I just listened to Obama’s commencement speech at Notre Dame. It reminded me that his entire schtick is one long commencement speech: a hypnotizing cadence, vaguely aspirational sentiments about the future, and self-congratulatory pablum about “this important time in history.”
On abortion, Obama continues his strategy of acknowledging the sincerity of his opponents, even while his policies are radical, i.e., removing conscience exemptions for medical professionals and opposing the nomination of Justices Roberts and Alito on “prochoice” grounds as a U.S. Senator. His words are always more satisfactory than his policies. He said today:
Understand – I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. No matter how much we may want to fudge it – indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory – the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.
Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words.
But what is missing? Missing is any sense that reason can lead us to answers on controversial issues of ethics and policy. For Obama and most of his peers, this is just a clash of sincere feelings and, as such, our mutual skepticism about arriving at any answers and our respect for the “authority” of feelings is supposed to lead us to a truce, where neither “imposes” his view on the other. The truce of course is what the “pro choice” side pretends to embrace, even as abortion is funded by the government and promoted to young children against the wishes of their parents. This idea of a relativistic truce is the very opposite of the Thomistic moral tradition at the heart of Catholic Social Teaching, a tradition where reason is acknowledged not merely as a tool of solving problems–that is, a means of arriving from point A to goal B–but a tradition where reason is acknowledged as including a capacity of sensing moral right by examining nature and the intrinsic purposes embedded in nature itself. In other words, reason offers us a way out of the impasse not by acknowledging the authenticity and sincerity of our opponents, though we may do that, but by eventually leading reasonable interlocutors proceeding in good faith into shared agreement.
The stuff about making abortion less common likely will not mollify the Catholic faithful either. Implicit in most of this talk is the value of state-funded birth control and eugenics regimes, including the use of abortifacient birth control pills. He did not spell this out, but his meaning was clear. Young people at places like Notre Dame are, believe it or not, often quite untainted by the compromises of life and likely better schooled than many of their parents and their left-leaning faculty on the evils of such a “consequentialist” approach.
Obama’s biggest problem is that his Notre Dame appearance was a bust that antagonized the faithful. Catholics that go to church are many times more consevative than “lapsed” Catholics who answer media surveys and the very unusual faculty at Catholic Universities. The anti-abortion issue is the great defining public issue of Catholics in American politics today. From stem cell research funding to abortion to the tone-deaf decision of Notre Dame to reward Obama with an honorary degree, Obama has appeared in public as a great antagonizer of Catholics. If the Catholic issues of yesteryear were the rights of workers and fair treatment of parochial schools, today’s issue is opposition to abortion, what the Holy Father John Paul II powerfully described as the opposition of the “culture of life” and the “culture of death.” Obama will never be on the right side of Catholics on this issue, and Catholics may become increasingly mobilized as a force along with Evangelicals, Southerners, Westerners, Gun-Owners, anti-immigrant natives, and others in a culturally conservative coalition little concerned about “capital gains tax cuts” but very united in their feeling that the country is not their own and the leadership is aiming at their subordination.
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Barack Hussein Obama, jr, a.k.a. (in Indonesia, Pakistan, Hawaii and California, at one point in his life) Barry Soetoro, comes from a devastated and dysfunctional family.
His biological father abandoned him to his biological mother when he was two years old, and returned to his first wife in Kenya, by the name of Kezia, and with whom he had two children, even before he “got together” with Stanley Ann Dunham, Junior’s mommy. Were his parents ever married? No marriage contract has ever (or yet) been uncovered and presented for public information and review. So how can they even “divorce” if his parents could only get married (in USA Laws), under penalty of bigamy on the part of his Daddy.
His (second)stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian muslim abandoned his biological mother when he was but 10 years old, in Indonesia.
His biological mother got him out of Indonesia and abandoned him when he was 10 years old to his maternal grandmother.
Barry Soetoro, Jr. on the other hand, effectively abandoned (disregarded)his maternal grandmommy, and gravitated towards Frank Marshall Davis, a communist, who became his growing up closed-in mentor.
His paternal grandfather, Onyango Hussein Obama was a Kenyan muslim. His Kenyan biological father was a muslim. His stepfather was an Indonesian muslim. His mother was a self-confessed and proud atheist and commie supporter.
He claims he became a christian in the 80s. About the same period when he went to Pakistan to rejoin his Pakistani former classmates, roommates and friends. They were all muslims, too. When he travelled to Pakistan, etc…did he use an American Passport? He was already 21 years old about that time. If he did, then he violated the law. No Americans were allowed to travel to Pakistan during that period because the USA did not have any diplomatic relations with Pakistan, then. So maybe, just maybe, he used his Indonesian passport? But if he did, how would the USA immigration and Foreign Service have found out about his trips and travels outside the country???
The point of all these? HE LIES. He has no family values that are consistent with Christianity, notwithstanding his “actuations” that he is a Christian. If he was “baptized” Christian, was he given a Christian name? What was it? Barack? Hussein? Any Christian Saint by that name?
No basic “religio, mores, et cultura” training and education. He was a drug (cocaine, and whatever else), by his own admission. Then shortly after he announced his decision to run for POTUS, he declared, he stopped smoking. MORE LIES.
That is why it is understandable (not condonable, however) why he advocates NOT ONLY THE FREE KILLING OF UNBORN INFANTS…but pursues the reasoning that the (irrelevant) mother has the right to DISPOSE of an unwanted child, who survived an abortion attempt.
I wonder, just wonder, when the time comes that his daughters get pregnant…and they tell him – “Daddy, I don’t want this baby…Can you help me kill it?” What do you think he will say?
On top of that…he insists that marriage ought not to be limited to one man and one woman…
This guy is SICK! And TORMENTED. Supposing his daughter/s one day tell him…”Daddy, we are not going to get married to any man. We just want to be our own lovers. Can I marry my sister?” What then?
What if, finally, one day his spouse, Michelle O, wakes up one day…and tells him…”Barry, I am attracted to another woman…?? Yes, Barack…how will you handle that?
But then, the most overwhelming question would be…supposing, just supposing, this POTUS, comes out of his closet and says…”Yes, I am coming out…and that is why…I see nothing wrong with homosexual marriages…” Nice, huh?
What is an “antichrist”? Why, we have been warned of their “coming”, as a sign or omen, that we are nearing the end of the world…the end game…antichrists are those who preach, teach and advocate anything and everything AGAINST THE TEACHING OF JESUS CHRIST, THE SON OF GOD, THE FATHER, ALMIGHTY.
As for his cohorts, Pelosi and Reid…that’s another (sickening) story-telling-lies…and liars.
Pepeton
I think the irony of Obama constantly explaining that he “understands” the other side’s views, and that he recognizes the right they have to their viewpoint, is that he usually never engages the opposing view. He acts as if the magnaminity of his acknowledging the opposing argument effectively dismisses the issue as worthy of any further debate. You see, if the great healer understands your argument, and still disagrees, well clearly the issue is settled. In reality, it’s the opposite of respecting the other viewpoint, and that is starting to become more obvious to those who don’t agree with this vain and shallow man.
Great shot, about all of Obama’s speeches being commencement speeches. That said, on the quote you posted here, I gotta agree with our Commencement Speaker-in-Chief.
You’re right that “[m]issing is any sense that reason can lead us to answers on controversial issues of ethics and policy.” Obama was correct not to suggest it because it isn’t true, at least not if “us” is the US and the issue is abortion. You’ve got opponents arguing rationally from (among others) two incompatible moral traditions, call them Catholic natural law and individual rights. Reason works pretty well within one or the other, though even libertarians disagree among themselves here. But one moral tradition can’t convince the other, short of converting the country to Catholicism or to secular individualism. (I’m cribbing this from Alasdair MacIntyre, who I think even cited the abortion issue as an example.)
So reason is pretty much useless here. What’s left is sentiment, pathos – what Obama calls “passion and conviction.” If the anti-abortion side is smart, they’ll learn to use pathos more effectively than they have so far.
Roach- “…one long commencement speech”; great line. I might have added that Obama seems to rate every one of (those) his speeches as putatively Lincolnian, too.
The whole act recalls Wilde’s observation: “The first duty in life is to assume a pose; what the second duty is no one yet has found out.”
Chris, Great assessment!
I don’t think that BHO is concerned that his appearance at ND would annoy “the faithful” He doesn’t see this group as powerful enough to do him any harm.
He was pandering to the liberal “cafeteria Catholic” crowd that voted AGAINST eight years of corruption under the Republicans. How fast this particular group would abandon him is not known. BHO is trying to make sure that they don’t rejoin with the Republicans in 2012.
I’m waiting to see what the Pope does, if anything, about the clergy at ND who invited BHO.
Some evils can’t be resolved or conquered by reason, politics or might. It takes action, prayer and sacrifice to turn some situations around for the better. Abortion appears to be one of those evils.
In any event, praying for the grace to change our own hearts and for the Holy Spirit to reveal God’s love to our advasaries can’t hurt.