Seeing the TIME cover as I carried my mail into the house today, I thought out loud "Obama has a better shot at the White House than Hillary."
Then I read what he wrote: "...our constituency...fears -- rightly no doubt [emphasis mine] -- that the agenda of an assertively Christian nation may not make room for them." This is a common fear among the atheists and other left-wing bigots, which I suppose is why Obama agrees with it.
These are words of intolerance and bigotry, unfounded in history -- it was an assertively Christian nation that made room for them in the first place -- which (by affirming that intolerance with the interjection "rightly no doubt") puts Obama and his "constituency" at odds with what he admits is the vast majority of the American people.
Two pages later he defines "Liberalism" in contrast to that intolerance, and in contrast to what many of the religious people in this country see the "liberals" actually *doing*, which is impinging on our right to believe differently. It is important to distinguish what the "liberals" do from what they think they are doing. They are perfectly happy to let people "believe" any nonsensical ideas they like, so long as they do not act on those ideas. Of course that is not belief at all, or at most belief in the atheist's god of feelings, not the real God. Thus they actually impinge on the freedom of people to actually believe there is a real God Who created everything and makes moral demands on us, such as requiring us to train our children in that same faith without having that freedom subverted in the public schools by the established religion of Darwinism being taught as if it alone is true.
So long as Barack Obama and his colleagues in the "blue states" propagate this hypocrisy, the American people will look for somebody better for President -- somebody who at least lives what he says he believes (I'm thinking here of President Bush: we may not like what he does, but at least it's consistent with what he says). Obama will not be so lucky as to be running against Alan Keyes in a national election. A large part of Obama's essay was devoted to how badly Alan Keyes ran against him for the Senate seat, and Obama's conflict in recognizing that Keyes was a man of firm faith that shaped his whole life, a quality missing in his own life.
Obama's essay ends with him having adopted Christianity as a social religion, but he is still unable to tell his own daughter what happens when we die. That is not the faith of our fathers, and not the faith of the religious people Obama and his colleagues so fear. It's also not the faith of the other religionists he tries to draw in as part of modern America, the Muslims and the Hindus, or even the atheists. Perhaps some day Obama will come to true faith, so he can tell his daughter confidently what happens when we die. Then the rest of us who already know the answer might have reason to trust him at the helm of the country. If Obama doesn't know what he believes, then how can we know what will shape his decisions when the terrorists take out their next target? Americans care about that sort of thing. That's why Bush got elected. It could keep Obama out of the White House.
At least he is asking some of the right questions.
Hillary is not.