J.R. Dunn has a piece at The American Thinker that is a bit humbling for someone like me, who was in the anybody-but-Mitt camp throughout the primary season, to read. He employs the Occam's Razor methodology to the question of why Romney has surged since the beginning of October: He's just really good at politics because he takes the largest possible view of his objective.
Worth pondering, anyway.
Kool aid going down smoothly, I see. Surely Mitt's Mormon brand of American exceptionalism will settle some stomachs. Yes, he's driven. My Catholicism taught me to take a universal world view that tends to temper my fire and brimstone Americanism. He sure seems to have a master politician's ability to appear to be all things to all. I am reserving judgement.
ReplyDeleteIs there an alternative to this tradition of hubris? Reinhold Niebuhr, the great Protestant theologian of the early Cold War, thought so and he believed another kind of theology might help. Niebuhr offered a post-exceptional view of America in what is still perhaps his most popular book, "The Irony of American History" (1952). After surveying his era's troubled world affairs -- from international communism to nuclear weapons -- Niebuhr turned to a civil religion espoused by Abraham Lincoln. Niebuhr believed that Lincoln's "combination of moral resoluteness about the immediate issues with a religious awareness of another dimension of meaning and judgment must be regarded as almost a perfect model of the difficult but not impossible task of remaining loyal and responsible toward the moral treasures of a free civilization on the one hand while yet having some religious vantage point over the struggle." Niebuhr believed that religion could bring perspective to an exceptionalist view of the nation.
ReplyDeleteMitt Romney is a man of faith and so it seems sensible to ask if his faith might provide a "religious awareness of another dimension." In short, how might Romney's Mormonism matter?
From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/raymond-haberski-jr/mitt-romney-theology-of-american-exceptionalism-_b_1674429.html
Oh your darlin', oh your darlin', oh your darlin' Sarah P. Where have you gone Sarah Palin, Jesus loves us much as He loves you?
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