potus

The NRA Is Waging a Jihad on America

April 18, 2013 By Tony Jones 28 Comments

Prolegomena: There are two guns in my house — 12-gauge shotguns. They are in a gun safe; each has a trigger lock; the shotgun shells are stored elsewhere. I hunt, and I fear guns. They are breathtakingly powerful.

Premise 1: When you live in a society with other human beings, you necessarily give up some of your freedoms. This is incumbent upon each individual citizen in order to reap the benefits that society offers. For example, you have the benefit of driving a car, an incredible perk of modern society: it gets you places far more quickly than your feet, adds billions of dollars to our economy because of its efficiency, etc. However, you can’t drive a car anywhere you want; you must stay on the paved roads — indeed, you must stay on one half of the paved roads. If you cannot abide by these rules, you abdicate your right to drive a car.

Premise 2: The Bill of Rights is an anachronistic document, and it therefore must be interpreted for our present situation. It was written at a time in which firearms were not nearly as powerful nor accurate as they are now; today, firearms can do exponentially more human damage than they could in 1789. It was written in order to protect against a monarchy or military dictatorship; under the command of the president, the US military is the most powerful force in the world by an order of magnitude, and could therefore easily put down any populist uprising.

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Filed Under: christianity in america, politics Tagged With: guns, hunting, potus 28 Comments

President Obama, Stop the Drones!

March 22, 2013 By Tony Jones 20 Comments

I am a supporter of the president. However, the ever-increasing use of drone warfare has got to stop. It’s gotten out of control, and the president seems virtually unaccountable for it.

This week, the highest ranking official yet voiced concerned over the use of drones:

Gen. James E. Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a favored adviser during Mr. Obama’s first term, expressed concern in a speech here on Thursday that America’s aggressive campaign of drone strikes could be undermining long-term efforts to battle extremism.

“We’re seeing that blowback,” General Cartwright, who is retired from the military, said at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “If you’re trying to kill your way to a solution, no matter how precise you are, you’re going to upset people even if they’re not targeted.”

Go back and re-read that last sentence. Let’s take one issue at a time.

“If you’re trying to kill your way to a solution.” Do you get that a military general is accusing a (Christian) civilian president of being too violent?!? That alone should take our breath away.

“You’re going to upset people even if they’re not targeted.” Huh, no shit. When people get mistakenly bombed by virtually invisible, silent, unmanned aircraft, it tends to piss them off. Good to know.

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Filed Under: politics Tagged With: barack obama, potus, tim o'brien, war 20 Comments

Who Should Replace Giglio?

January 11, 2013 By Tony Jones 30 Comments

If POTUS has called me, I don’t know it. I dropped my iPhone.

Two lists have surfaced — there are probably more. Salon has one (that includes Your Favorite Blogger):

Brian McLaren: In the post-evangelical, non-denominational “emerging church” movement, McLaren has distinguished himself for promoting the idea of what he calls a New Kind of Christian (also the title of his 2001 book). Time magazine named him one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in 2005, a year when conservative evangelicals were ascendant after helping George W. Bush secure a second term.

Rabbi David Saperstein: Newsweek dubbed him one of the most influential rabbis in the country and the Washington Post called him a “quintessential religious lobbyist on Capitol Hill.” Rabbi Saperstein, who represents the Reform Jewish Movement in Washington, has worked to combat hate crimes and discrimination, in addition to pushing a host of other progressive causes in Congress. He’s even had a trial run, delivering the invocation at the Democratic National Convention in 2008.

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Filed Under: christianity in america, politics Tagged With: barack obama, brian mclaren, potus 30 Comments

Remixing David Simon – for the Church

November 21, 2012 By Tony Jones 23 Comments

After the election, David Simon wrote a compelling post about change and our society. Simon is one of our best writers and thinkers, and I happen to believe that his show, The Wire, is the best show in the history of television. I have taken the liberty to remix his prescient words to the American electorate, because I think they’re equally applicable to the church:

David Simon (Wikicommons)

Barack Obama And The Death Of Normal Evangelicalism

I was on an airplane last night as the election was decided. As the plane landed after midnight on the East Coast, I confess that my hand was shaking as I turned on my phone for the news. I did not want to see dishonesty and divisiveness and raw political hackery rewarded. It is hard enough for anyone to actually address the problems, to move this country forward, to make the intransigent American ruling class yield even a yard of the past to the inevitable future. But going backwards last night would have been devastating. I read the returns in silent elation; a business trip had me traveling in business class and the gnashing of corporate teeth all around precluded a full-throated huzzah on my part. I abhor a gloat.

But the ~~country~~ church is changing. And this may be the last ~~election~~ liturgical year in which anyone but a fool tries to play — on a national level, at least — the cards of racial exclusion, of immigrant fear, of the patronization of women and hegemony over their bodies, of self-righteous discrimination against homosexuals. Some in the ~~Republican party~~ church and among the teabagged fringe will continue to play such losing hands for some time to come; this shit worked well in its day and distracted many from addressing any of our essential ~~national~~ ecclesiological and theological issues. But again, if they play that weak-ass game past this point, they are fools.

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Filed Under: christianity in america, politics Tagged With: barack obama, potus 23 Comments

Whom I’m Voting For, and Why

November 2, 2012 By Tony Jones 48 Comments

Editor’s Note: This post is a part of our Election Month at Patheos feature. Patheos was designed to present the world’s most compelling conversations on life’s most important questions. Please join the Facebook following for our new News and Politics Channel — and check back throughout the month for more commentary on Election 2012. Please use hashtag #PatheosElection on Twitter.

Let me note, I write this post not telling you for whom to vote. Nor do I think that you (or I) have an obligation to disclose our votes. A secret ballot is a cornerstone of our democracy.

I disclose my prospective votes today to offer them up for discussion. So, read them, then have at it:

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Filed Under: glbt, politics, same sex marriage Tagged With: barack obama, potus 48 Comments

Why Obama (Again)?

October 29, 2012 By Tony Jones 85 Comments

Later this week, I will be posting about whom I’m supporting at the federal, state, and local elections. In the meantime, I’ve revisited my reasons for supporting Barack Obama four years ago. Here’s the money quote from that post:

I am supporting Barack Obama for president. Why? Because Obama has so many of the qualities that we need in a president. He is committed to uniting the country around a vision for the future, he is committed to foreign diplomacy rather than empty posturing, he plays politics by a different and more noble playbook.

You can read the rest here: Why Obama?. And you can tell me if you think I made the right choice. I still have faith in the president. But I was sure that Hillary would have been too divisive, and now I’m not so sure…

I will say that based on John McCain’s last few FOX News appearances, I am damn glad that he is not our president.

Filed Under: politics Tagged With: barack obama, john mccain, potus 85 Comments

Let Me Repeat: Mitt’s Mormonism Matters

October 24, 2012 By Tony Jones 58 Comments

Bishop Mitt Romney, 1984

This morning, Andrew Sullivan penned what I think is a devastating post about Mitt Romney’s Mormonism. In short, Neither Mitt nor Anne nor his parents spoke against their church when it was rabidly racist for decades. Mitt claims that his parents wept with joy when a “new revelation” led church leaders to begin including African-Americans in the 1970s, but what led him to stay so silent for so long?

As Sullivan notes, all churches have their dark histories. But even the powerful and relatively monolithic Catholic Church — to which Sullivan belongs — allows for public dissent. Just drive around Minneapolis this week and see the lawnsigns that read, “Another Catholic Voting No,” in direct defiance of the stated position of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis on the marriage amendment.

Here’s the lede of Sullivan’s post:

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Filed Under: politics Tagged With: mitt romney, mormonism, potus 58 Comments

What I Hated about Last Night’s Debate? (Hint: Everything)

October 23, 2012 By Tony Jones 85 Comments

It may seem the height of irony, or maybe a double standard. Last night I listened to the third presidential debate as I drove home from a successful pheasant hunt in South Dakota. In my cooler were nine birds — birds that I had shot, that my dog had retrieved to me in his mouth, and that I had cleaned by hand. It’s a bloody business, hunting; admittedly violent.

And yet, as I drove home and listened to our president and his challenger talk about killing people, it just seemed to me that they were altogether nonchalant about it:

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Filed Under: politics Tagged With: barack obama, mitt romney, potus 85 Comments

Mitt’s Mormonism Matters: Considering a Candidate’s Faith

October 18, 2012 By Tony Jones 56 Comments

Bishop Mitt Romney, 1984

This week’s question in Patheos’s run up to the election is, Does a candidate’s faith really matter?

I say, yes, of course it matters.

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Filed Under: politics Tagged With: mitt romney, mormonism, patheos, potus 56 Comments

Barack Obama Is an Enneagram Nine – What That Means

October 17, 2012 By Tony Jones 16 Comments

Barack Obama is an Enneagram Nine with a strong Eight wing.

I’ve been wondering what the Enneagram numbers are of our two candidates and what they means about our choices in the election. Although you’re not supposed to pin a number on another person, when someone is as much in the public eye as a presidential nominee, it’s pretty clear to Enneagram experts what number they are. So I asked around in the Enneagram community and found out that they’re a consensus on Mitt Romney’s and Barack Obama’s numbers. On Monday, I posted about Mitt Romney, an Enneagram Three.

Barack Obama is an Enneagram Nine, with a strong Eight wing. Other famous political Nines include Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, and Dwight Eisenhower.

I asked Suzanne Stabile*, my personal Enneagram guru, to write up something about Nines, and here’s what she sent in:

Enneagram Nines are called “mediators.” They are men and women who intuitively try to maintain a sense of peace and balance. They avoid conflict and believe that having a single or personal agenda threatens harmony, often unnecessarily. They frequently merge with the other in order to maintain peace. They are self-effacing, tolerant, even-tempered and likeable. And their gift is their problem in that they see two sides to everything.

Nines are the primal person. They connect with everything and yet they stay disconnected from everything at the same time. These are people who are not stuck in their own way of thinking so they have the capacity for holding varied opinions and for finding value in most points of view.

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