Gunman Assassinates U.S. Congresswoman

[Imran Siddiqui]

I disagree, he seems more cynical to me. What really makes me doubt his religion was his comment on "guns and religion" and a few others that are escaping me at the moment. In the end I don't really care about his religion one bit, but he's certainly not as religious as Reagan or GW Bush.

You've never met a liberal Christian have you? They'd likely agree on the guns and religion comment, especially when it pertains to the Religious Right.

I'd argue he's more religious than John McCain. You can tell it in the way Obama speaks - it is obvious that he's read Niebuhr (and many atheists aren't really reading him).

[DinoDoc]

I'd argue he's more religious than John McCain. You can tell it in the way Obama speaks - it is obvious that he's read Niebuhr (and many atheists aren't really reading him).

Somehow I doubt an anti-communist, pro-nuclear weapon development theologian who's ideology formed the prototype for Neoconservatism had much influence on the thinking of Obama.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Well Obama did name him as his favorite philosopher:

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-02-05/politics/Obama.theologian_1_reinhold-niebuhr-president-obama-pastor?_s=PM:POLITICS

Also (in the article):

The president's political rhetoric reflects some of Niebuhr's world view, says great-nephew Gustav Niebuhr. He says Obama, like his great-uncle, avoids moral absolutes in his speeches: The U.S. is not always right, and its enemies are not always evil.

Niebuhr says he saw this attitude embedded in Obama's speech to the Arab world in Cairo, Egypt, last year. Obama acknowledged U.S. involvement in helping overthrow a democratically elected government in Iran during the 1950s and avoided "clash of civilizations" rhetoric that implied that the U.S. is free of moral taint.

"We can't see ourselves as the ultimate arbiter for what's good and moral," says Gustav Niebuhr, director of the Religion and Society Program at Syracuse University. "Reinhold would say to do that is to claim a perfectionism that doesn't belong to human beings."

When Niebuhr died in 1971, Gustav had just turned 16. But he still remembers the letters and toys his great-uncle sent him.

Gustav Niebuhr says he's gratified but not surprised that Obama would gravitate to his great-uncle.

"Obama is a very deep-thinking person, from what I can tell," Niebuhr said. "He is very attuned to nuance. I think he's found a philosopher that suits his temperament."

Crouter says he can see Niebuhr's pragmatism and moral complexity in Obama's governing style.

In a 2007 interview, Obama explained to David Brooks, a New York Times columnist, what he learns from Niebuhr.

He called Niebuhr his "favorite philosopher," Brooks wrote.

"I take away," Brooks quoted Obama as saying, "the compelling idea that there's serious evil in the world and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief that we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn't use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away ... the sense that we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naive idealism to bitter realism."

[Barnabas]

Submitted without comment:

Perhaps the science of Craniometry should not have been dismissed so easily

[Hauldren Collider]

What Obama is and what Obama says he is are very different things.

[Imran Siddiqui]

And, of course, Niebuhr was a big proponent of the New Deal, the Welfare State, and Civil Rights. It isn't like the neo-Orthodoxy he was a member of is accepted by right wing Protestants.

I mean, heck, Niebuhr was friends with Adlai Stevenson, Lyndon Johnson, and Hubert Humphrey!

[N35t0r]

Perhaps the science of Craniometry should not have been dismissed so easily

Phrenology

[DinoDoc]

I'm just sayin. There seems to be little resemblance between the thinking of Niebuhr and Obama's administration thus far. His contributions to the development of Neoconservatism are one can't be overlooked in this comparison.

[DinoDoc]

And, of course, Niebuhr was a big proponent of the New Deal, the Welfare State, and Civil Rights. It isn't like the neo-Orthodoxy he was a member of is accepted by right wing Protestants.

I mean, heck, Niebuhr was friends with Adlai Stevenson, Lyndon Johnson, and Hubert Humphrey!

I'm not claiming that the guy was a right winger. I'm just saying that the comparison between him and Obama should raise at least raise a few eyebrows.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I think Obama has been quite the practical liberal. Let's not forget that Niebuhr was against the Vietnam war (quite strenuously). And anyone looking at Afghanistan and its escalation can't say that Obama has completely abandoned neoconservatism.

And as for Niebuhr = neoconservatism, that comes under assault from his view that we need to be humble about our power to change things.

From wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Niebuhr

Niebuhr's great foe was idealism. American idealism, he believed, comes in two forms: the idealism of the antiwar noninterventionists, who are embarrassed by power, and the idealism of pro-war imperialists, who disguise power as virtue.

The later sounds like a critique of neoconservatives to me.

[DinoDoc]

And as for Niebuhr = neoconservatism, that comes under assault from his view that we need to be humble about our power to change things.

From your same article:

In 1941, he co-founded the Union for Democratic Action, a group with a strongly militarily interventionist, internationalist foreign policy and a pro-union, liberal domestic policy (This would be the best basis for comparison and I'll be the first to say that I am focusing on foreign policy), and was the group's sole president until its transformation into the Americans for Democratic Action in 1947.

At the outbreak of World War II, the pacifist component of his liberalism was challenged. Niebuhr began to distance himself from the pacifism of his more liberal colleagues and became a staunch advocate for the war. Niebuhr soon left the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a peace-oriented group of theologians and ministers, and became one of their harshest critics. This departure from his peers evolved into a movement known as Christian Realism. Niebuhr is widely considered to have been its primary advocate. (A philosophy which many Neoconservatives trace their thinking back to)

[Wezil]

Perhaps the science of Craniometry should not have been dismissed so easily

I was going to caption it "Spot the crazy guy".

It would have been a trick question of course.

[DaShi]

I'm not claiming that the guy was a right winger. I'm just saying that the comparison between him and Obama should raise at least raise a few eyebrows.

Exactly, anyone making those kinds of comparisons is an obvious loon.

[Imran Siddiqui]

From your same article:

And? One can be pro-union and liberal and still be pragmatic. See, Franklin Roosevelt or Daniel Patrick Moynihan (or heck, Joe Libermann).

[Docfeelgood]

could have just been out of fvcking prozac......