Vox Nova

Wintley Phipps, the president of the US Dream Academy, offers a rendition of Amazing Grace that simply overwhelms the imagination.  It’s unforgettable.

The US Dream Academy is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to help and inspire children whose misfortune is to have family members in prison.

Watch this inspiring video:

In Philadelphia today, Senator Barack Obama delivered what is perhaps the most important political speech on race since Martin Luther King gave his I Have A Dream speech on the Mall in Washington, D.C. 45 years ago.  

Obama’s speech is entitled A More Perfect Union.  Watch it:

Obama’s Minister Committed “Treason” But When My Father Said the Same Thing He Was a Republican Hero

by Frank Schaeffer 

“When Senator Obama’s preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father — Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer — denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.

“Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father’s footsteps) rail against America’s sins from tens of thousands of pulpits.  They tell us that America is complicit in the “murder of the unborn,” has become “Sodom” by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children.  They say, as my dad often did, that we are, “under the judgment of God.”  They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction.  By comparison Obama’s minister’s shouted “controversial” comments were mild.  All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.

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Derrick gained national attention the other day when he responded to a reporters question about why he supported Barack Obama.  The reporter’s original intent was to show Obama’s supporters as dreamy and without substance.  But Derrick confounded the reporter.  Instead of gushing emotion, Derrick elaborated in great detail the respective positions of Obama and Clinton on health care, setting forth why he favored Obama’s plan over Clinton’s.

Now Derrick has posted his own video on YouTube to explain what the presidential election means to him as an immigrant coming from West Africa.  His story is a powerful illustration of what America means to people around the world. 

Since coming to the US, Derrick has become a naturalized American citizen.  His comments are a good reminder of the love and esteem the world holds for this country.  Even with our failings, America is still the “world’s dream.”

Francis August Schaeffer (1912-1984), an American Evangelical Christian theologian, is most famous for his theological writings and the establishment of the L’Abri community in Switzerland.  But in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was a major catalyst that sparked a return to political activism among American Protestant evangelicals and fundamentalists, particularly in relation to the issue of abortion. 

His son, Frank Schaeffer, helped broker an alliance between his father (Francis) and Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and other religious leaders.  This alliance came to be known as the Religious Right. 

Frank has since concluded, however, that these tele-evangelists “stars” were intellectually inferior and theologically sleazy, referring to them archly as “cobelligerents.”

In his book, Crazy for God, Schaeffer concludes that, “We will never find a ‘good’ solution to the question of abortion.”

In an editorial published only yesterday, Schaeffer explains why he is pro-life and pro-Obama.

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Obama had an impressive run last night.  I suspect he’ll be able to capitalize on the momentum factor in the weeks ahead.  It’ll be interesting to watch.  As he said last night: “We’re the one’s we’ve been looking for!” — an old Hopi Indian phrase.  People are beginning to believe he just might be right.  “Yes, we can!”

Maryland and Washington, D.C. are up to bat very soon, as is Virginia (Nov. 12).  The TV spots have been running for days.

Since South Carolina, Hillary appears reluctant to use the traditional Clinton “break the kneecap with a ten pound hammer” style politics.  Perhaps the Clinton team feels they’ve been outed in that department.  Yet that’s her strength — nasty politics.  Hmmmmm!  One wonders. Maybe Obama has already begun to change her?  Where’s that fire breathing dragon?  Has her brand of politics taken a hit?  Is she a victim of her own “politics of fear”?

Pat Buchanan this morning said McCain would make Cheney look like Ghandi!  Rather poignant statement.  McCain has a big ego and temper.  From an advisor’s perspective, I would take that to mean he’d soon become isolated in the White House.  Not good for McCain.  Not good for America.

Obama seems willing and able to exchange ideas and strategies.  To me, that’s everything.  The secret of compromise is that it allows dialogue to enrich the final concrete outcome.  Inability to compromise indicates a detachment, an abstraction, from reality.  Ideological politics reduces everything it touches to ideological engagement.  Problems remain unresolved.  Passions dominate.

Ideological politics is what we’ve been living with since McGovern took over the Democratic party and the Fundamentalists took over the Republican Party beginning with the rise of Newt Gingrich.  Hopefully, the pragmatic center is seeing its own resurrection.  I’d like to see the day when the terms “conservative” and “liberal” have died a peaceful death.  For too long they have been mere slogans overburdened with emotive content. Intrinsically, both terms are meaningless.  Let’s once again address problems pragmatically and do it against the backdrop of a sound vision for America.

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Caroline Kennedy, writing in the New York Times, has endorsed Senator Barack Obama for President.  In an article entitled A President Like My Father, she said:

“I want a president who understands that his responsibility is to articulate a vision and encourage others to achieve it; who holds himself, and those around him, to the highest ethical standards; who appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the world who still believe in the American ideal; and who can lift our spirits, and make us believe again that our country needs every one of us to get involved.

“I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.”

Obama’s campaign calls the American people to rally behind a “change we can believe in.”  But already, he is bringing change to America.  Since announcing his candidacy a year ago, Obama has gently reminded us that there is a better way than what we’ve become accustomed to over these many years.  He urges the American people to a higher destiny, a higher aspiration than self-interest. 

Nearly a half century ago, in speech after speech, Kennedy cried out with a staccato-spoken voice: “I think we can do better.”  He believed we could.  And in thoughtful moments so did we.  Today, Obama echoes that same cry.  He urges us to to the great challenges ahead.  He says: “Yes, we can! Si, se puede!“

On April 16, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. released an open letter written from the city jail in Birmingham, Alabama.  This letter was in response to a public statement issued by eight white Alabama clergymen on April 12, 1963 entitled “A Call for Unity.”  In their statement, they agreed that social injustices were being committed but emphasized that the battle against racial segregation should be fought in the courts and not taken to the streets.

King responded four days later.  He said that without direct action the goal of civil rights could never be achieved.  “Wait“, he argued, has almost always meant “Never.”  He further argued that civil disobedience is justified when a people are confronted by unjust laws.  Indeed, “one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” … “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

On this day, a day which is dedicated to the memory of Dr. King, I have decided to publish his Letter from Birmingham Jail in its entirety.  The text follows after the break:

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Lee Atwater was a Republican political strategist who advised President Ronald Reagan and President George H.W. Bush.  He was the political mentor and a close friend of Karl Rove.  He has been characterized as the “happy hatchet man” and the “Darth Vader” of Republican party campaign politics.  He built his power base by designing many of the techniques that have since become common in American political life, including the design and promulgation of “reputation-destroying rumors.” 

Atwater died in 1991 at the age of forty from a brain tumor.  Shortly before his death, he converted to Catholicism through the assistance of a Jesuit priest, Fr. John Hardon, S.J.  As part of his process of repentance, Atwater released a number of public apologies and wrote letters to individuals whom he hurt throughout his career.

In an article for Life Magazine in February 1991, Atwater wrote:”My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood.  The ’80’s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige.  I know.  I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most.  But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty.  What power wouldn’t I trade for a little more time with my family?  What price wouldn’t I pay for an evening with friends?  It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime.  I don’t know who will lead us through the ’90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.”

It is the corrosive influence of Lee Atwater and his protege Karl Rove that Senator Barack Obama is attempting to efface from America’s political scene.  He has vowed never to use such techniques in his presidential campaign.  Whether he wins or loses this contest, one can hope that he succeeds in inspiring other political aspirants to take the same stance against negative politics.  

The politics of fear is destructive of the common good.  Only a politics that struggles to enhance the dignity of the person, individual freedom, and human solidarity is worthy of the American people.

Recently on NPR Radio’s All Things Considered [Trusted Advisor Recounts Obama's Evolution], David Axelrod, chief strategist for Senator Barack Obama, was asked whether Obama was ‘tough enough’ to win the presidency.   Echoing doubts about Obama’s toughness, the show’s host, Michelle Norris, said: “Success in politics sometimes, in fact often, means having to close your eyes or even hold your nose and do something you might not like to do but have to do if you keep your eye on the ball.”

Axelrod replied: “Well, that’s an interesting question.  Maybe we’ll test the proposition.” … “I believe he [Obama] has the ability to make a very tough case on behalf of the things he cares about, and he’ll fight very hard for them.  You’re asking a different question, though, which is: Does he have the ability to be underhanded, will he pull the trigger on the gratuitous negative shot you often see in politics.  The answer to that is probably no.” 

“I don’t think that [being underhanded] is toughness,” Axelrod said.  “I think that’s something he’s committed not to do.  The question is: What does the country want right now?  Do they want to continue the kind of politics we’ve had that’s led us to the morass we’re in?  Or, do they want someone who can really lift us, bring us together and, as Lincoln said, fulfill the better angels of our nature and move this country forward?  We’ll soon find out the answer to that question.”

David Axelrod’s comments are right on the mark.  

Obama does not have to sell his soul to get ahead in politics.  No one does.  Indeed, the deepest truth of politics is quite the opposite from what is too often presumed to be so.  Politics is not dark and dirty by nature.  It is what we choose to make it.  But only a noble soul can unleash a noble politics.

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Corrupt ideas underlie most problems facing America today.  We are informed and guided by ideas that not only debase the human spirit but corrupt our relations with other persons, nature, and God.  Being so enslaved, spiritual alienation and its effects are destined to strike at our efforts to forge an integral human existence.

The mythology of the self-contained, autonomous individual is one such idea.  This myth shapes much of American culture, including its socioeconomic and even religious life.  But if the truth be told, the notion of the autonomous individual is only a mask that enshrouds an inner emptiness and aloneness.   It is the same mask worn by Citizen Kane whose lust for power denied him the fulfillment he sought.  It is the mask worn by Tom and Daisy in The Great Gatsby.  It is a truth that permeates the paintings of Edward Hopper and the photographs of Robert Frank.  It is the cry of anguish that radiates from the spirituals of the cotton picker, the painful stories of the rural and urban Blues artist, the social voice of 1960s R&B, and  the modern prophet crying out from the wilderness of the street, the poetic artists of Rap and Hip Hop. 

Neither power, nor wealth, nor reputation can free a man from his existential aloneness.  Lurking behind every Horatio Alger story is a human tragedy waiting to unfold.  Every person reels under the weight that disaffection lays on their soul. 

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No one in America, or so it seems, can escape the ubiquitous impact of cynicism and distrust, violence and fear, intemperance and injustice, and the isolation and aloneness that ravages so much of our national life. Statistics on homelessness, substance abuse, youth violence, corruption within the family, and the litany of social and economic inequities have long told this tale but only through numbers.

Yet lurking in the shadows lies the specter of the autonomous individual. Anthropological atomism is embedded in American culture, and it acts as the wellspring of a spiritual alienation that rages unabated like a firestorm across the land. Its alluring dynamic fragments and distorts the nation’s institutions. It corrupts the lives of present and future generations. In every respect, its impact constitutes a serious intellectual, moral, and cultural challenge to an integral America.

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