Tell a liberal that you believe in heaven and you might get laughed at. Tell a liberal that you believe that earth can be made into a heaven and you might get ecstatic cheers of the type found at revival meetings. "I am confident that we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth," Barack Obama told a South Carolina megachurch this weekend. Immanentizing the eschaton, as more intelligent but less savvy conservatives pf the past used to call it, is the worst of the liberal delusions. It is so because any lie, any crime, any murder can be justified in its service. If you really believed you could usher in heaven on Earth, what wouldn't you do to make it happen? The Communists, the Nazis, the Islamic fanatics believed they were making heaven on earth, creating a perfect race of men, and instituting Allah's kingdom in the temporal world, respectively. Understanding this makes it easier to understand the gulags, gas chambers, and beheadings. They rationalized evil means by hoping for glorious ends. Any of this, quite clearly, was not the intent and will not be the effect of Obama's foolish rhetoric. But it's worth noting that once the Democrats finally recognized Americans as a religious people, they did so by introducing the most dangerous aspect of the potent religion/politics mix into the national dialogue.
They can attempt to convince people that they can create a Heaven here on Earth but that it can only happen as long as government taxes for it and runs the scheme. Therefore, it is government that's the religious conduit and they who are the ministers of that faith.
Any legitimate religion that I've ever known says that those who seek Heaven have to do time on the Planet and can only get there through righteous salvation and by passing on to the next unearthly plane.
F#$king lying pandering sacks of elephant dung.
Obama's rhetoric is reminiscent of President Bush's goal of ridding the world of terror and evil.
Beowulf, good point.
I think this is a very prominent strain of American political thought (stemming from Calvinism) and it crops up in all times and places in our history in many specific ideologies. The currently much more dangerous and radical form of it is the neocon/establishment Great Nation model. Barack is certainly a part of this w/ his threats to go nuclear on Iran (a country we should actively seek to engage).
It may simply be part of the human condition and more a reflection of our penchant for combining hubris w/ ambition. Lord knows it appears on the political scene often enough!
I am curious. Where has Bush articulated a goal of "ridding the world of . . . evil?"
"We have seen our vulnerability - and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny - prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder - violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.
We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.
. . .
So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."
