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Dash of Pepper

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Redemption belongs to God
By SHEILAH PEPPER
The Gazette Staff
Back in June, I didn't watch Senator Obama's primary victory speech at the end of his contest with Senator Clinton, but I did pick up some excerpts the next morning on cable news.
Although it received little notice from the news people, one passage fascinated me. He said (adopt soaring, lofty tone), "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."
There are many things an elected politician can do, but slowing the "rise" of the oceans and "healing" the planet seems to step out of the pragmatic world of man and politics and into the realm reserved for God.
That is, unless your politics are your religion.
In a treatise Pope Benedict described this clearly in 2003 when discussing the rise of Marxism in the last century:
" ... ultimately it even appeared as the force through which the Christian teaching of redemption could be transformed into a realistic practical means for liberation - as the force that could bring the Kingdom of God as the kingdom of man. The collapse of realist socialism in the East European states has not quite laid aside all such hopes, and here and there they still subsist, silently awaiting some new form." (One of these forms is the extreen Green Movement and its seduction of the democracies.)
As Sen. Obama's rather empty resume becomes more apparent, it also becomes apparent that his supporters are held in thrall, not by accomplishments, but by Obama's persona. They treat him as an anointed one and, gradually, he began to behave as one. The rhetoric soared higher, the recreated Presidential seal at a speech podium seemed to say that no election was needed, and phrases such as "We are the ones we have been waiting', while vapid in content, took on a Messianic tone.
The excellent European adventure seemed to feed Obama's view of himself as special - for example, the wish, denied by Chancellor Merckel, to appear at the Brandenburg Gate, as had Reagan and Kennedy. But Kennedy and Reagan had records of great accomplishment. I also noted his somewhat easy and presumptive speech in Paris, where the French president provided Obama with a perfect setting to feed his ego.
What Obama offers is a form of collective salvation with the government intervening in every aspect of life. This ranges from state education, starting at pre-school, to socialized health care, to taxing, regulating and handcuffing industry, particularly oil and energy businesses.
Utopia does not exist. America is a work in progress, imperfect but always striving toward perfection, the best nation on this earth. Socialism is now an anachronism, tired and old. It was tried for almost a century in the Soviet Union and it did not work. The credo "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" was fatally flawed. Human abilities differ hugely, but human basic needs are similar. The successful credo, the one we live by in our country reads "From each according to his ability, to each according to his ability."
Once again, Pope Benedict goes to the essence of the matter.
"Whenever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes, not divine, but demonic." Amen.
Copyright©2008SheilahPepper
Last Updated on Friday, 12 June 2009 14:35  

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