Thinking Faith – The Online Journal of British Jesuits. That is the name of a Jesuit publication. Perhaps I am becoming too cynical but the phrase Thinking Faith just smacks of elitism, n’est–ce pas? Can’t you just see a British Jesuit looking bemusedly over his reading glasses at such simple faith those Catholics now engaged in a Novena to stop the most pro-death candidate from becoming the leader of the formerly free world? In the eyes of the Thinking, we are mouth breathing, knuckle dragging, rosary praying neanderthals. They, the Jesuits, are Thinkers.
Anyway, it is amuses me that those who think of themselves as Thinking are so prone to the snake oil pitch of the huckster from Illinois.
Witness this, a few paragraphs from an article on Obama from the above mentioned thinking man’s journal.
Whoever wins the US election, Barack Obama’s campaign will be earnestly studied years from now. Not for decades has a presidential candidate so electrified politics. Not since 1968 has a campaign been so well organised. And never has one been so well funded by ordinary people donating $5 a time. How does he do it?
There is something new about Obama –something a little hard to get a grip on. It puts some people off him. The “who is he?” question is not just a figleaf for racism; it’s also because Obama doesn’t fit easily into the right-left spectrum. From the start his pitch to America has been precisely that he represents a new kind of politics, one which refuses to slice and dice people into “blues” (Democrats) and “reds” (Republicans), “liberal” and “conservative”. “We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States,” as he once declared.
This can look like spin – an attempt to transcend ideology by embracing an asinine “third position” – but in Obama’s case it is authentic. He doesn’t have an ideology so much as a methodology, one shaped by his experience working as a community organiser among the inner-city parishes of Chicago in the 1980s. Here is the key to Obama’s politics. He is the vessel of the hope of ordinary parishioners.
The rest of the article is paean to Obama and community organizing. As it is a self proclaimed Thinking journal, it goes without saying that abortion is never mentioned. Unseemly stuff, that. Best leave that topic to those less intellectually inclined.
This might play to my neanderthal upbringining, but if nothing else this election season. We now have a much clearer picture of who is with us and who is against us. N’est–ce pas?
November 4, 2008 at 4:26 am
For shame! This is the intellectual equivalent of masturbation. Pity these Jesuits probably don’t go to Confession.
Obama is the candidate spewed from the haemorroidical anus of Satan himself.
November 4, 2008 at 4:28 am
“it’s also because Obama doesn’t fit easily into the right-left spectrum.”
What a lot of bovine excrement.
It can only be considered true in the sense that, like Stalin, Obama is so far left that he falls of the edge of the chart.
And yes, the “Stalin” reference is valid, given Obama’s proclivity for infanticide…
November 4, 2008 at 5:48 am
Come now. Obama is not a Stalin. What worries me more is that he’s someone who lays the groundwork for a neo-Stalin down the road. If elected, he will embolden the radical Left for years to come. It will be a Howard Dean-style candidate that we neglected to laugh off the face of the political map.
November 4, 2008 at 6:15 am
I read the article with an open mind and agreed with some of it, and disagreed with the rest. Obama DOES fit clearly into the left of the “right-left spectrum”. And to insinuate “who is he” is a “figleaf for racism” is just plain pandering. But the author WAS correct on other points. Obama HAS electrified politics like no one within the last 20 years (i.e. Reagan). And he has raised more cash from ordinary people (but what they leave out is that about 2/3rds of his funds also come from over seas).
If the Republicans can learn anything here, it is that they need to bring in someone who best represents OUR values next time, rather than making us settle. This would electrify us.
And by the way, Patrick, EXCELLENT use of “N’est ce pas” to really drive the point home. I always find French to be sickeningly pretentious : )
November 4, 2008 at 2:32 pm
“We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism.”
– Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev, 1959
Unfortunately, if Obama wins tonight, the GOP will only give us another such in 2012, because it will be seen that he is what the people want.
Sarah Palin managed to electrify thousands. Myself included. If she didn’t help turn the tide, the GOP won’t pick anyone like her again.
I hope I’m wrong. 🙂
November 4, 2008 at 2:45 pm
I find it interesting that so many intelligent people keep saying that Sen. Obama doesn’t “divide us into categories” when on his web site there must be at least thirty divisions such as “greek americans”, “italian americans”, etc, ad nauseum. Can we be “united” when we are being so finely divided into ethnic categories by our new “uniter not a divider”? I don’t think so.
November 4, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Does the author of the article think it good that Mr. Obama is more method than ideology? That would be pretty scary on its own, but then he goes on to mention that this method was shaped in Chicago politics. That’s somthing all thinking people should cogitate on for awhile. Of course, in fact, Mr. Obama very much has an ideology, and his methods are straight out of the playbooks of that ideology. Perhaps the author doesn’t recognize the ideology being steeped in it himself. Is it too controversial to call it Marxist or some diluted form of it? Perhaps the word Marxism is not controversial enough these days. Perhaps people can not recognize it, don’t know what it is, or think it’s a good thing. It’s too bad the thinkers didn’t think enough about this crucial matter. Lets hope it’s not too late. Btw and off the subject, prayers for the soul of Mrs. Dunham. And don’t feel guilty for praying at the same time for the defeat of her grandson. I believe both are the right thing. Kit.
November 4, 2008 at 4:11 pm
On the bright side, this article pretty much solves our energy problem – you could wrap Ignatius of Loyola’s crypt in copper wire and his spinning would power the Eastern Seaboard for months.
November 4, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Nightfly – that was so freakin great. My hat’s off to you.