It's Everybody's Bible

This Dobson Accuses Obama of 'Distorting' Bible set of headlines is really one of the sickest flailings yet to emerge from the McCain side of the 2008 Presidential campaign.

In a nutshell, James Dobson, a right wing evangelist who has a huge following and a radio show called Focus on the Family, has said of Obama: "I think he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology," Dobson went on to say: "He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter."

So what did Obama do? He simply raised the very important question about how to interpret the Bible, asking what do we want to take literally and what don’t we. Obama preached tolerance and acceptance of our emerging diversity. He said, "Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers. And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's?"

Obama pointed to passages such as the Sermon on the Mount, and sections of Leviticus that refer to Jewish dietary law and asked questions such as whether we accept the slave-owning laws along with the more relevant laws. It was this attempt by Obama to refer to these different sections that most offended Dobson. Dobson essentially said how dare Obama equate these Old and New Testament portions -- hence his “gutter” comment.

I think it’s critical at this juncture that the Obama camp hit back hard at what is clearly the most obvious vulnerability of Dobson’s attack. Namely, Lou Dobson is being anti-Semetic by refusing to include Old testament theology in what he deems are valid biblical sources.

As most of the Muslim world knows, I, Uncle Sam, am somewhat Jewish (that's part of why I get called the "American Satan"), and so I can assure Mr. Dobson that Jewish dietary laws are neither trivial nor archaic. Whether from that book we call the Tree of Life, also known as the Five Books of Moses, what most would acknowledge is the foundation of the religion we call Christianity, it is absolutely valid to use as examples the Sermon on the Mount and the Hebrew laws of the Kashrut. There is nothing distorted about using not just these two, but any two (or more) biblical passages to learn about what teachings to truly take away from the Bible. Indeed, ancient Talmudic scholars would often debate by sticking a pin through the Bible, and then the Rabbis would discuss all the ways a divine thread links all the verses touched by the pin.

As Jews, we find God himself alive in these simple dietary laws Dobson derides. Indeed, we find Him most alive and exhalted when we carry these laws out. By living God’s law in our daily acts we create heaven on earth.

Mr. Dobson, you can keep telling your followers the lie that all they need to do is believe to be saved. The rest of us will continue our focus on the day-to-day things we can do to make a Godly world a reality here on earth. And I think we’re in increasing agreement that one of those things is to come together to elect Barack Obama President of the United States.

Osama, Obama, what's the diff?

I couldn't have seen it until I saw it but now here it is. They’re going to try to take down Obama by tarring him as a Muslim. Say it enough and it will stick, especially with a scandal-hungry press ready to report every rumor and lie as a “controversy.” Obama’s only hope of survival is to meet the charges head on, exactly as he would have to if the charges were actually true. He must realize, as Kerry was to dim to understand, that it simply doesn’t matter whether a political attack has any basis in truth. TV creates the reality; the truth is whatever is on TV.

It was reported the other day that Barack means 'Blessed' in Arabic, and that Barack's grandpappy was a hard core Muslim. That means in the minds of most Americans he was hanging out fighting whitey with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden's grandpappy. And Barack's middle name is Hussein, and his first name rhymes with Osama, so that’s that. He might as well be wearing a turban and carrying a scimitar.

OK. There's only one way to handle this. Right here, right now, big throwdown. Obama has got to hold a Checkers-style, prime-time 1/2 hour of plain speaking about himself and his God-blessed American-ness. And at the end he's got to cry about how much it hurts him to have anyone cast aspersions about how much he loves this country. He's got to detail everyone in his family's lineage that was Muslim, and tell the heartwarming story of their conversion to God’s real religion, and how converting is part of what a free nation allows its free people to do.

But mainly, he's got to say that we're not in a war against Islam, we're in a struggle for the hearts and minds of a billion Muslims. He's got to say that our leadership, by making this moral struggle a shooting war on terror, has terrorized the Muslim base, which is at it's core actually quite conservative and religious, and apt to be friendly to good American Heartland people. Obama has to compile a list of all the great people who say that we are not at war with Islam and read it to us. He's got to paint a devastating, super-scary and super-detailed picture of what's going to happen if we keep treating this like it is a war--really paint the full-on doomsday scenario. And all the while he does this he must wrap himself in the flag.

He has to explain that we can't militarize our way out of this situation, and that while we will go after specific people who are known to be bad, we have created a global war out of our conflict with a few small and isolated bands of fanatics. It is only a global war because we made it one. And he's got to make it look bad. Really bad.

Then he's got to offer us a way out. Instead, he would say, we will play the long game, using our real strengths: our moral vision, our honesty, our can-do attitude and good old American ingenuity. And we're going to do what half a trillion dollars has been (intrinsically) unable to do: we're going to calm these people down. We're going to get enough of them back on our side that we aren't doomed. How? Well, he'll explain, we're going to try to become as energy independent as is reasonable, we are going to reach out to the international community, we are going to try to work with the world to stabilize this region, we are going to try to figure out what the source of disaffection among the populace at large is such that we can help address their grievances in ways other than having them blow themselves up and us with them. Subtext: I can deal with these people.

So he gives this talk and the whole thing shifts. Imagine the headline: Presidential Candidate Denies US In War on Terror! It would make worldwide news. Can you imagine Obama in the follow up interview: "Look, one crazy guy with a few crazy followers managed to do something very smart and cunning, but the cleverness of the hijackings doesn't prove that entire countries and their populations were behind it. Indeed, prior to the bombings, only 3% of the Muslim populations advocated bombing US soil. Now 56% do! It wasn't the bombing of Americans that made their world hate us. We had their sympathy! It was our idiotic and indiscriminate response. We have to undo some serious damage here, and you are lucky you have me at your disposal to do it."

Then, by not fighting, we win. In summary: if Obama creates a strong enough cognitive dissonance, and makes it utterly clear at the outset that the problem is that we've ignited a world to hate us, and that only a guy with an Islamic inoculation can address the situation, we win. Though not a Muslim, Obama has Muslim antibodies. It's not a liability. He's our secret weapon. If Obama flips his Muslimness thus, in essence saying: “I can get these guys off your back,” then with each subsequent attack he only gains strength.