Barack Obama’s choice of pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at his presidential inauguration is a good one. Warren, whose book The Purpose Driven Life has inspired millions of Americans, represents American values – and American citizens – far better than the far-left zealots who are frothing at the mouth over Obama’s decision. Is Warren-gate a plot to make middle America fall under Obama’s spell? A final rejection of the mob-rule progressive agenda? An act that finally tells us who and what Barack Obama really values?
One thing is certain: the uber-liberals in the progressive left hate the idea more than I could have possibly imagined a couple of days ago.
Jane Hamsher of the all-but-unreadable FireDogLake says that ""Inclusiveness" does not meaning putting whatever hatemonger you can find onto the program" and goes on to compare Warren to the Grand Wizard of the K.K.K., of all idiotic things.
At the Nation, Sarah Posner one-ups Hamsher, saying:
Warren represents the absolute worst of the Democrats’ religious outreach, a right-winger masquerading as a do-gooder anointed as the arbiter of what it means to be faithful. Obama’s religious outreach was intended, supposedly, to make religious voters more comfortable with him and feel included in the Democratic Party. But that outreach now has come at the expense of other people’s comfort and inclusion, at an event meant to mark a turning point away from divisive politics.
What ever gave Posner and the progressives that an Obama presidency was going to mandate the "inclusion" of all of their alliance of fringe groups and their ultra-liberal agendas? Any American president worthy of the title is going to govern to obtain the most good for the most people while minimizing the undue influence of radical fringe groups at either end of the spectrum.
Posner admits that Obama was almost bound to choose a Christian minister to deliver the invocation. Why? Because that’s the way it’s done in this country, still, despite the left’s best efforts to completely abridge Christianity from public life.
As Posner says, at the core of the left’s hatred of Warren is something he said during California’s campaign to correct the state court’s mis-definition of marriage:
there are about 2 percent of Americans are homosexual, gay, lesbian people. We should not let 2 percent of the population…change a definition of marriage that has been supported by every single culture and every single religion for 5,000 years.
That is correct, both socially and politically, and it has nothing to do with Warren being a homophobe – it’s simple common sense. If 2 percent of Americans decide that it’s appropriate to drive on the left side of the road, there’s no way that their wishes are going to be allowed to become law because the result would be a disaster. Yet the vast majority of Americans are supposed to accept the far left’s redefinition of marriage, the fundamental unit of social cohesiveness?
The names that Warren is being called in the headlines of many major liberal blogs, including AmericaBlog where John Avarosis evidently felt no compunction about slandering Warren as a homophobe on the front page there, are completely out of bounds.
The liberals whose pro-abortion, pro-gay agendas are threatened by the likes of Rick Warren are unabashedly hostile to Warren, Christianity, and Barack Obama’s inevitable and much-needed turn to the center of American demographics. This last represents a betrayal in their mind and is not entirely unjustified. After all, Obama won their votes going away over Hillary Clinton and John McCain and now he pays them back with this, what must seem like the final rejection.
What’s really telling about progressives’ hate-filled diatribes is their complete and utter refusal to admit that they are, when the votes are all counted, some of them more than once, at the left edge of American politics, a small minority of radical voters whose loud, abrasive rhetoric gains them more attention than they deserve.
Anyone who crosses words or deeds with them is a hate-filled bigot, a homophobe, a racist, a mouth-breathing, woman-defiling wife beater. There is no other truth but their own; all opposition must be denied and disgraced because there is no other truth but liberal talking points. Abortion = Good, Gay Marriage = Good, Taxes = Good. No one is allowed to disagree. That’s some inclusiveness, I’ll say.
That’s why we should all relish Barack Obama’s inspirational choice of Rick Warren. For a moment a political leader rose above the din of his militant constituency and chose to embrace the real values of America. He was not my choice for president, but I hope that this is only the first of many such triumphs that Barack Obama will lead us to.