Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Separation of Church and State? And What Was That About McCain??

Today Senator Obama gave a speech on faith. Anyone who knows anything about Obama knows that faith has been a central issue in life, he has highlighted his struggles with faith in both of his books The Audacity of Hope and Dreams of My Father. SO his proposal today to expand President Bush's program of awarding Federal grants to faith-based groups, shouldn't have come as a surprise. But it did.

In his speech Obama said that he believes "deeply" in the separation of Church and State, but the funding needs to be made available for faith-based groups doing charitable, secular work- such as soup kitchens, reforming ex-offenders and the rebuilding of New Orleans.

“I believe that change comes not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up, and few are closer to the people than our churches, our synagogues, our temples and our mosques,” Obama said after touring the Eastside Community Ministry in Ohio. “That’s why Washington needs to draw on them. The fact is, the challenges we face today … are simply too big for government to solve alone.”

Make of it as you wish. My personal opinion on the matter is that all of those charitable works that Obama wants religious organizations to do, should be taken care of by the government. Or at least make the program fair, why not expand the federal grants to non-faith based charitable groups? Or better yet to any group that does charitable work?? There have been legal questions to the way Bush implemented the faith-based programs, that's something Obama should take into serious consideration because not only has he pissed of the left with his vote on the FISA bill but for him to propose an enhanced relationship to faith-based groups is "apprehensive" for a good portion of Democrats.


Next up, General Wesley Clark made some um..comments on The Face of The Nation, about McCain not being able to tout his POW and military record as Executive experience necessary to becoming President. Whether or not he was led into the comments by Bob Scheiffer is arguable, but to the substance of what he has said and has been saying for the past couple of months, is something that we should be talking about. People automatically see the Republicans as the "national security" party which is ironic since 9/11 happened when Bush was 22% into his first term and yet they've turned that against the Democrats saying that they would put the country at risk. Regardless, I would like your thoughts on this and the issue of faith-based organizations.
For any of you who would like to see Gen Clark's comments I have embedded the video.

4 comments:

supreem said...

i was thinking that the government should run such programs, rather than pushing it off onto faith-based organizations. I mean, aren't we supposed to be guaranteed security by our government... Yet, especially being a michiganite, this guarantee falls out of mouths of the dead...
I think that if federal funding is given to faith-based organizations than it has to be given to all the organizations rather than a select few.
On the issue of separation of church and state... well that wall of separation is more like a net fence... both sides leak out onto the other through the holes.

Artistic Logic said...

i agree with ^ whitefawn87...separation of church and state is usually just a motto but i really think the two are practically inseperable...hmm i hope im making sense...
also the video for some reason is not showing up on my computer... is it just me?

Snake Charmer said...

You guys are right the separation aspect has just become a motto, which sucks. But the video should work, it just worked for me

controlled chaos said...

i haven't watched the video yet, but i will be.
Hmm personally i don't quite see the big deal in giving faith based charities money. If they are doing good work with it, why not?
Maybe if they were discriminating between the charities, then yeahh. I mean they are discriminating among charities by giving faith based ones only, and i'm sure certain discrimination probably might/would occur between the faith based charities. I agree that they should extend that generosity to all charities, but maybe there's an honest good reason why it is the way it is.
And i think the whole separation between church and state is more than just a motto. It does exist to a certain extent, not as much as it should, but it does exist. And you can never have complete separation, i don't think. unless maybe if the country was made up of athiests only. But i'm grateful for whatever separation does exist.