He says that Obama was never offered tenure, and that he passed through U. Chicago without absorbing any of the internal culture there. The post he occupied is apparently a job that is often offered to politicians, to give them a resume boost.

Sounds like the Law School offers a politically correct response to inquiries. (I don’t make these things up)

Statement Regarding Barack Obama

The Law School has received many media requests about Barack Obama, especially about his status as “Senior Lecturer.”

From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each of the Law School’s Senior Lecturers has high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined.

“As to repentance, Obama can speak for himself. I’m quite capable of confronting my own sinfulness.”

Precisely.

In fact, isn’t it revealing that the one entity Obama conspicuously fails to demonstrate any repentance for is himself? He’s sorry for everything everyone else did, this “sort of God” (as Evan Thomas put it, non-ironically) – he’s sorry for the American past, he’s sorry for middle American “clinginess,” he’s sorry that the average American is non-rational, emotional, and occasionally fatuous enough to succumb to the temptation to vote Republican, he’s sorry for the bad writing of his messaging team, he’s sorry for the petty, quotidian motives of others, and on and on – but a divinity like Obama, make a mistake? Commit a sin? Not possible. God does not make mistakes.

The theology of Obamaism would tell quite a story if ever analyzed. (I don’t have the stomach for it.)

I always get the idea that it isn’t so much lying, as believing that it doesn’t matter what he says, his “gift” will make whatever he says palatable. and everyone will believe him. He is certainly unfamiliar with the truth, but he doesn’t worry about it. Weird.

Aptly put and succinct. 😉

“It was David Brooks, to his everlasting discredit, who got goose-bumps from Obama bloviating about Niebuhr, by the way.”

Brooks, Obama, Kierkegaard, Niebuhr, et all make my skin crawl. I’m a simple man, show me the money or the lack thereof.

Indeed, I was going to make a joke about invoking Niebuhr, but I wasn’t clever enough so I just let it stand. It was David Brooks, to his everlasting discredit, who got goose-bumps from Obama bloviating about Niebuhr, by the way.

Niebuhr was an interesting guy. Pretty much a socialist in politics (he was a co-founder of Americans for Democratic Action; also the founder of the liberal journal “Christianty and Society”), he was also a brilliant theologian and a surprisingly astute political theorist. Being a socialist of a very old school, quasi-Fabian sort, he wasn’t prone to utopian reveries, odd as that may sound. He was actually a rock-headed realist, though not a cynic (i.e., he was no Alinskyite, though it is easy to see how someone like Obama could confuse them). Conservatives like Michael Novak, Norman Podhoretz, and Irving Kristol always had a soft-spot for Niebuhr.

The phrase I borrowed from him comes from what I consider his best book, “Moral Man in Immoral Society,” but he wrote plenty of other good books, not least his theological works, peppered with wonderful aphorisms such as this:

“It is not wise for a theologian to know too much about the temperature of hell or the furniture of heaven.”

Inasmuch as Niebuhr was a (very) idiosyncratic Protestant, he and Kierkegaard were alike. Kierkegaard was obviously the superior thinker, and indeed, one of the greatest thinkers of all time. In terms of rank and genius, the two are separate leagues. Kierkegaard is for all time; Niebuhr is nice to consider and dip into from time to time.

That being said though, Niebuhr’s understanding of man and his place in history is quite fascinating. Very briefly, two facts about man are central for Niebuhr:

1) Self-transcendence – we are alone in the world in being able to look to the past and project to the future from the present, taking in infinity and beyond, striving for God, essentially free;

2) Fallenness – the myth of the Fall is true, (though not literally) in the following sense: being free, man is anxious; anxiety makes us self-interested; when we assert ourselves, we do so firstly to secure our interest and alleviate anxiety; continuing in that vein leads to “pride” and then to a deluge of sin; to realize this about ourselves is too shameful, so as a panacea we choose to worship whatever “truth” we set up in order to evade God’s judgement (this is the golden calf).

Niebuhr’s prescription for man, given the way that our self-transcending and fallen nature boxes us into inevitable cycles of selfishness, sin, and idolatry, is not the libertine “do what you will” that has come to typify liberalism, but the opposite: sincere, sustained inward repentance.

I don’t wan to give Obama more credit than he merits, but it’s possible his numerous “apology tours” and his generally apologetic attitude about his own country are based on a simplistic misappropriation of this idea of Niebuhr’s. If so, Obama has clearly forgotten that the prescription was INWARD repentance – the only real repentance there is, after all – and instead has done what’s typical of his kind of activist intellectual: mutilated an idea to fit one’s political agenda.

Niebuhr never did that, and it would be a shame if his good name were to be forever associated with Obama’s (even though Niebuhr, we must admit, probably would have voted for him – he certainly would not have had leg-tingles).

P.S. – Love “President Liar.” I can’t say why it’s so funny, though – perhaps because it doesn’t try to be cute (like NObama and the like) and just assumes that we know who “Liar” refers to. For whatever reason, I burst out laughing when I read that.

Good on ‘ya.