Barack Obama: Religion (and Guns) the Opiate of the Masses
John on April 12, 2008 at 11:12 am
Well it seems Barack has mastered the Clintonian art of being all things to all people. If you go to the “Rural Issues” section of Obama’s website, he has this quote from a recent speech at the top of the page:
“We are at that critical and urgent moment. If Washington continues policies that work against America’s family farmers, our rural communities will fall further behind — and so will America. But if we reject the politics that has shut ordinary folks out, we can create a new story for rural America… The dreams of rural Americans are familiar to all Americans — to make a good living, to raise a healthy and secure family, and to leave our children a future of opportunity. It’s time for real leadership for rural America to extend that American dream. That’s the dream of opportunity that I’ve spent my life fighting for. And that’s what our rural agenda will do.”
— Barack Obama, Speech in Fairfax, IA, October 16, 2007
Sounds like he really understands rural folks and their concerns, right? Now compare it with the following comments at a recent San Francisco fund raiser. Speaking of rural Pennsylvania (where he has an important primary in less than two weeks) he said:
“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them…And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Let’s see him put that on his website. His people were smart enough not to deny the comments since the entire thing is on tape. You can scroll in about two minutes to hear him say it:
What’s disturbing to me isn’t just the condescension he displayed, it’s the stunning hypocrisy. According to his own website wants to “fix our broken immigration system…” and “Create Secure Borders.” Is that “anti-immigrant sentiment” Barack? And over on this page we read “Obama believes that NAFTA and its potential were oversold to the American people. Obama will work with the leaders of Canada and Mexico to fix NAFTA so that it works for American workers.” Wow, that sounds almost “anti-trade.” I don’t know, is Barack trying to explain his own frustration?
What’s even more disturbing is the fact that what he’s offering here is essentially Marxism. The idea that religion and politics are merely emanations of a frustrated proletariat is classic Marx, who famously said “Religion…is the opiate of the masses.” Here, Obama has merely broadened Marx to include guns and border control.
If there is any sense left in the American electorate, this phrase will resonate well beyond the Pennsylvania primary. Here is a man who clearly holds in contempt a great many of his fellow citizens, be they gun owners, religious believers, or people who believe we need to control the border.
I hope Pennsylvania voters will keep his comments in mind when they enter voting booths in little more than a week.
More on this from around the sphere:
First off, Zombie has pictures of the $2,300 a plate event where Obama uttered these lines. What a picture perfect setting for a Marxist bull-session.
Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey: This is why rookies shouldn’t run for President
Allahpundit also nails it here. And posts on Obama’s lame attempt to weasel out of it here.
John at Powerline catches the hypocrisy angle. Could this kill Obama?
SCOTT ADDS (SATURDAY, 4/11/08 AT 9:30 AM)
This morning Mr. Obama tried to explain away his comments but has only made things worse:
“It’s interesting, right? Lately there’s been a typical sort of political fight. Because I said something that everybody knows is true — which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois, who are bitter. They are angry. They feel like they’ve been left behind. They feel like folks aren’t paying attention to what they’re doing here. So I said, ‘Well, you know, when you’re bitter you turn to what you can count on.’ So people, they vote about guns. Or they take comfort from their faith, and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming into this country. Or they get frustrated about, you know, how things have changed. That’s a natural response.”
I guess I missed something somewhere. He claims he SAID that when people are bitter they “turn to what [they] can count on” like faith, family and community, but what he really said was that people “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Perhaps he doesn’t know the difference between “turning to” (as in looking to something for comfort and support) and “clinging to” (as in out of desperation and a refusal to change).
And maybe there are subtle nuances between getting “mad about illegal immigrants who are coming into this country” (as in feeling angry about people who are breaking the law to come here and continue to break the law by being here) -and- “antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment” (as in xenophobia and a hatred of all immigrants, legal or illegal).
I just think he opened his mouth and revealed some of what he REALLY thinks, which is a dangerous thing for a politician to do, especially if he wants to be elected by people whom he secretly disdains.
Update by John @ 11:30AM: AP at HotAir found this first. I think conservatives can judge the outrageousness of Obama’s comments by the fact that, using them as her reference, Hillary is finally able to sound like a real American.
Category: Politics |
I still say Sen. Clinton from New York/Arkansas/Illinois will be president. Obama stepped away from the script, you never say anything about voters except “the American people are smart enough to…”. I love it, though, gaffs and mispeaks and lies and half truths, I love these election years, it’s so much meaningless entertainment.
But the queen of lies in Hillary. She is such a good politician, she would claim she went to the moon if it would get her elected. And McCain, “Now I’m conservative – now I’m not!”. And Obama is the most erudite of them all and in reality the most pragmatic and reasonable.
John, you should invent a board game titled “Electing a President”. It would be like monopoly where you but blocks of time and if your oponent falls on it he has to pay because you nail him with a negative add. There would be jail, fines, misspeaks, debates, evrything. It would sell!
April 12, 2008 @ 4:34 amWhat shocks me is that the media is not covering the real story here – not his elitism and snobbery, but his idea that somehow working class white people in PA are sitting around waiting for the government to fix their lives. Whoa. My pastor is from a small coal mining town in NE PA. In his opinion, Sen. Obama is an idiot.
IMHO, Sen. Obama needs to stick to his script and stop ad-libbing (sp?). He doesn’t do well on his own.
April 12, 2008 @ 7:36 am[...] John at Verum Serum has more on the Obama/Small Town story. Posted by: Michael Spencer @ 1:34 pm | Trackback | Permalink [...]
April 12, 2008 @ 10:34 amLook out, people, I’m bitter and I have a gun. Oh yea, I’m a Christian. Never mind, relax.
April 12, 2008 @ 6:04 pmWe shouldn’t wait for people to fix our lives, but the government really, really needs to make the US a good place to do business again. After reading through
April 13, 2008 @ 7:28 pmThe World Is Flat, I’m pretty convinced that there’s not many jobs they can’t offshore to another country.
[...] http://www.verumserum.com/?p=1818 [...]
April 14, 2008 @ 6:30 pmDid anyone hear the answer Hilary gave to what faith means to her at the Faith Forum? I heard it dissected on the radio a bunch of times yesterday, and it just confused me more each time I heard it. I found it in transcript-form online, but couldn’t find the video.
She would have done better just giving the basic Merriam Webster Dictionary definition of “faith” vs. the mud she decided to spew instead. She didn’t even know what she was saying. You’d think she would have been completely prepared for that question, considering just for a moment the TITLE of the forum she was attending.
At least do your homework lady.
April 15, 2008 @ 9:05 amCindy – and did you hear that she now believes that life begins at conception? I wonder how she squares that with her pro-abortion stance? She said “individuals” should make the decision as to whether or not to abort. OK. So, does she also believe “individuals” should decide when to end other inconvenient life, i.e., the handicapped and elderly?
Do these people even hear what they’re saying?
April 15, 2008 @ 11:13 ambeing from a small rural town I must say I didnt know I went to church and owned a gun because the textile industry moved out. These comments have thrust me into McCain support. I would like to keep my guns and go to church because I believe in Christ. I am to believe that if jobs we plentiful and everyone had a chicken in a pot that we would turn over our guns and stop going to church? Wow, not in touch with all the people around me!!!!!!
April 15, 2008 @ 3:02 pmYes, Carol I read those comments as well. Ridiculous. She makes no sense no matter how you look at it. She is trying to please all people in all matters, the problem is, you can not do this, and lose all credibility doing so.
I’ve decided to call her Slick Milly in honor of her husband’s nickname.
Is this Amy? As in the Amy from a long, long time ago? Have you returned? If so, where have you been?
April 15, 2008 @ 7:38 pmAs always this article took Marx’s Quote completely out of context:
“What’s even more disturbing is the fact that what he’s offering here is essentially Marxism. The idea that religion and politics are merely emanations of a frustrated proletariat is classic Marx, who famously said “Religion…is the opiate of the masses.” Here, Obama has merely broadened Marx to include guns and border control.”
Here is what marx really said:
“Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
April 15, 2008 @ 7:59 pmReligious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
I think we all should be more than just a little bit nervous that Clinton and Obama have managed to get this far… How dumb is our society becoming??
April 15, 2008 @ 8:56 pm“How dumb is our society becoming??”
I’m declaring it a complete tie.
April 16, 2008 @ 2:20 amJohn, what exactly was taken out of context? Marx said that people turned to religion because they don’t understand the real world, and that it is a “protest against suffering.” Obama didn’t call it a protest, but he did use words which indicate that religious faith is an act of economic desperation. How is “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature,…” that different than ” They feel like they’ve been left behind. They feel like folks aren’t paying attention to what they’re doing here. So I said, ‘Well, you know, when you’re bitter you turn to what you can count on.’ So people, they vote about guns. Or they take comfort from their faith, and their family and their community.”? Obviously you can leave out the guns in Marx, but the sentiments expressed really aren’t that different.
April 16, 2008 @ 7:06 pmTo the other John,
You stopped the quotation too early. Here’s the rest:
Personally, I think that sounds very much like the subtext of Barack’s comments, i.e. if only the government would come through for people, they wouldn’t have to “cling to” their illusions.
April 16, 2008 @ 9:28 pm“the opium of the people”
I’m still waiting for mine! :)
April 17, 2008 @ 5:26 amthere are clear signs of a disturbing breakdown in the very foundations of society: signs of alienation, anger and polarization on the part of many of our contemporaries
April 17, 2008 @ 11:48 am