#14 - No, He Wasn’t Born in Bethlehem!

I admit that, because of the views he holds on many public policy issues, I did not vote for our President in this past election. I also recognize that 52% of those who voted (not nearly enough for what I would call a “public mandate) did so for the President. (As I have stated previously, we who voted in the minority must not forget that we are part of the 47% who voted for Senator McCain and did not support the President with our votes.) What distresses me as much as the election results is the fact that so many who voted for him did so without seeming to know – or even caring to know – about his stand on critical public policy and social issues, and even then not the full scope of his views. I watched many “man on the street” interviews the media conducted with people before the election and was stunned to see that they could rarely find someone who could state something specific about what then Senator Obama proposed or supported. And who can forget the woman who said, “Oh, wow, I won’t have to buy groceries, buy gasoline, or have to pay my mortgage!” Though certainly an extreme view, you have to wonder – with the way in which our President is almost worshipped – just how representative of a lot of his supporters was that woman. (Of course, that many of those who voted for him did so because they did know his views and agreed with them frightens me greatly.)

In a Reader’s Digest poll of 750 “Millennials” (those between 18-29 years old) in March ‘08, 36% of them said that “it’s important to elect the first black President, almost the same as those (35%) who want to see a woman in office.” (I find it scary that so many of our young adults have such blind faith in our President, and even more scary that some of their faith is not blind but that they actually share his views on the issues of our day.) Also, for many voters, you have to wonder if this is not the primary consideration when they heard the word “change” echoed by Obama’s campaign. When the media kept touting this as a “historic” election, I doubt that there is any who did not anyone believe that they were referring to this being the first African-American President in our nation’s history. Ask yourself: Isn’t every election or every new President essentially “historic?” And wasn’t it Martin Luther King himself who famously said that people should be judged not by the color of their skin but the content of their character. I believe we can infer from Dr. King’s pronouncement that we should judge our President not by the color of our President’s skin but by the nature of his policies.

Obviously, the election of the first African American President WAS historic. But come on, hasn’t it been so over-the-top the way his presidency continues to be treated like another celebrity to being near idolized? For instance, right after the election, they was an infomercial selling commemorative coins with his image and just last month a neighborhood pharmacy was still selling commemorative plates with his image on it! That same week, I was in Barnes & Noble and I actually saw a catalog devoted exclusively to Obama memorabilia! Recently I even read in a newsletter that in “a Harris poll [2/09] in which, when some Americans were asked to name who their hero is, President Obama ranked first, Jesus second [!!!].” I read that comedian Jon Stewart, the host of the popular cable program, “The Daily Show,” and someone whom no one would call “a radical right-winger,” remarked last year that on his trip to Israel, (then) Senator Obama stopped by Bethlehem to see where he was born! At least someone has publicly pointed out just how far things have gone. And of course, don’t get me started on how almost every day there is some “news” story about the First Dog, the First Lady’s dress, the President going out to buy a hamburger, the President’s NCAA collegiate basketball tournament picks, ad nauseum.

All of this is especially scary because even after the myriad of very questionable policies the President has put into place in just 4 months in office, public outcry against anything the President does of substance is nearly always muted. Consider everything from his having the government spend TRILLIONS of dollars that do not necessarily guarantee to create jobs or “stimulate” the economy, to his having the government dictate who runs certain corporations and what kind of cars we will be allowed to buy, to his signing an executive order reversing a decades long ban on sending American dollars (that we don’t have) to help those performing abortions throughout the world, to spending more billions of our tax dollars to help fund EMBRYONIC stem cell research (which destroys human life for a science that private research has not found successful), to his never speaking out in defense of our nation’s actions but instead always seeming to apologize for them when he is OVERSEAS addressing other nations, to his very questionable pick to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court (more on this in an upcoming posting), and you have part of a growing list of our President’s questionable actions.

Furthermore, have you heard or read any news report during the election and since the election (six months ago) in the mainstream media that was or has been at all critical of the then candidate and now President? And when a over a quarter million Americans held TEA (Taxed Enough Already) TEA Parties about a month ago, do you remember their getting as much coverage let alone any favorable coverage as compared to those who demonstrated against former President Bush’s foreign policies in past years? [I will have more to say about the media bias in this country in an upcoming posting.] But even if the media fails to be discerning of what our leaders decide, don’t all Americans have a responsibility to do so? For whether our President is black, white, or evergreen, Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, or Green Party, what matters finally are the decisions he makes and the policies he promotes. Wrong-headed and even dangerous policies (rubber stamped by a Congress controlled by his political party) will impact America for years to come.

As a great man, Francis Schaeffer, taught us: “Ideas have consequences.” We MUST be discerning of where candidates for office stand on critical issues and what kind of decisions they are making on our behalf, especially by our national leaders. And if we who recognize the danger of our President’s ideas do not speak up, then we will in essence be forfeiting our country – and future generations of Americans - to those ideas. I ask you: Do we really want to do that, and what will our nation become if we do?