Reform (i.e., liberal) Jews seem to react to the invocation of G0d by a devout Christian like a vampire exposed to garlic. I was out of town this weekend with a group of such Jewish friends. We had little ready access to TV or radio, so no one was really caught up with the latest news unless they had time to pull out their iPhone and go on-line. This morning at breakfast, one of them did just that. In a state of disgusted shock, he informed the table that in Sarah Palin’s Tea Party speech the former governor said:
… it would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country …
This made the like-minded people at the table gasp in horror.
I called B.S. on the report and that there had to be a bigger context the line was taken out of. Sure enough, the statement was made not as part of Palin’s speech, but to an attendee during the Q&A section. The entire statement goes thus, as reported by the U.K. Guardian:
Asked what she thought that a Republican-controlled congress’s top three priorities should be, she answered: stop spending, energy policy and ... well, here's the whole quote, judge for yourself:
I think, kind of tougher to put our arms around, but allowing America’s spirit to rise again by not being afraid to kind of go back to some of our roots as a God fearing nation where we’re not afraid to say especially in times of potential trouble in the future here, where we’re not afraid to say, you know, we don’t have all the answers as fallible men and women so it would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country, so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again. To have people involved in government who aren’t afraid to go that route, not so afraid of the political correctness that, you know, they have to be afraid of what the media said about them if they were to proclaim their alliance to our creator.
So, one of the US congress’s top priorities should be ... asking for divine intervention from God? “I can think of two words right now that scare liberals: President Palin,” the moderator ended the evening by saying.
Oh wow, that’s some impartial and objective moderator. Anyway, the reference was quite casual and pretty innocuous, if you ask me. But not to my friends.
Sarah Palin’s speech and subsequent Q&A session was an hour in duration. The woman spoke several thousand words. Yet, sure enough, the mainstream media and lefty sites are buzzing with these two supposedly horrifying words: divine intervention. In fact, at the really unhinged lefty blogs (I’m not going to link them; do your own search) there are charges of Palin channeling Hitler and deifying herself.
(She wants a theocracy, I tell you. She actually believes this G0d crap.)
It would be understandable for secular, atheist Americans to be concerned about such rhetoric. But for some strange reason, every time a devout Christian uses some sort of religious reference or, G0d help us, invoke G0d’s name, Reform Jews from Boston to Seattle get the vapors.
The last time I saw my fellow Reform Jews react this way was with George W. Bush. At the start of the Iraq War, Bush had the chutzpah to invoke the strength and guidance of G0d in his decisions regarding Iraq and Afghanistan. Almost immediately the hissy fit from both the secular and liberal left as well as from the religious Islamic world. Headlines to the effect of “Bush: G0d told me to invade Iraq” abounded.
For instance, in October, 2004, The New York Times lamented:
When [Bush] took the nation to war in Iraq, he refused to meet with delegations of religious leaders who opposed a pre-emptive war. To their dismay, he has repeatedly justified the war in theological terms, repeating a favorite axiom, as he did at a rally in Colorado this month: “Freedom is not America’s gift to the world; freedom is the Almighty G0d’s gift to each man and woman in this world.”
Such words make a liberal shiver as if he just heard a certain Iranian leader herald the arrival of the Twelfth Imam in order to initiate Armageddon. A less unhinged American would simply say, Oh, he’s just building on this notion:
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s G0d entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Whoa, invoking G0d! What’s that from, the manual of some radical right-wing wacko group who wants to quash our civil rights and establish an American theocracy? No, dear liberal, it’s from the U.S. Declaration of Independence. (Ever heard of it?)
And if that’s not bad enough, how about a presidential speech that reads:
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if G0d wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondsman’s 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another draw with the sword, as was said 3000 years ago, so still must it be said, ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as G0d gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
That would be the words of arguably the nation’s most beloved president, Abraham Lincoln, in 1865. Yes, people, G0d told Lincoln to free the slaves and to keep the Union together. Crazy religious nut.
Or how about this:
With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth G0d’s work must truly be our own.
… [T]he same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe—the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of G0d.
Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah—to “undo the heavy burdens … and to let the oppressed go free.”
That must be either Dubya or Sarah Palin trying to impose their religion on us! How dare they tell us that the United States has some sort of G0d-sanctioned responsibility to free the world’s oppressed? Oops, wait a minute. These lines are from the inauguration address of one of the left’s favorite presidents, John F. Kennedy.
Now snack on these goodies:
I hope that you have re-read the Constitution of the United States in these past few weeks. Like the Bible, it ought to be read again and again.
Another one of those right-wing nuts invoking G0d again? Nope. Try the left’s other favorite Democrat president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Well, I’ll be damned.
Finally, here’s my favorite:
We have “an ethical and moral obligation … that we look out for one another. …
We are G0d’s partners in matters of life and death.
The second part of that speech is a reference to the Rosh Hashanah prayer “Un’taneh Tokef,” which says that at that time of year, it is decided “who shall live and who shall die.”
And which religious fanatic might this be, daring to declare that he and we are G0d’s partners in instituting one of his plans?
That would be one President Barack Hussein Obama, addressing about a thousand rabbis on August 19, 2009. And I’ll bet that my same friends at this morning’s breakfast table who were put off by Sarah Palin’s “divine intervention” comment were among those on that phone conference with the president.
In short, invoking G0d to justify the role of America in the world goes all the way back to the founders. To be put off by such speech is to be ignorant of our nation’s founding and history.
I have no problem with Sarah Palin expressing hope for a “divine intervention.” I also have no problem with Obama doing it either, even if I strongly disagree with what Obama hopes G0d helps him with.
Besides, I’d rather have Obama and his peeps invoking G0d then invoking Karl Marx or Chairman Mao. That’s already happened, yet I have yet to hear from my Reform Jewish friends whether that frightened them …
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