Walking through Target this afternoon with the kiddos and happened to catch a glimpse of the book section. Anyone else see the humor in how this shelf was staged? With the words Giving, The Quickie and Bill Clinton that close together I thought I'd been transported to 1998.
Henry G. Brinton, pastor and author merited nearly all of page 13A today with his op-ed Finding spiritual world's middle ground. He makes some interesting points about American politics and redefines the national political spectrum in a very American, and very spiritual way. Instead of conservatives and liberals, he renames the polar ends obligation-keepers and liberation-seekers.
He links his definitions to Biblical examples in a fascinating and yet faulty manner, even offering modern examples of each category.
"President Bush is a classic obligation-keeper - pro-life and pro-traditional family, with a strong focus on moral clarity. His approach to strong focus goes back to God's original covenant with Abraham, whom God promised to make fruitful if he will walk before God and be blameless...
Bill Clinton, on the other hand, is a liberation-seeker - determined to help people in need and protect freedoms such as gay rights and abortion rights. His style of religion can be traced back to Moses and the exodus from Egypt, in which God liberates his people from the oppression of pharoah."
If you've ever actually read the Bible, you know exactly where this analogy breaks down. Moses did not simply liberate people unconditionally. He liberated the people who had covenanted with God. Obedience to specific laws were exacted in order to gain liberation - remember that bit about lamb's blood over the door as an outward display of the convenant. Obedience to that divine mandate spared the lives of the promise keepers. Let's not forget that freedom was a benefit of compliance to the covenants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was not arbitrary - it was a direct response to keeping "obligations". Further more, Moses was the prophet of the Law. It was he who came down from Mt. Sinai with commandments in hand.
Brinton makes the point that conservatives and liberals often change from obligation-keepers to liberation-seekers and vice versa depending on the political issue and therein lies room for much compromise and understanding. This is about the closest his assessment comes to making sense. No group is as homogenous as it seems at first glance - only those who view political issues and people through the short-sighted lens of a camera see things so naively. These are people who let newspaper headlines and 30 second CNN reports govern their political thought. The reality of the human condition is infinitely more complex.
As far as the whole idea of obligation-keeper and liberation-seeker goes, these spiritual themes are not extremes on a spectrum of modern American thought. They are more like polar ends of the same stick. You cannot have one without the other. Take for example the analogy of two children taking piano lessons. There is the one child whose parents demand attentive practice and there is the other whose parents allow him the freedom to choose whether or not he will dedicate time to his talent. Both boys hate practicing. Their liberty is infringed upon by the daily half hour sessions spent plunking out notes and studying melodies. And yet, in later years, when called upon to demonstrate his skill only one of the boys enjoys the freedom to play. The child who never practiced, who did not keep up his obligation, ultimately lost his freedom. When asked, "Will you play the piano?" He was left only one response. The diligent boy, on the other hand had the freedom to respond by either declining or accepting the invitation. He is now free to choose.
The same principle holds true with every decision we make as individuals and as a society of the free. We often choose to give up some liberties for the greater good. We choose to inhibit the freedom of our children, forcing them (as they often see it) like cruel taskmasters to endure 8 hours of schooling daily. We exhibit cultural self-abnegation in a myriad of ways, and do so willingly and frequently when we consider the ultimate freedoms guaranteed through a little give and take. We give up income so that our tax dollars can buy us the greater freedom of a standing military and freedom from criminals and social ills. We have nationally chosen to be obligation-keepers in countless ways because we realize that keeping obligations allows us to ultimately enjoy greater liberty. Obligation and libertarianism are not and either-or proposition but and if-then construct.
Most of the social degradation, corruption and lack of personal morality that afflicts our nation right now is directly caused by the desire to offer liberty without obligation. The removal of allegiance to social and moral covenants has resulted in a complete absolution of accountability and when we refuse to hold up our obligations, we find ourselves like the Israelites Moses was sent to liberate. Enslaved.
Bush : Clinton
Accused of using Requested
NSA wiretaps illegally to 900 FBI files
wage a war on terrorists. of prominent
Republicans as part
of a political enemies list.
Accused of misleading Completely invented Kosovar
Americans into a war genocide, instead of
in Iraq, a known sponsor corroborating evidence,
of Palestinian terror international investigators
groups and ruled by a proved it never happened.
crazed killer (of his own Don't forget he wagged the
people). dog by bombing a
Mass graves found, pharmaceutical plant - that soil
weapons caches captured, sample proving it was
Saddam tapes reveal a "nuclear" facility got lost
intent to supply terrorists conveniently somewhere
with nuclear and biological in the White House.
weapons.
Accused of never really Dodged the draft but
serving in the military. didn't inhale.
Two words: Jack Abramoff Six words: Web Hubbell,
Charlie Trie, Marc Rich
Accused of selling out Sold military technology to
security by leasing ports the Chinese, who,
to a reputable internat'l according to satellite images,
conglomerate had those weapons pointed
right at us.
Sure Bush is the worst American president - yep, I can see that...
You don't have to be a monster to be an American president. But Bill Clinton was.
1- He changed the policy in Somalia where US forces had been acting in a purely humanitarian capacity, putting soldiers in the unenviable position of nation-building and hunting down warlords. When the mission changed and MG Montgomery asked for more firepower - troops and equipment, Les Aspin said "uh-no." This left our guys high and dry and a month later 18 died, 80 were wounded and some were desecrated posthumously, having their bodies dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.
2- By the way - he left them so unsupported that we had to borrow tanks and armored personnel carriers from Pakistan and Malaysia.
3- In the Balkans, Bill engineered the Dayton peace accords and interjected American troops into a region of the world with absolutely no US interests. While our soldiers have done a magnificent job staving off the civil wars that erupt periodically, the five year mission that Bill advertised has already turned into a ten year excursion. There is no exit strategy for the military in this region because the peace (if you can call it that) is so tenuous that we can't afford to leave. We now have what appears to be a permanent American force in Bosnia and Kosovo. (And the cost of that venture reached 15 billion before he even left office. Bill's policy was to exagerrate and outright invent atrocities - fabricating a genocide that never happened in Kosovo. To resolve the apparent imbalance (Bill made muslims the victims in that fairy tale) mujahadeen were imported from the Middle East to fight.
4- Bill bombed Serbia against the will of congress (they actually voted not to authorize him to use such force) and in doing such was the first US prez to act in direct opposition to congress.
5- Under Bill's direction the US Information Agency purported that hundreds of thousands of Albanian Muslims had been slaughtered when in acuality there were no mass graves. "The Spanish forensic surgeon Emilio Perez Pujol, who was dispatched to uncover evidence of Serbian atrocities, reported that 'we did not find one - not one - mass grave.'" (This quote taken from Thomas Woods Jr's 2004 book)
6- I won't even detail the bombing of El Shifa - the pharmaceutical company. When he wagged the dog because Monica was giving testimony before the grand jury. Suffice it to say that the soil sample used to show that El Shifa was really a WMD manufacturing plant in disguise, like so many other things in the Clinton White House, never showed up.
7- Also according to Woods' count Clinton "dispatched the military overseas an amazing forty-four time during his eight years. The American military had been deployed outside of our borders only eight times in the previous forty-five years."
Now, there are things about the current war that I don't like. Finding WMDs would have done a lot to quiet the naysayers but WMDs or not, I would have sent guys in to take out Saddam. The footage you can link to from my last post is more than enough reason for him to be out of power. Not to mention gassing the Kurds. But there is one thing you cannot deny no matter how many rumors, how much innuendo and how many brazen and outright lies are fabricated about George W. Bush, you know where he stands every step of the way. He never said the transition would be easy. It hasn't been. He said Saddam was a ruthless tyrant and a homicidal killer. The bodies and mass graves are numberless. He said that we thought there were WMDs or the capacity to produce them. WMDs have been found (not in the quantities that the press and the liberals demand - but then again, what amount would truly satisfy them?). You could pick apart the details but every piece of intelligence that this president saw (and that has been made public) could have gone either way. We all knew from day one that the relationship with Al-Queda was circumstancial at best. What the president listed in his address as evidence of a connection between Osama and Baghdad was never strong.
So, if you felt you were deceived going into Iraq, then you just weren't paying attention. If, on the other hand you are just plain disgusted with the US military being sent around the globe like a world cop, I'd suggest you give Bill Clinton a call.
