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"There is, of
course, a need for prayer even in times
of joy and peace and prosperity. Perhaps
especially in such times prayer is
needed -- to guard against pride and to
guard against complacency. But rightly
or wrongly, most of us are inclined to
seek out the divine not in the moment
when the Lord makes His face shine upon
us, but in moments when God's grace can
seem farthest away."
So began the meat of President Obama’s
remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast
last Thursday. He mentioned various
things such as Haiti, Martin Luther
King, 9/11, Katrina, tsunamis and other
tragedies, but the actual subject of his
speech was the need for civility. He
quoted John F. Kennedy who said that “civility
is not a sign of weakness."
It seems odd that the president now
finds it important to call for civility,
particularly in government, after his
party spent eight years of continually
belittling, insulting, cussing and
demeaning the last president and those
in the Republican Party. A little
civility would have gone a long way back
then. It also seems somewhat
hypocritical for the president to be
calling for civility when he exhibits so
little of it when anyone disagrees with
him.
Author Mark
Whittington, wrote last week, “One gets
the idea that President Obama does not
actually recognize his own actions as
lacking civility. For him, the call for
civility was not really about him, but
all of those strange people around the
country who actually have the temerity
to oppose him or even get angry at his
proposals… with the Republicans no
longer powerless and with less
powerlessness to come, President Obama
has suddenly found the virtues of
civility in political intercourse. Obama
knows that he is going to have a
Congress next year that is far different
in character and makeup that the one
that exists today.”
Obama went on to mention his favorite
topic, health care reform (government
take over of the medical field). “We may
disagree about the best way to reform
our health care system, but surely we
can agree that no one ought to go broke
when they get sick in the richest nation
on Earth. We can take different
approaches to ending inequality, but
surely we can agree on the need to lift
our children out of ignorance; to lift
our neighbors from poverty.”
This final quote from the president: “It
is this spirit of civility that we are
called to take up when we leave here
today. That's what I'm praying for. I
know in difficult times like these --
when people are frustrated, when pundits
start shouting and politicians start
calling each other names -- it can seem
like a return to civility is not
possible, like the very idea is a relic
of some bygone era. The word itself
seems quaint -- civility.” It is about
as quaint as the word “sanity” when
discussing the current administration
and its penchant for blowing every dime
we can borrow on what is essentially
welfare, while calling it “stimulating
the economy.”
What the president is asking for, if not
demanding, is not civility per se,
but rather silence from a growing number
of vociferous critics that have come to
realize that competent management, not
soaring rhetoric or irresponsible
spending, is what the country needs to
get it out of this deep recession.
Civility has its place and is preferable
to the continual din that has become the
norm in American political discourse;
however, calmly chatting nicely with
ones opponents will not in itself solve
the nation’s economic problems or end
the war with Islamic terrorists bent on
our destruction.
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