Reverend Obama passes the "collective" plate

By Norvell Rose

Who could forget how Newsweek editor Evan Thomas practically fell to his knees last summer in adoration of President Obama, declaring on MSNBC: "I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above — above the world, he's sort of God."

How about the musings of the Washington Post "On Faith" column in February 2008: "Is Obama the Messiah? People are asking these days and it's not so hard to understand why: the desperate throngs, the tears, the great awakening of a slumbering demographic."

At about the same time, the tingly-legged Chris Matthews gushed to the New York Observer, "I've never seen anything like this. This is bigger than Kennedy. [Obama] comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament."

Or Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in early 2008 praising Obama as "hope of the entire world" and savior who "can turn out to be the one who can lift America from her fall."

Then there was Democrat strategist Donna Brazile lauding Obama as a "metaphysical force." But not to be outdone, commentator Ezra Klein effused with near-biblical exhortation in The American Prospect, "He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair."

With a flourish of "Second Coming" rhetoric, the queen of all media, Oprah Winfrey, asked a Hollywood-inspired question when stumping for Obama. "Are you the one?" she implored. Then turning to the adoring crowd, "It's a question the entire nation is asking — is he the one? South Carolina, I do believe he's the one." As Rich Lowry noted in a column for National Review, it was a moment "fraught with messianic symbolism."

And of course Michelle Obama contributed to the tent-revival atmosphere of a California campaign rally. Speaking of then candidate Barack, Michelle said her husband understood that before America can solve its problems, Americans have to fix their "broken souls." She went on to claim that her husband's intimate understanding of our souls makes him uniquely qualified to be President. She told the assembled multitude, "I am married to the only person in this race who has a chance to heal this nation." Obama the healer. Obama the redeemer.

While Barack Obama's own opinion of these reverential flights of fancy is debatable, one conclusion is, I would argue, inescapable. For the true-believing zealots — for the evangelical left — Obama is the duly ordained minister of a glorious, revivalist liberal orthodoxy. He is the enlightened one, the long-awaited prophet, illuminating the path to a long-sought promised land.

This robe of religiosity is not refused by Obama. Wearing it, he can claim not to be an ideologue, because he believes he transcends ideology. He can ignore the will of We the People, because his higher calling speaks with a louder voice. With shallow sincerity, he can call for a new spirit of bipartisanship in Washington, while simultaneously launching sharp partisan attacks, because he believes his high-and-mighty convictions render others unworthy of serious consideration.

Devotees of the doctrine are sheep to Obama the shepherd. From him doth all good things flow. He is their light and their protector.

Unbelievers are scorned as heretics, and quite possibly should be stoned to provide a fitting sacrifice on the cold altar of secularism. For if you don't show the new church of the anointed one your love, then you must be an abject creature of hate. Just listen to the fire-and-brimstoners on MSNBC.

Yet, this is an orthodoxy that increasingly requires a blind and unquestioning faith to support it. Strangely, it is dogma made more rigid by the very doubt that should imperil it.

Consider Obama's environmental policies — his vision for a greener planet. How many times have climate change skeptics pointed out the religious fervor with which global warming missionaries proselytize for their all-consuming cause? And given the almost daily revelations of how truly holey is their theory, you'd have to say the whole concept of man-made global warming is increasingly based on faith rather than on fact.

And now, o flock, it's time in Obama's service of humanity for the offering. The Reverend is passing the massive "collective" plate. And it is the Reverend, not the congregant, who will determine the proper level of generosity to the cause. To tithe, o brethren, is not nearly generous enough to support the work of the new church of State.

What about that notion of the separation of church and State? No need, for in the grand orthodoxy of Reverend Obama they are now one and the same.. And this State/church, don't you see, has all of humanity as its needy congregation. We are our brother's and our sister's keeper, and we've got a very, very large family.

As patriots and protectors of the Constitution, we must pray that the all-everything government of the deified Obama does not come to pass. If it does, then the President and possibly a few of his loyal acolytes, will decide how, once collected, the communal riches are to be divided — redistributed — among the members of this global family. It will be Reverend Obama, aided by a handful of his disciples, who will determine and enforce the rites and rituals by which we are absolved of our evil, capitalist transgressions and salvation is achieved.

The fast-approaching, all-consuming collective plate — thus inscribed, "'Tis better to give...and give some more" — is indeed what we're now facing. Collectivism is creed, and in this case, creed is good.

Sure Obama may have tried to be a closet collectivist for a while, but he has now climbed high into the pulpit of centralized social and economic control. His audacious vision of a grand, global collectivist society — the brave new world of wonkish socialism — is the self-absorbed stuff of sermon upon self-righteous sermon.

To serve the ends of others, we at his feet are but tools, and he is the master carpenter. Collectivism, unlike individualism, holds the group as the primary beneficiary and the standard of moral value. Remember the argument that achieving his vision of health care reform was a "moral imperative?"

In the collectivist church of Reverend Obama, the common man is a sacrificial victim, whose true value is his ability to forgo his happiness, willingly or not, for the will of the group. Translate happiness into rights, wealth, property — you get the picture.

The opposite of collectivism is individualism. Individualism declares that each and every man may live his own life for his own happiness, as an end to himself. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" — sound familiar? Politically and economically, the result of such a principle is capitalism endowed by conscience: a social system where the individual does not live by permission of others, but by inalienable right.

Into his State-as-church collective plate, Obama wants us to put our rights, our liberties, our education and job choices, an ever-increasing offering of our money — essentially our future. In his congregation, traditional families yield to anything-goes, ad hoc, feel-good groups. Individual workers kneel before unions. Small business bows down to giant corporations. Hometown main street banks kowtow to international mega-banks. Our country genuflects to the community of nations. The collective plate needs to be filled in order for the mission to be fulfilled.

Paying for our past sins — for our villainous, selfish, greedy pursuit of capitalist dreams — we must now be stripped of our ill-gotten wealth and standing. We are offenders against the superior doctrine of social justice, and in the future we must humbly beseech the State/church for favor and opportunity.

God-given rights? Not any more. Not in the State/church of the almighty Obama. Rights — and wrongs — will be determined by he who Newsweek's Evan Thomas giddily glorified as "standing above the country, above — above the world, he's sort of God."

Remember the definition of idolatry: excessive or blind adoration, reverence or devotion. And yield not to the pressure to offer yourself, your labor, your earnings and your nation into Reverend Obama's ruinous collective plate.

© Norvell Rose