A Great Speech from President Obama in Tucson - Whoever Wrote It Is a Conservative!

Barack Obama gave a moving, eloquent, and, most importantly, true speech tonight in Tucson, Arizona. Now, don't have a heart attack just because I'm praising the politician I disagree with more often than any other. He could be wrong on every other issue in the world, but that would not make him wrong on this one.

This speech is a powerful rebuke to the left-wing media, activists and politicians who have kicked the hate machine into high gear over the past few days in order to turn a tragic event perpetrated by a madman into an excuse to demonize Sarah Palin and all conservatives and score cheap political points. (Yes, I'm referring to Paul Krugmann and the New York Times. See the previous post.) No, he didn't name them; he didn't have to. It was painfully clear:

You see, when a tragedy like this strikes, it is part of our nature to demand explanations – to try to impose some order on the chaos, and make sense out of that which seems senseless. Already we've seen a national conversation commence, not only about the motivations behind these killings, but about everything from the merits of gun safety laws to the adequacy of our mental health systems. Much of this process, of debating what might be done to prevent such tragedies in the future, is an essential ingredient in our exercise of self-government.

But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.

Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, "when I looked for light, then came darkness." Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.

For the truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped those shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man's mind.

So yes, we must examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.

But what we can't do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.

After all, that's what most of us do when we lose someone in our family – especially if the loss is unexpected. We're shaken from our routines, and forced to look inward. We reflect on the past. Did we spend enough time with an aging parent, we wonder. Did we express our gratitude for all the sacrifices they made for us? Did we tell a spouse just how desperately we loved them, not just once in awhile but every single day?

So sudden loss causes us to look backward – but it also forces us to look forward, to reflect on the present and the future, on the manner in which we live our lives and nurture our relationships with those who are still with us. We may ask ourselves if we've shown enough kindness and generosity and compassion to the people in our lives. Perhaps we question whether we are doing right by our children, or our community, and whether our priorities are in order. We recognize our own mortality, and are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame – but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in bettering the lives of others.

Read it all here.

This was a thoroughly conservative speech. How so?

1. He praised the heroics of the people who risked their lives to take down the gunman, tried to shield their loved ones from the bullets with their bodies and kept Congresswoman Giffords from bleeding to death even as the shots continued. He praised virtue. This is important because it demonstrates an awareness of the reality of good and evil and personal moral responsibility.

2. He said that we cannot know what caused this man to do what he did; sometimes Providence is inscrutable. We don't know why some things happen. Sometimes the presence of evil in the world is the best explanation we have. This was an implicit rejection of the Enlightenment faith in reason as able to solve all problems and prevent all tragedies. It is a tragic, rather than a Utopian, view of life, which is a deeply conservative position.

3. He told people to stop exploiting this event as an excuse to score cheap political points against their opponents and he refrained from descending to that level himself.

This speech will be welcomed by thinking conservatives, although many who are embittered by the partisanship of the last few days will have difficulty being gracious. But if this speech had been given by a conservative it would be hailed as a masterpiece.

On the other hand, this speech poses a real dilemma for the Left. If they criticize it they basically throw Obama in the same bag as Sarah Palin and make themselves look even more extreme than they do now. But if they praise it, they thereby damn themselves. What a dilemma! Well done, Mr. President!

What Real Hate Speech Sounds Like

Given the way the leftist hate machine has flooded the media with a cynical attempt to blame Sarah Palin for the mentally deranged man who shot the Democratic Congresswoman the other day, I thought it might be time to have a reminder of what actual hate sounds like. The Left accuses conservatives of inciting murder and then proceeds to moralize about the need to tone down the rhetoric. They go after Palin and other conservatives in a hypocritical manner only because she is an impediment to their reaching their goals.

But they never seem to find time to criticize this:



If you want incitement to violence, here is the real thing. Does anybody on the Left want to denounce this? Could we have this on TV 24/7 for a few days? Would President Obama care to weigh in? How about MSNBC? No, why not?

Hans Boersma on Violence

In a previous post "Judgment, Force and Violence: Some Crucial Distinctions" I advocated defining Divine Judgment as righteous and good, force in terms of disciplinary, police and just war categories and violence as irrational, out of control and without limits.

In the collection of articles, Stricken by God? Nonviolent Identification and the Victory of Christ, (Fresh Wind, 2007) the recent book by Hans Boersma, Violence, Hospitality and the Cross: Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition (Baker2004) is repeatedly attacked for defending the traditional satisfaction theory of the atonement as part of the doctrine of the atonement necessary for seeing the importance and meaning of the cross of Jesus Christ.

1. Violence versus Judgment: For example, Wayne Northey attacks Boersma for stating: "Put provocatively, God's hospitality in Christ needs an edge of violence to ensure the welcome of all humanity and all creation." (Northey on p. 367 of Stricken, quoting Boersma, Violence, p. 93). The problem here is that Boersma uses the term "violence" to describe God's righteous judgment for which saints in both the Old Testament and the New Testament are said to yearn with all their hearts. If Boersma had used "judgment" instead of "violence" he could have made it harder for the critics to imply that God is mean-tempered, irrational and out of control - i.e. violent.

2. Violence versus Force: Similarly, in the Introduction, Boersma writes: "I draw on what I have come to regard as positive elements in the historic Christian faith and in particular in the Reformed tradition. This comes to the fore in my reevaluation of violence as something that is not inherently negative; in my insistence that boundaries can function in wholesome ways and need at times to be defended." Northey pounces on this and says that Boersma never specifies exactly what kind of state violence is "not inherently negative." Again, if Boersma had distinguished between violence and force, this question would lose much of its force. To defend boundaries in a violent way is surely a different matter than defending them according to limits and rules. Northey and the rest of the authors in Stricken by God? would doubtless remain unsatisfied, but Boersma's position would be immensely strengthened by his not having to defend violence.

Judgment, Force and Violence: Some Crucial Distinctions

If I were to re-write my book, Rethinking Christ and Culture, I would employ some careful distinctions between the concepts of judgment, force and violence. Having seen what people like J. Denny Weaver do with the idea of violence (eg. in his The Nonviolent Atonement) I think that a great deal of mischief arises from the failure to distinguish adequately between the three concepts.

Judgment is properly and primarily applied to God alone, although there is such a thing as a pale imitation of it among humans. The paleness of the imitation is the result of original sin; we may try to judge righteously, but we often fail completely and never get it perfectly right. God, on the other hand, is presented in Scripture as "the righteous Judge" (eg. Ps. 96) who judges in a perfectly eqitable, just and fair manner at all times. God is holy, so he hates sin and God is righteous, so he must punish sin. Therefore: "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who supress the truth by their wickedness" (Rom. 1:18 NIV) There is nothing in the teaching of Jesus or the New Testament as a whole that contradicts this essentially Jewish, Old Testament teaching about the nature of God. The whole concept of human government, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is built, as Oliver O'Donovan points out, on the function of right judgment.

Force is the use of disciplinary, police or military means to make laws effective and stop evil. It can also be used to shape character. Force is different from violence in that it is 1) constrained by law, 2) limited in scope and 3) rationally deployed. Force consists of various grades up to and including lethal force. But force always operates within rationally determined limits; if it exceeds those limits it turns into violence and this is a constant threat. The difference between God's wrath and human force is that God's wrath is always an exact reflection of his perfectly righteous judgment, whereas human force is, at best, an approximation and, at worst, a demonic mockery of God's perfectly righteous judgment. An example of disciplinary force would be parental punishment of children or expulsion from school by the school authorities. An example of police force would be policemen arresting murderers or thieves. An example of military force would be just war, but not total war, crusades or nuclear holocaust.

Violence then can be defined as the human use of force when it is unconstrained by law, unlimited in scope and irrational. Force may turn into violence at any moment; it lives on the boundary between law and lawlessness. Parental discipline can become violent if parents are not self-controlled. In certain situations, large scale use of force almost inevitably morphs into violence, as for example in a large scale war in which irrational powers such as nationalism or racism come into play and take over the whole enterprise. This is one of the most troubling problems with the actualy deployment of just war theory in the real world, yet it is inescapable in the fallen human condition.

In liberal Protestant theology, Divine judgment, divine wrath, human force and violence are all collapsed into one category and rejected as a package. The resulting nonviolent stance then becomes a rational principle by which all ethics and theology are revised. Most of the 16th century Anabaptists did collapse force and violence into each other, (with the exception of people like Hubmaier), but many contemporary Mennonites are going further in collapsing Divine judgment into the same package as well. This is not really an Anabaptist move; it is a liberal Protestant one. Ironically, people like Ted Grimsrud and Denny Weaver often criticize Mennonites who follow the 16th century tradition for being influenced by Evangelical Protestantism, even as they themselves embrace liberal Protestantism and re-interpret their Anabaptist heritage in terms of it. To deny Dvine judgment is to embrace Pelagianism and to reject the whole idea of salvation from the penalty of sin. It is to turn the Gospel into a message that God already accepts; all we have to do is accept our acceptance. We are fine just we are; no repentance is required and ammendment of life is unnecessary so long as we become non-judgmental of others.

To regard God's judgment of sin as violence and to redefine God as nonviolent is to reject the God of the Bible and to fashion an idol in His place. This idol is a mythical symbol of the rational principle of nonviolence, which is derived from modern liberal political philosophy, from which also comes the notion of freedom from constraint and tolerance as the highest goods. To be nonviolent means essentiallly to be tolerant and to exalt individual freedom as the absolute.

This philosophy is incoherent and impossible to implement in the real world, but it destroys the rational morality of the Enlightenment out of which it sprang and the revealed morality of biblical law against which the Enlightenment rebelled. The end result is that when tolerance and individualism break down in the face of a challenge from determined enemies, for example in the event of 9/11, liberals find it difficult to distinguish between responding with force and responding with violence. This explains why civil rights and prohibitions of torture crumbled so quickly in the panic of 9/11. It also explains why Pope Benedict XVI was right in his Regensburg Address to suggest that our dilemma is that certain strains of both Islam and the modern West have cut themselves off from rational traditions of metaphysics which could provide the basis for fruitful dialogue between cultures and have embraced a voluntarism that can lead only to nihilistic violence. As Benedict XVI said, God is rational and His judgments are not violence; the world is governed by the Logos and we humans are created in God's image. Theology and philosophy that fail to recognize these truths are leading us off the cliff of nihilism and are dangerous to the future of world peace.

Western political philosophy and liberal theology are dead ends for the future of world civilization because they teach individualism in politics, relativism in ethics and atheism/idolatry in theology, i.e. a false view of freedom rooted in a false anthropology and a false doctrine of God. Only a revival of Christian metaphysics rooted in revelation has a hope of beginning a dialogue with the rational and religious elements of Islam, which would have the potential to lead to peaceful co-existence on the basis of a shared moral foundation. Crucial to such a metaphysics are fundamental distinctions between judgment, force and violence.