We need an extraordinary savior

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Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 16
Q. Why must he be truly human
and truly righteous?

A. God’s justice demands
that human nature, which has sinned,
must pay for its sin;1
but a sinner could never pay for others.2

Note: mouse over footnotes for Scripture references (does not work in IE 6).

This is the keystone of the dilemma: no one who is not truly and fully human, fully participating in human nature and human life, could possibly serve as the mediator we need and pay the penalty for human sin—it had to be one of us; what human beings had put wrong, another human being must put right. At the same time, no one who participated in human sinfulness, no one who was himself or herself guilty of sin, would have the ability to pay that price. “Pretty good” isn’t good enough for the salvation we need; not even the best human being we’ve ever known or heard of is up to the task. No one less than a completely perfect human being could do it.

Q & A 17
Q. Why must he also be true God?

A. So that,
by the power of his divinity,
he might bear the weight of God’s anger in his humanity
and earn for us
and restore to us
righteousness and life.1

Logically, then, we need a savior who is both fully human and fully God, since only God can be perfect enough to satisfy his own demands. And yet, there’s more to it than that. Only God could bear the weight of what had to be done; only God could endure bearing the near-infinite guilt of all human sin and suffering. Only God could lay down a life of infinite worth, in a deliberate choice of infinite love, as an act of infinite grace, to wash away that near-infinite guilt.

A benefit to the Obama victory I hadn’t considered

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If you’re familiar with the history of Hawaii, I’d think you’d likely agree that the annexation of the islands wasn’t exactly America’s finest hour. On a rational level, one could debate whether Hawaiians are better off as a part of the USA than they would be as an independent nation, but national pride and the sense of national identity doesn’t operate on a rational level, or at least not only so; there’s still a lot of resentment among many Hawaiians that the US didn’t play fair back in the 1890s, and many who would rather have had their independence back in 1959 than statehood. Of course, tourism is a major part of the Hawaiian economy, and tourist economies tend to generate a lot of resentment of the tourists anyway, and those two things no doubt work to reinforce each other.

Apparently, though, that’s being mitigated somewhat by Barack Obama’s ascension to the presidency, as having a Hawaiian in the White House—even if he hasn’t lived there full-time in many years—has created a lot of pride. My in-laws just returned from a trip, and one of the points that really struck them was how every place President Obama lived, went to school, etc. was pointed out to them; from the comments people made, it sounds like his election has given many in his home state a new sense of ownership in America, a new sense of being Americans as well as Hawaiians. That can only be a good thing. I tend to think the US government ought to offer Hawaii the chance to regain its independence if the Hawaiian people want it—no doubt the feds would insist on retaining military installations, but one imagines a deal could be worked out, if a constitutional means for such a plebiscite could be found—but given the unlikelihood of such an act, it is well that Hawaiians at least have more reason to feel like they belong to the country of which they are legally a part.

So much for the post-racial presidency

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From America’s most accurate pollster, Scott Rasmussen:

Just 60% of U.S. voters now say that American society is generally fair and decent, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

That’s down nine points since late August and the lowest measure since President Obama took office in January, fueled in large part by growing unhappiness among African-American voters.

Twenty-seven percent (27%) of all voters say U.S. society is basically unfair and discriminatory, up six points from late August and the highest level measured since December.

Only 14% of African-Americans now feel society is fair and decent. That number has dropped 41 points from 55% a month after Obama took office. Sixty-six percent (66%) of black voters think society is unfair and discriminatory, up 26 points since early February.

The majority of white voters (65%) say society is fair and decent. Seventy-two percent (72%) of all other voters agree.

John Hinderaker comments,

It’s interesting that Latinos and Asians evidently have a higher opinion of the decency of American society than whites. But the main point here, obviously, is the dramatic shift among African-Americans. What could have caused it?

The only possible answer is that many Americans have opposed President Obama’s policies. But why would that cause African-Americans to think that our society is “discriminatory” rather than “decent”? No mystery there: in a well-coordinated campaign, the Democratic Party has relentlessly portrayed all disagreement with the Obama administration’s policies as “racist.” That contemptible and divisive tactic had seemed to produce no results, but we now see that it had one consequence: alienating African-Americans from their country.

Some “post-racial President.”

As I noted a week or so ago, drawing on a post by Cornell law professor William Jacobson, and as I touched on again a few days ago, using the accusation of racism to demonize anyone who dares disagree with the President’s agenda is a toxic tactic that will only sicken this nation. I think Rasmussen’s polling is picking up the first symptoms of that illness.

On abortion and the political divide

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I was thinking this morning about one of the odder facts of recent American political history: the flip-flop in positions on abortion between the parties. Up into the ’60s, the Democratic Party was firmly pro-life, as hard as that may be to believe now. In large part, I imagine, that was due to the fact that Catholics were as firmly in the Democratic camp as blacks are now, and the Catholic Church has always been strongly pro-life—in fact (here’s another thing that sounds bizarre now), when Roe v. Wade was handed down in 1973, the decision was applauded by the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention(!) on grounds of religious freedom. Abortion was seen as a Catholic issue; the SBC interpreted Roe as a victory for Protestants over Catholics, and thus (by their anti-Catholic logic) as a freeing of the law from Catholic influence. Beyond that, though, it was generally understood that the logic of liberalism and its emphasis on social justice meant defending the rights of the unborn.

Within a very short time, though, that all changed, and the pro-life movement found itself entrenched within the Republican Party instead. Why? Well, part of that is probably the rise of the Catholic Right—noted traditional Catholic William F. Buckley launched National Review in 1955, and though not an overtly Catholic magazine, it’s always had a definite Catholic character to it—but the shift came nearly two decades later; at most, the rise of the Catholic Right gave Catholics who left the Democratic Party someplace to go. It doesn’t explain why they left, nor why many non-Catholics went with them. Take the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, who as a Lutheran pastor in NYC was a leading intellectual light on the Left in the ’60s, involved in the civil rights movement and an intimate of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; how is it that by the ’80s, he was one of the most influential thinkers and leaders in this country on the Right?

The answer is that after Roe, the parties reconfigured themselves. As Princeton’s Robert P. George tells the story,

Neuhaus opposed abortion for the same reasons he had fought for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. At the root of his thinking was the conviction that human beings, as creatures fashioned in the image and likeness of God, possess a profound, inherent, and equal dignity. This dignity must be respected by all and protected by law. That, so far as Neuhaus was concerned, was not only a biblical mandate but also the bedrock principle of the American constitutional order. Respect for the dignity of human beings meant, among other things, not subjecting them to a system of racial oppression; not wasting their lives in futile wars; not slaughtering them in the womb.

It is important to remember that in those days it was not yet clear whether support for “abortion rights” would be a litmus test for standing as a “liberal.” After all, the early movement for abortion included many conservatives, such as James J. Kilpatrick, who viewed abortion not only as a solution for the private difficulties of a “girl in trouble,” but also as a way of dealing with the public problem of impoverished (and often unmarried) women giving birth to children who would increase welfare costs to taxpayers.

At the same time, more than a few notable liberals were outspokenly pro-life. In the early 1970s, Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy, for example, replied to constituents’ inquiries about his position on abortion by saying that it was a form of “violence” incompatible with his vision of an America generous enough to care for and protect all its children, born and unborn. Some of the most eloquent and passionate pro-life speeches of the time were given by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. In condemning abortion, Jackson never failed to note that he himself was born to an unwed mother who would likely have been tempted to abort him had abortion been legal and easily available at the time.

The liberal argument against abortion was straightforward and powerful. “We liberals believe in the inherent and equal dignity of every member of the human family. We believe that the role of government is to protect all members of the community against brutality and oppression, especially the weakest and most vulnerable. We do not believe in solving personal or social problems by means of violence. We seek a fairer, nobler, more humane way. The personal and social problems created by unwanted pregnancy should not be solved by offering women the ‘choice’ of destroying their children in utero; rather, as a society we should reach out in love and compassion to mother and child alike.”

So it was that Pastor Neuhaus and many like him saw no contradiction between their commitment to liberalism and their devotion to the pro-life cause. On the contrary, they understood their pro-life convictions to be part and parcel of what it meant to be a liberal. They were “for the little guy”—and the unborn child was “the littlest guy of all.”

It seems strange to think that some of the justices who crafted Roe and its successor decision, Doe v. Bolton, were considered conservatives and considered themselves to be acting on conservative principles, but it’s the truth. The decision, however, galvanized reactions, as all major decisions do, producing shifts in the political landscape:

By 1980, when Ronald Reagan (who as governor of California in the 1960s had signed an abortion liberalization bill) sought the presidency as a staunchly pro-life conservative and Edward Kennedy, having switched sides on abortion, challenged the wishy-washy President Jimmy Carter in the Democratic primaries as a doctrinaire “abortion rights” liberal, things had pretty much sorted themselves out. “Pro-choice” conservatives were gradually becoming rarer, and “pro-life” liberals were nearly an endangered species.

This, combined with the movement to re-ideologize American politics that began in earnest in 1968, is probably the most important fact in creating the political landscape as we know it.

One further thought: what of the Rev. Dr. King? He was a man who knew his history, who knew that part of the drive behind Planned Parenthood and the promotion of legalized abortion was the eugenicist impulses of white racists like Margaret Sanger who believed that “Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated”; he was also, inarguably, a man of great moral courage. He’s generally thought of now as a man of the Left, and certainly had moved in that direction in a number of ways in the last few years of his life—but would he have followed the Left’s migration on the abortion issue, helping to realize Sanger’s vision of a self-inflicted black genocide? I could be wrong—I could always be wrong—but I don’t think so. Whether he would have shifted rightward with his friend the Rev. (and later Fr.) Neuhaus on economic issues is an imponderable, but I believe the man who stood so powerfully for the civil rights of people with dark skin would have stayed with Fr. Neuhaus in standing powerfully for the civil rights of the unborn. It may well be that the greatest loser in the Rev. Dr. King’s assassination was the pro-life movement then still unborn.

Speaking of conservative idolatry

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here’s an example that’s every bit as sickening, in a different but equally serious way, as the Obamadolatry we’ve been seeing: the “Conservative Bible Project.” What an astonishing fusion of conservative Bibliolatry with conservative patriolatry . . . just look at this:

As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:

1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias . . .

4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop; defective translations use the word “comrade” three times as often as “volunteer”; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as “word”, “peace”, and “miracle”. . . .

7. Express Free Market Parables: explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story . . .

10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”

Several things are clear at this point. In the first place, these people clearly know little or nothing of what they would need to know to produce a useful translation of the Bible—just enough to be dangerous, at best. (I’ll duel any of these fools—and I use the term advisedly, in its full biblical sense—over the authenticity of John 7:53-8:11, the story of the woman caught in adultery; there is no good reason to call it inauthentic, though on my judgment, it was probably originally a part of the gospel of Luke.) In the second place, their work is—deliberately—every bit as agenda-driven as the “liberal” work they condemn (much of which isn’t liberal at all).

And in the third place, their professed interest in the Bible is a sham and a delusion. They may well believe it to be sincere—they may well be self-deluded—but it’s a sham and a delusion nonetheless. Their whole approach demonstrates that they only care about the Bible as a tool to be used for their purposes; and that’s about as unbiblical an approach as there is. It’s also, I confess, an approach which I find completely intolerable. As I wrote recently,

If we have indeed been given birth through God’s word of truth, then to know who we are and how we should live, we need to under-stand that word of truth; which is to say, we need to stand under it, to place ourselves in position to receive and accept it. We must be quick to listen and slow to speak; we must receive and absorb the word of God, chew on it and swallow it and let it change us, rather than spitting it out whenever we don’t care for the taste.

Too often, however, we reverse this—we’re slow to listen and quick to speak. Too often we see ourselves not as the receiver but as the judge, standing over the word of truth to critique it. There are, for instance, those who feel they have the right to disregard or reject the parts of Scripture that say things they don’t like; but really, you can’t do that without rejecting all of Scripture, because the Bible itself won’t let you do that. Once you start doing that, you have rejected the word of God as the word of truth, and have instead set it up as something to be used when convenient to support what you already believe, or would like to believe.

I suspect from their comments that the folks doing this “conservative Bible” would assert that their project is necessary because liberals do this; but while I agree that liberals very often do, the answer is not for conservatives to do the same! That only worsens the problem, it doesn’t help it. This sort of exegetical obscenity is intolerable in the service of any agenda. The Bible isn’t “conservative” or “liberal” in the sense that it’s about any human agenda, for any person or group of people; the Bible is about God’s agenda, and his agenda alone, to which we’re called to submit ourselves. To do otherwise isn’t to “translate” the Bible but to distort and deform it.

One wonders why these fools can’t get this. Rod Dreher does, calling the project “insane hubris”; so does Ed Morrissey:

However, if one believes the Bible to be the Word of God written for His purposes, which I do, then the idea of recalibrating the language to suit partisan political purposes in this age is pretty offensive—just as offensive as they see the “liberal bias” in existing translations. If they question the authenticity of the current translations, then the only legitimate process would be to work from the original sources and retranslate. And not just retranslate with political biases in mind, but to retranslate using proper linguistic processes and correct terminology.

The challenge of Christian believers is to adhere to the Word of God, not to bend the Word of God to our preferred ideology. Doing the former requires discipline and a clear understanding of the the Bible. Doing the latter makes God subservient to an ideology, rather than the other way around.

It can’t be that difficult to understand that replacing liberal bias with conservative bias doesn’t make for better Bible translation, doesn’t it? Is “two wrongs don’t make a right” really that hard a concept? For my part, I’m with the Anchoress (whose post is a must-read) on this one: This is where I get off the boat.

On partial-birth abortion

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No, it isn’t all Doug Hagler all the time around here (though I should probably declare this “Doug Hagler Week,” and send him a thank-you card for giving me so much to post about), but he did say something in his post on George W. Bush that I think requires a response. To wit, here was the first point he adduced in President Bush’s favor:

Bush banned what is often erroneously called partial-birth abortion, or more accurately late-term abortion. I’m not sure what the moral argument in favor of late-term abortion would be.

Now, there are several things that need to be said here. First, I do agree completely with the second sentence. Second, Aric Clark tried to counter that sentence by misrepresenting late-term abortion (the abortion industry is actually woefully under-regulated, and notorious for fighting any regulation on proclaimed ideological grounds). And third, none of that is actually germain to the point, because Doug’s first sentence here is almost completely wrong. On a technical level, President Bush didn’t ban partial-birth abortion, Congress did, though under his leadership. On a semantic level, the term “partial-birth abortion” is not in fact erroneous. And on the level of content, “partial-birth abortion” does not mean “late-term abortion,” it means something very particular.

For those who are pro-life and squeamish, you might not want to read further, especially if you already know the score on partial-birth abortion. If you’re pro-choice and squeamish, I would suggest that you do read on, so that you understand what it is you’re defending. And if you’re pro-choice and not bothered by the details, then may God soften your heart.

Partial-birth abortion is a particular procedure, technically known as intact dilation and extraction (as well as by other, similar terms) and often referred to as D&X. The Free Dictionary describes the procedure this way:

According to the American Medical Association, this procedure has four main elements.[8] First, the cervix is dilated. Second, the fetus is positioned for a footling breech. Third, the fetus is extracted except for the head. Fourth, the brain of the fetus is evacuated so that a dead but otherwise intact fetus is delivered via the vagina.

Usually, preliminary procedures are performed over a period of two to three days, to gradually dilate the cervix using laminaria tents (sticks of seaweed which absorb fluid and swell). Sometimes drugs such as synthetic pitocin are used to induce labor. Once the cervix is sufficiently dilated, the doctor uses an ultrasound and forceps to grasp the fetus‘ leg. The fetus is turned to a breech position, if necessary, and the doctor pulls one or both legs out of the birth canal, causing what is referred to by some people as the ‘partial birth’ of the fetus. The doctor subsequently extracts the rest of the fetus, usually without the aid of forceps, leaving only the head still inside the birth canal. An incision is made at the base of the skull, scissors are inserted into the incision and opened to widen the opening[9], and then a suction catheter is inserted into the opening. The brain is suctioned out, which causes the skull to collapse and allows the fetus to pass more easily through the birth canal. The placenta is removed and the uterine wall is vacuum aspirated using a suction curette.

The AMA doesn’t acknowledge the term “partial-birth abortion,” but that’s not because it’s factually inaccurate; to the contrary, it’s descriptive and evocative, which is precisely why the AMA resists it. Nor is it true to say that the procedure is only used in “rare and terrifyingly ugly situations,” as Aric Clark claimed; rather,

Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers (a trade association of abortion providers), told the New York Times (Feb. 26, 1997): “In the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along.”[35] Some prominent self-described pro-choice advocates quickly defended the accuracy of Fitzsimmons’ statements.[36]

This is nothing less than the torture-murder of innocent human beings for no more crime, in most cases, than being inconvenient to the mother—or to people whom the mother is unwilling to challenge. You may well argue that opposition to abortion requires pacifism, opposition to anything one might call torture, and the like, and you might well be right (though at this point, I’m not convinced; I intend to argue through some of these things in the near future)—but it seems to me far stronger in the other direction: the arguments for pacifism and for the condemnation of such things as waterboarding apply with even greater force to abortion. To call oneself a pro-choice pacifist is to be logically and morally incoherent.

The demon parade

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I just put up a post arguing that hero worship really isn’t a normal part of politics in this country, and that started me thinking: what is “just part of politics” in this country anymore is the opposite of hero worship—what we might call villain demonization. I think the first place we really see that in recent American politics was in Edward Kennedy’s decision to throw out truth and civility in order to destroy the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court; that was succeeded by the attempt to do the same to Clarence Thomas, which failed when Anita Hill didn’t hold up as a credible witness. When Bill Clinton won the White House, those two things, combined with the memory of the Iran-Contra investigation, had the Right out for blood, and what Hillary Clinton would dub the “politics of personal destruction” were on in earnest. I do believe the impeachment of President Clinton was justified—perjury is a major felony; it is to the justice system what counterfeiting is to the banking system—but I don’t believe the investigation that produced the circumstances under which the President (stupidly) perjured himself was justified by that point, if indeed there had ever been sufficient justification for it. (Those aren’t weasel words—I simply don’t know the facts of the matter well enough to say one way or the other.)

From there, we got the disputed 2000 election and the outrage of a Left that had never seriously considered the possibility it might lose, and thus refused to accept that it had (a refusal which did, at least, produce the single most brilliant political bumper sticker I’ve ever seen: “Re-Defeat Bush”); this would, over time, build to a crescendo of political filth such as I don’t think the US has seen since the 1860s, with shots like “BusHitler” and “Chimpy McHitler” aimed at the President, and considerably worse insults directed at VP Cheney. We saw the Left advance from the level of abuse directed at the Clintons to language actively designed to debase and dehumanize President Bush and his administration—with the worst of it (aside from that dumped on the President and VP) unloaded on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for whom the good old Southern plantation racism was dragged out, used for the exact same purpose against her as it had been back in the day. She might well have said, as entertainer Lloyd Marcus recently did, “Because they are libs and I am an uppity, off the liberal plantation, run-away black, all tactics to restore me to my owners are acceptable.” If she had, however, I doubt she would have gotten any consideration from the Left, only more ridicule.

One advantage to the election of Barack Obama to the big chair at 1600 Pennsylvania is that his status as the first person of African descent (though not of slave descent; that breakthrough hasn’t happened yet) to assume the Presidency has made the use of that sort of vitriol against him politically disadvantageous (for now, at least), and has thus walked back the level of nastiness in our political discourse. Unfortunately, the Left seems firmly intent on undoing that advantage by treating any sharp opposition to the President and his policies as if it were that bad, or worse. Thus, for instance, the howl over Joe Wilson’s inappropriate (though arguably true) outburst—you’d never realize, listening to the sanctimony oozing from the lips of Nancy Pelosi and others, that the Democratic congressional caucus as a whole had treated President Bush far worse, and on more than one occasion. Thus as well the debasement of the words “racism” and “racist” into mere political swear words for liberals to hurl at conservatives. Thus, ultimately, the deliberate effort to exacerbate the inflammation in the American body politic for political gain, rather than allowing it to subside somewhat and hoping to draw advantage from that.

This is not to say that there haven’t been inappropriate and outrageous things hurled at President Obama (though the most ubiquitous, the Obama-Joker poster, was created by a liberal Palestinian supporter of Dennis Kucinich); but it is to say that in their efforts to paint seemingly every criticism directed at him with that brush, Democratic leaders are guilty of both the rankest of rank hypocrisy and an appallingly cynical and short-sighted attempt at political manipulation. Honestly, while the Right needs to continue to work to marginalize and weed out the nasty folks, most folks on the Left really don’t have a leg to stand on to complain about the nastiness. If they want to publicly repent of calling George W. Bush “Chimpy McHitler,” Dick Cheney “Darth Vader,” Condoleezza Rice “Aunt Jemima,” and Michael Steele “Simple Sambo,” then I’ll welcome them complaining about a portrayal of Barack Obama as a witch doctor. Until then, what more are they saying than “It’s only racist when you do it”? They’d never tolerate that sort of special pleading from the Right; why should they be allowed to get away with it?

Hero worship?

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I posted below what I labeled three parts of a four-part response to Doug Hagler’s comments on my post “The self-esteem presidency.” Those parts were, respectively, a post noting mistakes Sarah Palin has made, one listing positive things about Barack Obama, and one listing positive things about the overly- and unfairly-vilified Dick Cheney. Being all of the same kind, detail posts, they quite properly went together. There is, however, a broader response that I think needs to be offered. Doug kicked the conversation off not just with a challenge, but with an assertion:

See, my theory is that hero-worship is just part of politics, and my guess is that it is just as operative with Palin supporters as it is with Obama supporters.

I think the best that can be said of the first part of this statement, the general theory Doug propounded, is that to the extent that it’s true, it’s not meaningful. On the one hand, I don’t know that we can rule out all hero worship for any significant politician—heck, I can think of one or two people who could be accused of that with respect to John McCain, though not for anything he’s done in politics. (Come to think of it, though, that same qualifier could be applied to most of Barack Obama’s adoring fans.) On the other, however, and more significantly, large-scale hero worship for politicians is a very rare thing. Take John Kerry, for instance (I’m tempted to say, “Please!”): he certainly tried to create an heroic image for himself, but I don’t think even Democrats bought it on a visceral level. They staunchly supported him, but for ideological reasons—and for emotional reasons that had nothing to do with Sen. Kerry, on which more in a minute. Hero worship of Ol’ Long Face was simply not in evidence.

If you look at the major politicians out there, at recent presidents and presidential candidates, Sen. Kerry was in that respect the rule, not the exception. Granted, Sen. Kerry was at the uncharismatic end for a politician, and thus unusually unlikely to inspire adoration—but not even Bill Clinton, the most charismatic of a remarkably unappealing set of presidential contenders over the last quarter-century, never inspired anything remotely approaching true widespread hero worship, let alone anything one might think to call a cult of personality.

This past campaign was the exception. Under normal circumstances, Hillary Clinton would have run away with the Democratic nomination, because she came into the campaign generating far more passion than any non-incumbent Democratic presidential candidate of the preceding 45 years; in some cases, I think you could fairly call that hero worship, of a purely ideological sort. As it was, though, she got blown away by somebody who could also generate that ideological sort of hero worship, but who also had the charisma and political skills to create much more—and took full advantage of them, even amplifying them by using quasi-messianic language of himself in his speeches.

This, of course, created a hunger in the Republican base for a candidate of their own who could do the same—and when Sen. McCain found one to be his running mate, the base went through the roof. There were a couple things, however, which mitigated against the development of the same sort of personality cult around Gov. Palin that had developed around Sen. Obama. The first, of course, was the fact that the McCain campaign didn’t want any such thing to happen; indeed, once they realized just how big a tiger they’d gotten by the tail, their main concern the rest of the way appeared to be keeping Gov. Palin from upstaging Sen. McCain. I wouldn’t say the GOP candidate was actively trying to squash support for his running mate, but he and his staff were definitely working to prevent it from developing in ways that wouldn’t benefit him directly.

The second, on the evidence of her own writings and speeches since the campaign, appears to have been that Gov. Palin wasn’t interested in any such thing happening either. Not only did she not make any “elect me and everything will be wonderful” types of statements during the campaign, she hasn’t made any since, or indeed done anything close. She has not adopted a strategy of offering herself to the nation, and there seems to be no reason to think that will change. Nor has she tried to organize, or indeed offered any support to, the community of online communities that have developed around her; in fact, the only acknowledgements I can recall from her staff of sites like Conservatives4Palin and TeamSarah have been vaguely unflattering.

The upshot of all of this is that, while there are no doubt a lot of people out there who could be fairly accused of hero worship with regard to Gov. Palin, whose view of her is unreasonably positive, there’s none of the fawning over her that one gets over the President, even from her most prominent supporters. There are no clergy offering prayers to her, no celebrities making music videos offering prayers to her, no school districts teaching their students to sing worship songs about her, no “Palin Youth” to match the “Obama Youth”—none of that, nothing of the kind. And certainly there’s no other politician, now or in living memory, who’s ever gotten that sort of treatment. The Obama phenomenon (Obamanomenon?) is and remains sui generis—at least outside countries like North Korea that can compel it.

Now, I can understand Doug’s desire to argue otherwise, since I know the personality cult of the Obamessiah doesn’t make him any happier than it does me; I can understand why he would want to be able to argue that this is just par for the course in politics, not something of which the Left has become uniquely guilty. In the end, though, the facts just won’t sustain that argument; this is in fact something unique to the Left in American politics. I continue to believe that there’s good reason for that, that this is no accident but rather is the result of the secular Left’s search for a secular messiah to replace the one it has decisively rejected. For all the temptation to political idolatry on the Right (something I’ve certainly written about often enough), that particular temptation doesn’t exist there, as religious conservatives already have a Messiah and non-religious conservatives tend to be quite consciously anti-messianic. Here’s hoping that doesn’t change.