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Drew ChristiansenSeptember 28, 2009

Before work each morning President Barack Obama prayerfully reads a passage of Scripture sent him by the Rev. Joshua DuBois, the young Pentecostal preacher who is his director of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. I wonder whether on one of those mornings the president has pondered Lk 11:24-26, the parable of the evil spirit who after being expelled wanders the barren land and returns in the company of “seven spirits even worse than itself. So when it is over, that person is in worse shape than he was at the beginning.”

In Luke, the passage is paired with the parable of the strong man (11:21-22), about a homeowner whose home is safe because he guards it with all his weapons. The house is plundered, however, when a stronger, better armed housebreaker defeats him. The tag line Luke uses to tie the two parables together, “Whoever is not with me is against me,” may be seen by many Democratic stalwarts as needed warning for President Obama to stiffen his backbone in his current predicaments.

I appreciate, as the president does, that the American people prefer to be governed from the middle. But muddling through is unsuited to the crises the nation now faces. In a time like ours, such a management style surrenders sound policy to the forces of the status quo in a string of unreasoned compromises. It leaves the tough decisions until later and worsens the problems to be resolved in the future.

Lack of vigilance and active control results in irrational disorder. Without an assertive agenda of one’s own, the political field grows chaotic; and irrational discontent, like the seven devils, comes rushing in. August’s hellishly heated town hall shout-fests ought to have made clear that after the housecleaning of the 2008 elections, nihilistic forces were waiting to come back to haunt our body politic. The president has failed to exercise the leadership necessary to control the shape of policy debate on health care. His adversaries, not the president, are setting the agenda, even after his speech to Congress on Sept. 9.

To take another example, a year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, greed has recaptured Wall Street. The 30,000 employees of Goldman Sachs are set to earn an average of $700,000 this year. The president’s economic team of Wall Street insiders succeeded in stemming the decline of the economy, but they have done nothing until now to remedy the systemic problems underlying the collapse, beginning with the outsized compensation at Goldman: regulating nonbank financial institutions, restricting bank size, requiring transparency for financial instruments and raising lending standards.

In a third case, the national security apparatus holds tight to the practices of the last eight years. The closing of the detention camps at Guantánamo Bay has been stymied by Congressional action; and the parallel institution at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan has not even come under scrutiny.

The administration, moreover, has given no clear signal as to how it hopes to strike a balance between human and civil rights and protecting the nation from terrorism. One of the simplest practices to eliminate would have been the rendition of suspects to other countries for interrogation. But there are no plans to end it, despite court actions and public acts of repentance by other countries like Italy and Canada for past cooperation in U.S. abuses.

There are balances to be struck, and compromises will have to be made. But without some genuine reforms, the challenges confronting our nation, beginning with the financial crisis, will soon threaten to be worse than those we have recently faced.

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14 years 6 months ago

It seems to me, "Of Many Things" by editor Drew Christiansen, S.J., is more about "one thing" rather than "many things,"- a not so velied dislike of the previous administration and a distinct preference of the current one. The editor did ruler-whack the knuckles of the current administration ever so gently, ( ruler-whacked like we got as kids in school back in the 40s but not so gently!)ruler-whacked the administration for playing with the "spiri t of evil." Obviously to him, I guess, through its wishy-washy, or sometimes spit-on-your-finger in the wind, kind of governance, or whtever it's called, the Obama administration is "playing with the "spirit of evil?"

The editor uses  the paarable about the evil spirit, who, after being expelled wanders through barren land (Like the "barren land" made so by the insensitive inaction of the Bush administration's global warming non-policies?) to return with seven evil spirits worse than itself. Thus, "Of Many Things" reminds its readers of August's "hellishly heated" town hall meetings with its "shout-fests" making it clear that the "housecleaning" of the 2008 election and the "nihilistic forces" of the previous administration, want to come back to "haunt our body politic."

Like heresy, even politically tainted heresy, such as Fr. Christiansen's partisan opinion, contains a grain of truth. Yes, the previous administration had multiple flaws, some serious. But if honestly is to be served, it must be admitted that the current  one has gaping holes, even chasms of fright, notably within its health care public option dictatorial notion, not to mention its gelatin-like domestic terror poliocy and its wavering national security policy, which tends to give not only Generals, but the whole country a bad case of persistent vertigo! And our enimies waiting to pounce lick their chops with joy!

Some would say the current  administrations greatest albatros is caused by the  preposterous adventurism of President Obama's out-of-control idealism, his kind of starry-eyed neighborhood organizer's "let's try it" approach, to the complexities of national and international governance. Others may even accuse him of intended, or unintended deception.  It's true as a child he was exposed to Islamic teaching which according to Koran (as best I understand it) permits lying to infidels without moral culpability. All non-Islamic people are considered as  infidels. So might there be a light-years-away possibility that President Obama could subliminally be deceiving the 'Infidels" influenced by early childhood experience? And not know it, or intend it?
I strongly say "No! The President is no liar - he truly believes in what he is trying to sell, but he's trying to do too much too soon, the same mistake the Bishops of the United Staes made in implementing the reforms of Vatican Council II. See what trouble that too poorly thought-out implementation caused the American Church! And note too, the trouble President Obama's cramming down America's throat his "reforms" are causing in our Country!

The President means well! Mr. Bush meant well! Editor Drew Christiansen in his "Of Many Things" meant well! mean well! Evil spirits don't mean well! Let's get rid of their influence at the left, or the right and let truth prevail! Is all this too simplistic for the more erudite?

14 years 6 months ago

Dear Online Editor,
Once again my name stayed behind on a posted comment, which I now send attached to this note, as a requirement to have one's posting considered. Thank you.  Bruce Snowden

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