The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Obama and Religion

Text Size

Obama and Religion

By Philip Klein on 6.19.07 @ 10:15AM

Andrew Sullivan cites excerpts from an article about Obama speaking about faith in public, and argues:

What Obama might represent is a twist on Bush's "compassionate conservatism." That label was always a way to disguise well-meaning big government liberalism. Obama, unlike Bush, need not pretend otherwise. He can raise taxes on the successful as a Biblical injunction. He can increase even further the reach of the welfare state because Jesus is calling him to. It may be that history records the Bush presidency as the breakthrough for a revival of domestic liberalism - because Bush conceded that "when someone's hurt, government has got to move." I'm not surprised many Democrats are now exploiting that concession.

I agree with Sullivan, and just expanding on this, one point I make in an upcoming magazine piece on Obama for our July/August issue is that he shrewdly realizes that appealing to faith is actually an effective way to advance progressive ideas. In his book The Audcacity of Hope, Obama writes, "Scrub language of all religious content, and we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice."

topics:
Taxes, Conservatism