"Hold the Frankfurter"
Donohue is not impressed with Obama's secularization of the "faith-based initiative".
Catholic League president Bill Donohue urged Catholics to reject Sen. Barack Obama’s faith-based initiative:
“If a customer walked into a New York deli and said, ‘Let me have a hot dog on a roll—hold the frankfurter’—he’d likely be thrown out. That’s what the public should do to Obama’s faith-based initiative: since he wants to gut the faith from his faith-based programs, he should be told to junk it.
“Any church or religious agency that agrees to take federal money on the condition that it must operate in a secular fashion—in hiring and in disseminating its values—is selling out. If Orthodox Jews running a day care center are not allowed to exclusively hire Orthodox Jews, there is nothing kosher about it. If a Catholic foster care program cannot place Catholic children with Catholic parents, it is doing a disservice to the children. If an evangelical drug rehab program can’t deliver a Christian message to its clients, it may as well close up shop. But that’s what Obama wants—he wants to secularize the religious workplace.
“No wonder Obama said yesterday that ‘I’m not saying that faith-based groups are an alternative to government or secular nonprofits, and I’m not saying that they’re somehow better at lifting people up.’ Indeed, if he really believes this then he might as well withdraw his initiative.
“The whole purpose behind funding faith-based programs is that they are, in fact, superior to secular programs. And the reason they are has everything to do with the inculcation of religious values disseminated by people of faith. No matter, Obama wants to gut the religious values and bar religious agencies from hiring people who share their religion. Hence, his initiative is a fraud.”
Quite frankly, I'm beginning to believe that all "faith-based initiatives" are government intrusions into the private sphere. More importantly, they create a sense of co-dependency upon government on the part of religious organizations for funding and, eventually, their mere existence. "Faith-based initiatives" are a way for the government to co-opt the church (as if James Dobson, Jeremiah Wright. Jesse Jackass, Al Sharpton, the American ass-hat bishops and Pat Robertson-of-a-bitch haven't been trying to do that, already, in their own, special way).
ReplyDeleteI agree that the concept is problematic. It starts with a good intention -- as most gov't programs do -- in this case, a conservative one whereby you acknowledge that churches help people more efficiently than secular do-gooders. But who's to say that will remain true if you start to pump big federal funds into said "faith-based program". Sounds like a way to attract more of the J. Wright ilk. It would make more sense to raise the amount of charitable deductions indivuals can write-off.
ReplyDeleteIf you havent, you might want to read Kuo's book. He notes that there is little evidence that faith based initiatives work better than other agencies. This is mostly an assumption.
ReplyDeleteSteve
Kuo's book always struck me as a real page-turner, you know, on the order of magnitude of Tom Wolfe or Hunter S. Thompson. But hey, I still haven't read Scott McClellan's exciting book. So maybe we'll just leave Kuo to develop his angle on the Bush-obsession meta-narrative over at his ponderous blog.
ReplyDeleteLOL. Interesting way of saying I am not going to read a book that contradicts preconceived ideas. It helps that DiIulio supports Kuo's version of the story. If you read it, he is not a Bush basher, but mostly just a disillusioned idealist.
ReplyDeleteSteve
Steve, you know you have a point about Kuo not being a run-of-the-mill Bush-basher. I think that disillusioned idealists are a dime a dozen, and they should really keep their overly-sensitive selves secure in the protected world of academia and not venture into the rough & tumble world of politics. My "preconceived ideas" are grounded in real life experiences; they've been "pre-disillusioned", sort of in the manner of pre-shrunk Levis.
ReplyDeleteKuo is the guy dreher recently said he would "gay marry" if it weren't for their respective wives.
ReplyDeleteThat's really all i care to know about the guy.
Kathleen, are you f-ing serious??
ReplyDeleteLOL, Kuo an academic? All he has done is politics. He worked for Bill Bennett. Was a speechwriter for Ashcroft and Santorum(?), then went to help run Bush's faith based initiative office. He strikes me much more as someone who is a Christian trying to carry out the Catholic imperative of caring for the poor and sick amongst us. The faith based office was not funded, he got disillusioned and left. Oh, forgot, he worked for Teddy Kennedy, thought he was a fraud and left.
ReplyDeleteWhere did you ever get the idea he was an academic just out of curiosity?
Steve
yeah, a couple of weeks ago. that is how dreher chose to sing kuo's praises. interesting no?
ReplyDelete7/28/08
ReplyDelete"Later, I said goodnight to Julie and the kids and went downtown to meet and have dinner with my Beliefnet colleague, Beltway man of mystery David Kuo. I've thought about this, and I believe I can say confidently that if our wives ever tired of us, I would gay-marry that David Kuo. He had me at "cassoulet." "
Woww.... Actually it was 6/28, but, yeah, here it is.
ReplyDeleteKuo an academic? All he has done is politics.
ReplyDeleteAnd he's had such a great time at it, hasn't he. Yeah, Kuo's a regular success story in the world of politics.
He has recommended that the Christian right make a "fast from politics" as a marketing hook for his book.
His latest post is about how Obama and Dobson are "tempting faith" by the blurring they do between religion and politics. He might as well complain that pigeons and homeless people poop in the park. This is the kind of hand-wringing done by academics and the politically uninitiated, not those trying to make a difference in the real world.
"gay-marry"???? Ewwwww. Very, very weird.
ReplyDeleteNo comment. Thoughts a-churnin', but no comment.