Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Park 51 - 3 -The mosque 2
I don’t see why Obama jumped into this. He defends religious freedom and then refuses to go further and state an opinion about the wisdom of it. All my life I have heard of these polls that show that the American people overwhelmingly support this or that Constitutional right and by similar majorities they oppose some actual implementation of that right. (Classic examples: freedom of speech and either burning the flag or spending money on a campaign.) Surely he knows about that. If he felt he had to do something he could have gotten Bush 41, Clinton, and Bush 43 to issue some statement about it. They are past worrying about votes. Obama isn’t. In fact there is whole branch of government specifically designed to be independent of public passions so that they can handle the maintenance of Constitutional protections. Maybe he was just trying to help the Supreme Court again.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why would he jump into the fray? Good question so here are some possibilities:
ReplyDelete1. He is undisciplined – nope
2. His staff told him to do it – Not a chance
3. His speech writer screwed up and nobody caught it – no way
4. He was pandering to his audience – hummm!
Well, I was being a little too hard on Obama. It is part of his job to remind us about the restraints that are the other side of the coin of liberty. But I still think that getting 41-43 to issue a joint statement would have been more effective and kept the profile lower.
ReplyDeleteI also still believe that supporting someone’s right to do something is different than supporting their actually doing it.