got the idea?  Sometimes political analysis is just downright silly.

But some of it is ugly and untoward, as in this Boston Globe editorial, reprinted in the SLTrib:

Thus, one would expect Romney to stand against those who, seeking a “wedge’’ issue, are making a cause out of the plans for a mosque to be built in Lower Manhattan. They are playing on ignorance — the notion that all Muslims somehow share responsibility for Al Qaeda — and intolerance. As a very small minority religion in the United States, Islam can be easily stereotyped by self-proclaimed experts, and maligned by every crank who has access to email. Just as Romney’s critics took pieces of Mormon doctrine and twisted them to create rumors of current-day polygamy and rejection of Jesus Christ, some critics of the mosque in Lower Manhattan have sought to portray all of Islam as warlike, and the decision to build a mosque as an act of triumph.

That is so full of straw men and hot-button pushing as to defy analysis.  First Romney was criticized by these same sources for not taking a stance of a LOCAL Issue and then when he does, he is excoriated for the stance he took.  Talk about playing “gotcha.”  The GZM issue has nothing to do with religious freedom or “twisting doctrine.”  Rather, it has to do with taste, respect and class.  There was a movie martial artist by the name of Sammo Hung.  His gimmick was he could make a weapon out of anything at hand.  That seems to be the game the Globe (& Trib) wants to play here.  “We’ll hammer Romney with any issue we can trump up.”  Others are picking up the meme.

By the way, note that through all this, they get to hammer on the Mormon issue one more time.  Coincidence? I think not.  They will take any shot they can get – no matter how far they have to stretch a point.

Reviewing The Field…

…Mitch Daniels. Have we added him to our masthead too soon?  We said when he tested the press waters that he did not seem to pass the audition.  He may have agreed with us.  MSNBC’s “First Read” reprints an interview he did with the Louisville Courier-Journal in which he says, “This is nothing I have started, encouraged,…People have asked, ‘Please don’t absolutely close your mind’ and I have said I’ll think about it.”  Now, very early in the game that’s how we analyzed the Daniels talk, but then between whisperings from our Indiana Statehouse contacts and the big press roll out we figured he was actively pursuing it.  Of course most guys considering a run deny it until they can’t.  Stay tuned.

…John Thune. He is running unopposed, but spending like there’s a lot at stake.  Does not take a psychic to read those tea leaves.

…Tim Pawlenty. His hometown paper says, “”Mapping out a route to the White House, Gov. Tim Pawlenty appears headed for a fork in the road: One way goes through fiscally conservative New Hampshire, the other through socially conservative Iowa,….”  (HT: Taegan Goddard)  Let’s see, the last winner skipped “socially conservative Iowa” and headed straight to New Hampshire.  Just sayin’.

…Sarah Palin. Gee, ya think:

But while the former Alaska governor often sounds and looks like a presidential candidate, her failure to pursue other aspects of the presidential playbook has created significant doubts about her intentions.

We’ve been sayin’….

In the World of Religion and Politics…

Jim Wallis apologizes to Marvin Olasky, but remains amazingly ungracious to Glenn Beck.  Better, but not enough in my opinion.  Wallis’ continued slams of Beck lack graciousness.  If Wallis wants to be a Christian voice in politics, he would do well to remember that grace is one of the hallmarks of a Christian, even towards someone with whom you vehemently disagree.  Although there are some much uglier than Wallis when it comes to Beck.  (Set-up for a Romney attack? – time will tell.)

Ramesh Ponnuru continues the discussion on identity politics and religion.

Not smart.  But then I am fairly sure that is why TPM brought it up to begin with.

Lowell adds . . .

Gee, next thing we know there will be stories about pickup trucks in Mormon culture…. The CNN piece seems pretty balanced to me.  This bit of reporting/analysis caught my eye:

“There’s a long history of tensions between Mormons and evangelicals and some of that is flat-out theology,” says John C. Green, an expert on religion and politics at the University of Akron. “Mormons have additional sacred texts (to the Bible) and a different conception of God.”

“It’s also competitive,” Green said, “because evangelicals and Mormons are both proselytizing in the U.S. and around the world.“

I’d like to see more of that clear-eyed discussion. We ought to be able to say, simply, that religions will always compete – whether the fight is over converts or over debates on baptism by immersion or the nature of God – and that those discussions don’t belong in politics and elections.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comment on this post » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

…Well, you can fill in your own metaphor because mine is not suitable for public consumption.

In the wake of our comments this morning, Hugh Hewitt brought up our old friend Jacob Weisberg of Slate.  You remember good ‘ol Jake?  In our review of the left wing religiously based attack on Romney in ‘08 we said:

Far and away the most bigoted, nastiest religious attack to come from the left side of the aisle was Jacob Weisberg’s December 2006 Slate piece.  This was the piece that included the now infamous phrase, “the founding whoppers of Mormonism.”  This piece went on to become one we cited again and again and again on the blog as pure, unthinking, left-leaning bigotry….

Hewitt said this morning:

(I don’t know if Weisberg has denounced opponents of the mosque as bigots,but it certainly wouldn’t surprise me.)

Well, we still have not found Slate or Weisberg calling GZM opponents bigots, but they do seem to have it out for Republicans of faith.  Ramesh Ponnuru points out on The Corner this evening that Slate has run a piece trying to make more of Sharon Angle’s unfortunate religious comments than is really there.

Angle’s invocation of here faith in a Las Vegas Sun interview may mark the lowest point of a poorly run campaign.  However, despite her missteps and malapropisms she remains a far preferable choice in comparison to Harry Reid.  What is unbelievable is that Slate would pile onto a campaign clearly faltering with an attack of this sort.  She gave them plenty of ammunition without having to stoop to this level of innuendo and sleight-of-hand.  It seems clear Slate, as edited by Weisberg, would agree with the recent Prop 8 ruling that religion causes harm and therefore feels justified in this sort of attack there upon.

This move clearly signals what we said would happen if religious attacks against Romney were allowed to stand in ‘08 – such attacks would broaden to people of all faiths – and so it begins.  We’ll see about the current mid-terms when they turn serious in a couple of weeks – chances are they will just be the preliminaries.  But I think we can be assured that 2012 will be “open season” on faith.  Sadly by failing to defend someone of a different, but closely related, faith, we will have set ourselves up for it.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

As much as Huckabee’s back-handed play of the Mormon card in ‘08 was despicable, it seems like it is always the left that just gets in-your-face nasty on issues like race and religion.  As the Ground Zero Mosque controversy heats up, I guess it was inevitable – and Harry Reid sealed the deal when he came out against it – The Mormon persecution/Muslim persecution comparisons were going to be drawn.  Of course, there is virtually no such comparison, but since when did that stop the rabid left from taking the shot anyway?

Some of what is going on is so transparent as to not be worth arguing with, like this bit from a Salt Lake City “alternative” (read “gay”) paper.  But it is Jonathon Chait at The New Republic that seems to be really turning up the heat.  His post on Jennifer Rubin’s comments have a barely disguised anti-Semitic tone.  That set loose a torrent of comments that truly are heinous.  Here is the worst:

I wonder if Romney or Harry Reid would also oppose the building of a Mormon church or Temple near Mountain Meadows.

As an initial point, the first place I heard the Ground Zero/Mountain Meadows comparison was on the Michael Medved radio show, and I winced at the time – I knew then, and this proves, that all such comments can only serve to provide ammunition to the opposition.  But that said, there simply is no comparison.  No Mormon has ever proposed building a ward or stake house, or a Temple anywhere near the site of that unfortunate incident.  In point of fact Mormons are quite horrified by the entire episode and when it comes up they tend to either deny the participants are “real” Mormons or shrink from the conversation in complete embarrassment.  The Mountain Meadows Massacre is a point of deep shame  for any Mormon I have ever met or read – it is not an “opportunity for outreach.”

In this instance the comparison serves only to politicize on new levels something that should not be a political argument to begin with.  Ground Zero is about the sense of a national sacred space that most of us share when we visit the places where our fellow citizens lost their lives.  Comparisons have been drawn to Civil War battlegrounds and I find them a far more apt comparison.  Every time I have been to such a battleground I have found myself speaking in unintentional whispers.

As an Evangelical, by definition, I want to tell others of the amazing experience I have had in my walk with Jesus Christ, and yet to do so when wandering the emplacements of Gettysburg or Vicksburg would be beyond distasteful.  Those places honor those that died in service to others, or as victims of war.  To graft a different agenda onto those spaces, whether it is s religious or a political one,  is to lessen that honor due.  I do not think God expects me to lessen that honor, and my political convictions just are not that important.

Shame on anyone that uses this issue for their private agendas.

Lowell adds . . .

I’ll just drop in for a moment to add to John’s Mountain Meadows analogy, which I’ve actually been using in discussions with friends about the Ground Zero mosque. John’s right: That place, Mountain Meadows, is not one that Mormons are proud of. It is a site on which people closely associated with Mormonism (to say the least) committed horrible acts of murder on other human beings. It is umimaginable that the Church would build a temple, for example, on the edge of that site.  The Church may have the legal right to do so, but as my father used to say,  just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.  I am opposed to legal steps being taken to stop the mosque’s construction, but I support efforts to persuade or incentivize the group planning to build the mosque to put it up somewhere else.  I think I have an awful lot of company in my view.

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

Greetings from vacation!

Romney/Palin – The Left Will Not Let It Die…

Last week’s left created Romney/Palin psuedo-dust-up sure did catch the attention of the leftie punditry.  Steve Kornacki of Salon basically said that Romney was a misogynist.   There was a response from Allahpundit,  but Andrew Sullivan (yes I am about to say something nice about him) had the most salient observation:

If policies come up during debates, and she gives the same answers she gives on Fox now, and Mitt Romney pounces on her, the story will not be that the GOP’s frontrunner gave a pallid answer. The story will be that Mitt Romney pounced. What does this do to his image? What does Mike Huckabee have to say about it?

This entire episode from its ill-defined inception until now is designed, by a left leaning media, to cast the race first as Romney v Palin and secondly do whatever they can to divide Republicans.  And in some circles, it is working to some extent.

There are serious candidates – Romney, Pawlenty – probably serious candidates – Thune – wannabe serious candidates – Daniels – and then there are media serious candidates – Palin, Gingrich and Huckabee.  Look at those names.  The “media serious candidates” all carry serious baggage and they all represent only a portion of the Republican/conservative movement.  Of course the portions they represent are the portions the media and the left love to use to describe the entire movement and they are the most divisive portions.  They are also portions that cannot possibly win general elections – which is why the left likes those names so well.  If any of those people run, it will be for building their personal media cred.

Amongst the serious, Romney is clearly the frontrunner and he continues to straw poll well.

Now, what is amazing about all this  is that Romney’s religion has not come up.  By even mainstream denominational Christianity standards, Mormon complimentarian views about the genders might be considered a bit archaic if being kind and sexist if not.  When you have people at Kos writing stuff like this:

The greatest value in the book is Zaitchik’s patient exploration of the affect Beck’s conversion to Mormonism has exerted on his politics and beliefs, but also on his methods of message of delivery. Beck has managed something fairly difficult in the presentation of his schmaltz to the audiences he’s dog-whistling: he’s using the tried and true confessional style of his chosen religion to rope in evangelicals and even more secular (but teary-eyed) members of the hard right. This is no small feat, as Mitt Romney can testify; many on the right are not all at ease with Mormonism, and Beck’s bridging of its style with old-fashioned knee-jerk patriotism is part of his unique appeal.

You’d think they would feel compelled to make a big deal out the CJCLDS view on the role of women.  Of course, I doubt this conversation is over.

Angle/Reid…

Nothing, and I repeat nothing, could be better for America at this present electoral juncture than the defeat of Harry Reid in Nevada.  Therefore, it pains me to point out that his opponent, Sharon Angle, is seemingly going out of her way to assure him of victory.  GetReligion discusses a Las Vegas Sun story on Angle:

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle describes her motivation for seeking elected office as a religious calling.

Politics, including her bid to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is God’s purpose for her life — one he has long been preparing her for, she says.

“When God calls you, he also equips you and he doesn’t just say ‘Well, today you’re going to run against Harry Reid.’ There is a preparation,” she said during a recent interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “Moses had his preparatory time. Paul had his preparatory time. Even Jesus had his preparatory time, and so my preparation began on a school board.”

GR even has the video.  I am reminded of the numbskull in Idaho a few months back that convened all the Mormons in the area.  We chastised him and now, well….

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

But the press should be vilified for reporting this and not Reid’s Mormonism, particularly give the treatment Mormonism got last presidential cycle.   I guess its not really the religion, but the political views and party affiliation of the candidate that matter when it comes to religion as a political weapon.

General Religion Stuff…

Scary Graph

Good Question

But in closing, let us reprint a C.S. Lewis quote posted by Godblogger Justin Taylor yesterday:

I am a democrat [proponent of democracy] because I believe in the Fall of Man.

I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that every one deserved a share in the government.

The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. . . . I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost. Much less a nation. . . .

The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

That dear friends are words worth deep consideration.

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

The events of the last several days reveal two important lessons about American and our electoral politics.  One is the victory of Nikki Haley in South Carolina and the other is the continued anger of our current President.  The lessons are summed up, in a sense by Roger Simon blogging on incivility in politics.

As we are acutely aware here, Nikki Haley had to survive an ugly, and typically South Carolinian, “whisper campaign” concerning her religion,  but as Ed Morrisey points out, such campaigns are not working anymore.  Lesson One – people are tired of this garbage, they want their campaigns straight up and straightforward.  They want to hear about things that matter, not things that don’t.  Character does matter, and religion and fidelity contribute to character, but people want evidence, not innuendo – data, not rumors.

We are also seeing an increasingly angry Barack Obama.  From the BP escrow extraction to accepting Stanley McCrystal’s resignation, this president is unhappy and upset and irritated and angry.  But he has not got a thing to offer to make the situation any better – and the American people know it.  He was elected because the press was more in the tank with him than any candidate in history, and because people thought he understood their dissatisfaction.  Apparently he understands, even trumps, that dissatisfaction, but his promised hope and change seems to be about cementing that dissatisfaction in the White House, not doing anything to solve the problems.  Lesson Two – People want a president that can do something, not just empathize with their plight.

Periodically, Americans forget these two very important lessons, but it does not take long for them to remember, and when they do, if there is someone in office that violates them, they get politically embarrassed.  Barack Obama has a couple of years to step up his game or he is going to find himself in the angry former president’s home that Jimmy Carter currently occupies.  Not a nice place to be.

All which sets the stage nicely for discussing future presidential possibilities…

Who “Won” with Haley?

Chris Cilizza is pretty adamant that it was Romney – here and here.  Have to agree, and in this case it is more than just the typical “he endorsed, she won” thing.  By overcoming the whisper campaigns handily, and especially the religious ones, a clear signal is sent that Romney’s competence will far outweigh his faith in the public’s mind next time.   Bill O’Reilly has gone so far as to say Romney’s nomination is more or less a done deal.

One person that had no play in South Carolina at all (this time) was Mike Huckabee….

The Huckabee Press Push…

OK – A profile in The New Yorker is typically a big deal.  But I see no traction developing out of it.  The Atlantic was squawking about it, so that’s two left wing outlets touting a Republican contender.  Could it be that they want Republicans to nominate the weaker candidate?  Just asking.  Laura Curtis at Hot Air was deeply unimpressed.

What has always repelled me most about Mike Huckabee is his dishonesty, especially given how the man who made Judicial Watch’s 2007 “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” list puts himself forward as the Christian candidate.

But my favorite is Mike Allen’s Monday Headline:

HEFTY HUCKABEE MOVES TO FLORIDA — Warns of ‘ick factor’ with gays — Steve Schmidt on how he could win

Laughingstock here we come.  Mark Silk seems to think he has a shot with the Jewish vote.  While I am deeply heartened to see more and more of my Jewish cousins joining the ranks of the Republican party, they have a way to go before they will be able to carry a nomination, which is what matters at the moment.

The Others…

Thune will run…. (subscription link)  He is playing things very cool until after November, but he will run.  However, given how things are going for Romney, Thune is likely to be rehearsing for another year or running for VP.

Jeb Bush has been under a lot of discussion his week, most because he took a well-deserved swipe at Obama.  But Jeb in 2016 is a fantasy.  For one thing it is better than even money we will have a Republican incumbent in 2016, and for another, that incumbent is increasingly likely to be Mitt Romney.  Romney and Jeb Bush are deep political allies – I doubt seriously they would challenge each other.

General Religious Headlines…

Warning – we have not had time to go through this material in detail, but it looks like it would be of interest so we are passing it on.

• The New Face of American Evangelicalism
• Video: Cops arrest Christians for handing out gospel at Dearborn Arab festival?
• Prop 8: Mormon Persecution, Marriage and the Refuge of Patriotism
• Is a religious bus ban on my dog right?

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

In our continuing effort at Online Activism – monitoring and complaining about comments on web sites – we want to add a couple of problems sites to the list.  We have previously targeted Politico and specifically Ben Smith’s blog.  Something must be working because they have not hit the radar in a while, but we need to continue to keep an eye on them.

We have; however, been getting repeated pop-ups from CBSNews and something called FitsNews.com.  CBS has the typical “report problem” device – please feel free to wear it out.

“FitsNews.com is a South Carolina political consultant’s personal brainchild and does not pretend to be “news” in even the warped traditional sense of American journalism.  The locale makes the Mormon slamming seem par-for-the-course, but it seems to have a large readership, and it hits are radar with regularity.  There is no “bad comment” button.  You’ll just have to use the “Contact” tab and have at them.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments » |  Print this post |  Email This Post