Religion, Part II

[moraulf]

So I found online this speech by Barack Obama, which made me feel kind of dumb about my previous religion post. I will stop plugging for Obama now. Sorry. But seriously, watch this if you haven't seen it.



I mean, holy crap, right?

Comments

[stackolee]

Thanks for posting... I ended up watching the whole thing and felt enlightened(?) by the experience.

I sincerely hope he gets the nomination, at the very least.

Damn New Hampshire...

[moraulf]

Weirdly, that was the first time I've ever heard that argument made in a way that convinced me.

[arollercoaster]

i don't like his populist pandering. i don't like his aversion to free-market capitalism. i don't know that his health care plan is developed enough. i'm unsure about how he's going to reform social programs to make them more efficient and avoid bankruptcy. i don't know how he's going to get us disentangled from our military engagements without leaving a horrific mess behind

[moraulf]

So you're looking for someone who is solid on National Defense, conservative with the economy, and somewhat unifying politically; yeah, I'd go McCain if I were you, too.

My view is less complicated and maybe more naive: I think Obama, Clinton, and Edwards will push for liberal reforms that will strengthen the middle class, and that doing so will generally help the economy recover. But I think Obama is the only one of the three of them who can sell those reforms to America; Edwards lacks credibility and Clinton is too polarizing. I also think another Republican administration, with all the accompanying tax cuts for the rich (which I view essentially as a tax on the middle class and the poor), social service cuts, and military overspending, would obviously be terrible. Even with McCain, who I think is honest and well-intentioned.

[symmys]

I misread your post and thought you were complaining about the speech, so then I was quite confused when I was moved by it and liked it, then I reread your post and now all makes sense.

When it comes to a lot of issues, I don't have much hope of honest from any of the politicians. Given that, more and more I think it's not so crazy to vote based on character and message and image -- what kind of America someone will project to the country and to the world. And there Obama definitely seems to have something. I also liked Obama's honest response on cap-and-trade in the ABC/Facebook debates (actually, really I just deeply disliked what Richardson said, but then I was surprised that Obama was honest enough not to repeat the party line as Richardson did -- I get so annoyed at politicians saying we need to take global warming seriously in one breath and then in the next saying American's are suffering too much with high gas prices).

[moraulf]

I remember that moment as being pretty impressive, also, although part of me just doesn't think Global Warming is a solvable issue...but definitely my enjoyment of this speech (and others of Obama's) comes out of the sense I get from him that he isn't crazy or dishonest and that he actually wants people to pay attention to politics.

[symmys]

I don't think Global Warming is something we'll either solve or not -- I think there are degrees. Hell, even without global warming, there are degrees to how clean our air will be, to how liveable our cities will be, etc., and making it harder to pump carbon into the air seems to me to be something that will help.

What most frustrates me about this issue is that the republicans resist the free market solution (carbon taxes) and instead plug the alternative energy subsidies (what I would see as the nanny-government-knows-best solution).

If you believe the market is the answer, as Republicans claim to, then you should believe that the best way to regulate a negative externality is with a Pigovian tax or a cap-and-trade system. The point is, the government shouldn't be in the business of deciding which innovation will be the most effective at reducing polution -- that opens it up to too much corruption. Rather, government should simply set a price on polution -- as time goes by, we expect more from our people and our technology in the

[moraulf]

It's not that I don't agree with you, but I think there's an argument to be made that *some* externalities get hit with taxes and some don't, and that therefore there's no lack of nanny-state politics involved with that decision, either. I also generally think the phrase "nanny state" is an annoying Republican attack on all consumer-protection law and that people who use it should be forced to drive Pintos (although being that you have a new baby, you're exempt).

[alyosha_k]

Sorry to have taken a while to post anything on the Obama speech. I agree with you, however, that it is extremely impressive. I have never before heard such a thoughtful, respectful, and nuanced discussion of the church-state relationship in the United States from any politician

[moraulf]

I'm glad you liked the speech; I generally was most influenced by Obama's argument about language - that religious rhetoric was a common cultural code for morality that shouldn't be ignored - than any specific policy issues, since I agree with you that religion doesn't necessarily assign any particular policy positions. I did not fail to grasp the lightly-touched-upon logical consequence there, which is that the Democratic party needs to re-attach religion to its arguments around policy position(I'm about to post an article by Stephen Pinker about morality that I think takes this discussion further, by the way). I'd also mention that there's a level on which it's not so unreasonable of me to react to the Alan Keyes-esque argument that I should do what he thinks is right because he speaks for God with indignance and not just disagreement