The Riddle of Moral Authority

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/the-riddle-of-moral-authority/

by Ross Douthat
August 31, 2010, 2:50 pm

David Zurawik, the Baltimore Sun’s television critic, had one of the more interesting takes on Glenn
Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally:

    … for all the “warnings” and wakeup calls” that Beck issued from the steps of the Lincoln Monument
Saturday, here’s another one: We need to think about the success of Beck’s rally Saturday and ask what
it says about the lack of moral authority in this country today.

    As I watched this spectacle Saturday, I started thinking how much recent American history has been about
the struggle for moral authority since the death of King and Robert Kennedy … That’s what what was so
powerful about November 2008 in Grant Park when Barack Obama took the stage on election night: Millions of
Americans thought they were finally watching someone who brought moral authority to the White House and
the land. I know I did.

    Sadly, millions now feel Obama has since lost it with too many morning-after flip-flops on moral issues,
entertainment TV show appearances, and days on the golf course as the economy struggles.

    We are a saner, more focused and calmer nation when we feel as if we have someone we can look to for moral
authority. Glenn Beck understands that, and that is what makes what happened in Washington Saturday
worth thinking about long and hard.

But perhaps “millions now feel Obama has since lost it” because moral authority and modern political
leadership are mutually incompatible, or very nearly so. The act of governing is inherently polarizing
and inherently compromising, and we simply know too much, in the age of Politico and Drudge and cable news,
to maintain any kind of illusions about politicians once they leave the campaign stage behind and enter
the realm of real decision-making. MLK’s moral authority is unchallenged in part because — unlike

Re: Obama from the Oval Office

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/greenwald/351316

Abe Greenwald - 08.31.2010 - 10:22 PM

Much like the man who gave it, President Obama’s speech on Iraq was many things to many people.  It was a
paean to Americans in uniform, a bone tossed to Bush-nostalgic conservatives, a placeholder for
Afghanistan hawks, a pacifier for the anti-war Left, and, clumsily, an acknowledgment of Americans
worried about the economy.   Much like the man who gave it, the speech was too irresolute to signify anything
other than America’s ambivalence on the world stage. According to Obama, the Iraq War was at once a
mistake and a success. In Afghanistan, we will both fight and leave (as if he has not given a second’s
thought to the damage his confusion on this point has already done).  For all the president’s talk of
“turn[ing] the page,” he is stuck in the extended paradox of his own contradictions.

Not surprisingly, the most revealing part of the speech came in the form of a seemingly negligible aside,
not a strategically inconclusive talking point. Obama said, “In an age without surrender ceremonies,
we must earn victory through the success of our partners and the strength of our own nation.” Reread the
first part of that sentence. What reason is there to think we have passed into an age without surrender
ceremonies? Barack Obama believes this because he assumes that mankind is now so modern and reasonable
that we are outside the vast breadth of history. Nations will never formally go to war again and will not get
caught up in pre-21st-century anachronisms like “victory” and “surrender.” For Barack Obama,
an old-fashioned victory is as quaint as a dual at twenty paces. This unjustified optimism is not a
historically new phenomenon among academics and has invited exploitation by tyrants throughout the
modern age. (We need only look to the post-Cold War gambits of Sloboan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein to
disprove the contention.)

To wit: The single mention of the word “victory” in a speech acknowledging the successful conclusion
of a remarkable American military effort came in a bid to redefine the term as a universalist construct. If
only the world’s bad actors would agree to do the same, this would prove to be a speech for the ages.

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THE CRIMINALIZATION OF BUSINESS

http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/3478/28/

Steyn on People
Tuesday, 31 August 2010

A year or so back, in the lobby of Fox News, I was approached by a gentleman who introduced himself as a member
of Conrad Black’s legal team. That doesn’t narrow it down very much. There’ve been so many of them
over the years: Canadian, American, young, old, rough and ready, bespoke and urbane, incompetent
and . . . well, marginally less incompetent. “Good news,” this one told me. “We’re
really pleased with the way things are going on the Supreme Court appeal.”

“That’s great,” I said, forcing a smile and feeling the way the Indian Foreign Minister must have
felt when President Ahmadinejad told him not to worry because everything would be hunky-dory in two
years’ time when the Twelfth Imam would be showing up. On balance, the Twelfth Imam seemed more likely to
ride to Mahmoud’s rescue than the U.S. Supreme Court to Conrad’s. I’d been in Washington a few days
earlier and various legal “experts” had derided Black’s SCOTUS appeal as a pathetic but
characteristically self-aggrandizing last roll of the dice that was bound to come up snake eyes.

The federal justice system is a bit like one of those unmanned drones President Obama is so fond of using on
the unfortunate villagers of Waziristan. Once it’s locked on to you and your coordinates are in the
system, it’s hard to get it called off. Three years ago, during his trial in Chicago, I suggested to the
defendant he’d be better off saving his gazillions in legal fees and instead climbing under the tarp in
the bed of my truck and letting me drive him over the minimally enforced Pittsburg-La Patrie border
crossing to Quebec and thence by fishing boat to a remote landing strip on Miquelon where a waiting plane
could spirit him somewhere beyond the reach of the U.S. Attorney. Estimated cost: about a thousandth of
what he’d spent on lawyers to date. P’shaw, scoffed Conrad, or ejaculations to that effect. He was not
a fugitive but an innocent man, and eventually he would be vindicated by the justice system of this great republic.

This kind of talk persuaded his American friends that Conrad was out of his tree. Guilt? Innocence? What
sort of nut subscribed to such outmoded absolutisms? If Black had just cut a deal, sighed Richard Breeden,

Mormons, Evangelicals and Glenn BeckGlenn

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/mormons-evangelicals-and-glenn-beck/

by Ross Douthat
August 30, 2010, 5:02 pm

I enjoyed Dave Weigel’s report from Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally, no doubt because it
dovetailed with my own take on the proceedings. This passage, in particular, neatly captures what I was
trying to get at when I described the rally as an exercise in “identity politics without the politics”:

    The Democrats who pre-butted Beck’s rally by predicting an overtly political hateananny were played
for suckers. They didn’t pay attention to Beck’s “Founder Fridays” episodes on Fox, his
high-selling speaking tour, or his schmaltzy children’s book The Christmas Sweater. It’s not his
blackboard that makes him popular. It’s the total package he sells: membership in a corny, righteous,
Mormonism-approved-by-John Hagee cultural family.

Weigel’s nod to Beck’s Mormonism raises an interesting secondary point about the weekend’s
events. Watching the “Restoring Honor” rally, Reihan Salam tweeted: “Who else thinks Beck is more
of a tent revivalist than a political pitchman, and that his ultimate goal is to win souls for the L.D.S.
Church?” I don’t know if the Fox News host actually has any soul-winning ambitions. But you could, if
you were so inclined, regard him as a kind of ecumenical outreach coordinator, working to burnish
Mormonism’s image among conservative evangelicals.

Latter Day Saints and evangelical Christians arguably share enough affinities to belong in the same
“cultural family,” as Weigel puts it. But you’re more likely to find them in competition, from the
streets of American suburbia to the mission fields of the developing world to the 2008 election’s great
Mike Huckabee-Mitt Romney throwdown. It’s a case of theological differences trumping cultural
commonalities: The two faiths occupy opposite sides of a theological chasm that makes the gulf between
Catholics and Protestants look narrow by comparison, and many evangelicals bristle with hostility for
what they regard as Mormonism’s cultish pseudo-Christianity.

Mr. Beck Goes to Washington

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/opinion/30douthat.html

By ROSS DOUTHAT
Published: August 29, 2010

Entering this weekend, I was convinced that Glenn Beck’s star was about to go into eclipse.

Just as Michael Moore, amid Democratic disarray, became the unlikely face of liberal opposition to George
W. Bush, the mercurial, weepy, demagogic Beck has spent the last 18 months filling the void left by the
institutional collapse of the Republican Party. And just as Moore’s influence diminished as the
Democrats came roaring back, it seemed plausible that Beck would matter less and less as the midterms and
then the 2012 election re-empowered actual Republican politicians.

But after spending my Saturday at Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally on the Washington Mall, I’m
beginning to think that I underestimated the man.

The Fox News host had promised that the rally, billed as a celebration of American values, would be an
explicitly apolitical event. And so it came to pass: save for an occasional “Don’t Tread On Me,”
banner, the crowded Mall was nearly free of political signs and T-shirt slogans, and there was barely a
whisper of the crusade against liberalism that consumes most of Beck’s on-air hours.

Instead, Beck served up something considerably stranger. This was a tent revival crossed with a pep rally
intertwined with a history lecture married to a U.S.O. telethon — and that was just in the first hour.

There was piety — endless piety, as speaker after speaker demanded that Americans rededicate
themselves to God. There was patriotism: fund- raising for children of slain Special Forces vets, paeans
to military heroism (delivered by Sarah Palin, among others), encomiums to the founding fathers. There
was an awards ceremony on the theme of “Faith, Hope and Charity,” in which community-service prizes
were handed out to a black minister, a Mormon businessman and the St. Louis Cardinals’ Albert Pujols.
And since this was (as you may have heard) the anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech, there was a

Re: Mormons, Evangelicals and Glenn BeckGlenn

Is it just me or is anyone else getting the sense that lacking any real 
substantive complaints about Beck and his appeal, his opponents, or those who 
are uncomfortable with his style, are resorting to pitting different religious 
camps/doctrines against each other?

I've heard more about Beck's mormonism in the last week or so than in the 
previous couple years.  I'm not saying I never heard about it, but it seemed 
more of a sidenote.  Now it appears that with the apparent success of his rally 
people are emphasizing it in order to portray him as a wide -eyed zealot, and/or 
in an attempt to drive a wedge between him and evangelicals who make up the 
majority of the religious right.

Mike F. 

----- Original Message ----
From: Peter Chattaway <petert <at> interchange.ubc.ca>
To: Daniel Amos off-topic listserver <dadl-ot <at> thehood.us>
Sent: Wed, September 1, 2010 1:48:43 AM
Subject: [DADL-OT] Mormons, Evangelicals and Glenn BeckGlenn

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/mormons-evangelicals-and-glenn-beck/

by Ross Douthat
August 30, 2010, 5:02 pm

I enjoyed Dave Weigel’s report from Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally, no 
doubt because it dovetailed with my own take on the proceedings. This passage, 
in particular, neatly captures what I was trying to get at when I described the 
rally as an exercise in “identity politics without the politics”:

Re: Mormons, Evangelicals and Glenn BeckGlenn

On Sep 1, 2010, at 6:39 AM, Mike Findlay wrote:
>   Now it appears that with the apparent success of his rally
> people are emphasizing it in order to portray him as a wide -eyed  
> zealot, and/or
> in an attempt to drive a wedge between him and evangelicals who make  
> up the
> majority of the religious right.

That's the way I see it.  Although I don't see this coming from the  
left, so much as coming from that portion of the right that is  
uncomfortable with Beck.

regards,
-Lance

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Re: Mormons, Evangelicals and Glenn BeckGlenn

On Wed, 1 Sep 2010, Mike Findlay wrote:
> I've heard more about Beck's mormonism in the last week or so than in 
> the previous couple years.�

Maybe that's because Beck just led a massive rally in favour of religious 
revival -- one that many evangelicals seemed to be just ducky with.

> I'm not saying I never heard about it, but it seemed more of a 
> sidenote.  Now it appears that with the apparent success of his rally 
> people are emphasizing it in order to portray him as a wide -eyed 
> zealot, and/or in an attempt to drive a wedge between him and 
> evangelicals who make up the majority of the religious right.

I'm generally in favour of anything that would encourage Christians to 
rethink their adherence to civil religion.

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Re: Mormons, Evangelicals and Glenn BeckGlenn

That's pretty accurate.  The left has more than enough reasons to hate him,
they don't need his Mormonism...

-----Original Message-----
From: dadl-ot-bounces@...
[mailto:dadl-ot-bounces@...] On
Behalf Of Lance McLain
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2010 6:33 AM
To: DADL (off topic)
Subject: Re: [DADL-OT] Mormons, Evangelicals and Glenn BeckGlenn

On Sep 1, 2010, at 6:39 AM, Mike Findlay wrote:
>   Now it appears that with the apparent success of his rally
> people are emphasizing it in order to portray him as a wide -eyed  
> zealot, and/or
> in an attempt to drive a wedge between him and evangelicals who make  
> up the
> majority of the religious right.

That's the way I see it.  Although I don't see this coming from the  
left, so much as coming from that portion of the right that is  
uncomfortable with Beck.

regards,
-Lance

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dadl-ot mailing list
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Re: Mormons, Evangelicals and Glenn BeckGlenn

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