Confronting the Beast,,of Dogma

No wonder the agents of intolerance and keepers of the flames of rigid religiosity despise Barack Obama. His appearance at Notre Dame was a tour de force and a ritual slaying of the beast(Ignorance)!
Yes the man IS the Antichrist! All hail!


The Notre Dame Postmortem
By Sonia Tsuruoka • on May 18, 2009

After treading treacherous waters for weeks, President Obama averted the jaws of political pitfall and successfully defused much of the faith-charged controversy surrounding Notre Dame’s Sunday Commencement.

Then again, maybe “averted” isn’t the right word. No, put it this way: with rhetorical machismo that would make a Spartan shake in his cleats, Obama leapt off the parapet, confronted the beast, and served its twitching head on a platter to every off-campus rabble-rouser that dared litter the scene with “hate-baiting” and hyperbole.

Which, of course, leads us to the most important question of the evening:

Would Alan Keyes like some ice for that third degree…burn?

As always, Obama settled the match without a drop of blood spilt. His strategy was subliminal: to subdue extremist beliefs on both sides of the fence by his advocacy of “middle-ground” politics and refusal to “shy away from things that are uncomfortable.”

As Winston Churchill once said, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” And seize the opportunity Obama did, delivering a remarkable, no-holds barred address that discretely confronted – and conquered – the controversy surrounding the afternoon Commencement.

Yet the sensitivity with which Obama met his most recent ideological hurdle is largely representative of his own persona. He was clever, calculated and courageous, with an undeniable political swag that engaged Notre Dame students and faculty members on common religious ground.

To the probable chagrin of his right-wing counterparts, Obama emphasized the fact that all pro-lifers were not “ideologues” deserving of political dismissal. And it is here the President was careful to draw a clear distinction between the coherent on-campus protests of Notre Dame students (sans fetal pictures), and the demagoguery of far-right extremists in the media.

Watching the address brought me back to the primaries, where “Change you can believe in”, seemed like little more than hogwash poetry. But to media’s most seasoned political analysts, Obama’s uplifting slogan was nothing short of a political coup d’état, a declaration that shook — and eventually toppled – the crudest aspects of Cheney and Rove’s neo-con establishment.

Similarly, Obama’s call for “Open hearts, open minds, [and] fair-minded words,” challenged the tactics of people like Randall Terry who believe Obama’s stances on abortion make him “the adversary…of the global common good,” and Alan Keyes, who believes that the honorary degree being given to Barack Obama “not only honors evil [but] exalts and worships it.”

To that end, I disagree with the premise of many off-campus protests.

Take, for instance, the controversy surrounding Notre Dame’s decision to award Obama an honorary degree. Bill Donahue, President of the Catholic League, recently opined that Notre Dame giving Obama an honorary degree “would be like Howard University giving David Duke a degree in racial politics.”

But according to Larry Marsh, a former Notre Dame faculty member, that simply isn’t true. In his involvement with the Notre Dame Honorary Degree Committee, Marsh cites the body was glad to recommend (and eventually award) a Jewish scholar with an honorary degree.

In Marsh’s own words,“How can it be ok to award an honorary degree to a person who does not recognize the divinity of Christ, but not ok to award one to someone who might have a different conception about conception? Why should Christ’s divinity have to take a back seat to the disagreement over when a fetus becomes a child?”

Second, it’s important to emphasize that the President has no direct jurisdiction over a woman’s right to choice – this issue is a judicial precedent under the control of the Supreme Court, that, in the following years, will evaluate its constitutional legitimacy independently from the Oval Office.

Of course, the logical argument used by Catholic protesters on Notre Dame’s campus — and pretty much all pro-lifers — is that the President can influence Supreme Court decisions through new court appointments, should a replacement be necessary. That’s true. Of course, it’s also true that their argument is pretty much identical to the one used by disgruntled pro-choice advocates during the Bush Presidency, all of whom took to hysterics at the notion of a conservative court appointment.

Interestingly enough, the nightmare of many pro-choicers was soon realized in the appointment of Chief Justice Roberts — and as liberals know full well, utter chaos ensued. A day after the seasoned justice was sworn into office, Roe v. Wade was reversed, millions of teenagers became underage parents, America degenerated into violence, and locusts rained down from the sky into the streets of Washington. Then, seven Orc-like horsemen stormed the Capitol and delivered the Apocalypse. The end.

We all know this series of events never transpired. In fact, even the reversal of Roe V. Wade didn’t come close to becoming a reality under the watch of a conservative Chief Justice appointment. And therein lies two harsh truths:

For one, it will take more than a new Supreme Court appointment to challenge judicial precedent, regardless of his/her ideological slant. Since the landmark 1973 decision, conservative Presidents have only halfheartedly suggested that the Court “reconsider” the case, if at all.

Similarly, conservative Justices seated on the Supreme Court have been wary about any reversal; Chief Justice Roberts, though personally pro-life, has been careful to exercise judicial minimalism — the emphasis of legal precedent and decline of judicial activism — in order to preserve the status quo. Even if Obama were to suddenly cast off his liberal leanings, adopt a pro-life platform, and, like Bush Jr., appoint a conservative Justice to the Court, there would be no indication that any reversal of judicial precedent would take place at all.

And why?

Because regardless of what pro-lifers and feminists have come to believe, abortion is, in large part, a wedge issue; comparatively speaking, it has little to no sweeping national consequences. To that end, I have always been indiscriminate; any one-issue voter who concerns themselves solely with the matter of abortion — whichever end of the spectrum they occupy — will likely irritate me, regardless of my own political and religious inclinations.

With the US embroiled in two critical overseas wars and the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, it baffles (and vexes me) that anyone would preoccupy themselves with an issue so comparatively inconsequential. Sure, it’s possible to cook up an impassioned argument against “moral decay” but these qualms should not, in any instance, supersede government’s primary concerns : the economy and state of US foreign affairs.

In short, I applaud Obama’s fearless political dialogue regarding a subject that has proved untouchable for dozens of Democratic politicians. Well played, Mr. President, well played.

Source Scoop 44

Bishop John D'Arcy not a fan..