From City Journal. All the spending on social policy will come to naught as long as the family remains in shambles. The article contains strong evidence that persistent poverty has much more to do with family breakdown than this or that economic phenomena, but few suggestions are offered as to how we can resuscitate the family. That may be a problem that has no government solution.
More on Jeremiah Wright (ah, the well that never runs dry). Stanley Kurtz argues that we haven't even scratched the surface of Barack Obama's radicalism.
A president who identifies with Malcolm X? A man who grew up alienated from ordinary American life and determined to avoid becoming a "sellout" by hanging with Marxist professors and radical feminists?
Meanwhile Victor Davis Hanson sees identity politics chickens coming home to roost.
Watching the parade of apologists for Rev. Wright’s hatred—“garlic noses”; “KKK of A;” “God Damn America;” “Condamnesia;” the U.S. deserved 9/11; America is no different from al-Qaeda; we caused the AIDs virus; Israel is a “dirty word” and sought an Arab and black ethnic bomb, etc—is, well, depressing. Instead of offering distance from Wright, far too many African-American professors and pastors interviewed on the cable stations the last few nights instead praised his brilliance and inspiration.
Hanson is frustrated to see Rev. Wright described as a "prophet." Dennis Prager argued on his radio show last week that a prophet is exactly what Jeremiah Wright is not. A prophet tells the people what they don't want to hear. A prophet goes to his people and asks them to look inside themselves at their own sin. Jeremiah Wright assures his congregation that there is nothing wrong with them; it is everyone else who needs to change.
It appears Rev. Wright has his own "mansiongate" problem.
Speaking of religion, Joe Carter (the evangelical, not the baseball player) acts as a prophet, telling his fellow Christian conservatives some things they don't want to hear. For example:
America is not a "Christian nation", though we should aspire to be a nation of Christians. America is not a "shining city on a hill", though we should let our light of freedom be a shining example for the entire world. America is not the "greatest blessing God gave mankind", though it is a great nation worthy of our conditional adoration. Patriotic sentiment has its place but we mustn't let it expand beyond its acceptable borders.
Carter also urges the purging of the likes of Ann Coulter from the ranks of the reasonable right. Her bombastic rhetoric is both unpersuasive and uncharitable. Hear, hear.
A commenter at Carter's site suggests reading this article that links early evangelicals to the separationist project of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. The history here is largely correct: evangelicals of the founding era, particularly Baptists, sided with Madison and Jefferson, partially out of theology and partially because they were a religious minority often abused by the majority. I'd simply suggest, though, that while there maybe some practical wisdom in the separationist agenda of Madison and Jefferson, let us not forget that especially for Jefferson this was motivated by a hope to weaken religion as a social force. Also, Madison and Jefferson were not typical of the founding generation, so let us not make the same mistake the Supreme Court has in turning their approach to religion into constitutional law. Prayer in public schools may be unwise, but that does not make it unconstitutional.
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