The Subtle Landscape

  OK.  Its having been Monday, the event is well outside the current news cycle, but on July 11^th Newt Gingrich spoke at the University of Iowa in the latest of a series sponsored by the Family Leader organization.  That group is led by Bob Vander Plaats who in 2010 headed a successful effort to unseat three Iowa Supreme Court justices for their part in a unanimous decision – not a judgment regarding gay marriage, but rather whether a certain cohort had been subject to discrimination.

  Unanimous.

  Recently Family Leader offered that “slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President”.

  Uhm, say again? 

  They’ve dropped that observation, but perhaps its utterance was at least partially responsible for Mr. Gingerich and others to decline to sign the Family Leader ‘Marriage Pledge’ endorsing a particular set of values – “…a consistent voice… always standing for God’s truth”.

  For his part, Mr. Gingerich does ask: “Do you believe this is still a country where your rights come from your creator and you are the center of the society…( or do you subscribe to a) worldview in which you’re randomly gathered protoplasm”?

  If you visit this space at all it is obvious that I think about this stuff too much and am fascinated by all that remains unknown in this universe.  What I don’t get is the Blues Brothers business about being on a “Mission for God”.  My suggestion for those who think they are is to test the theory with the purchase of a lottery ticket.

  Or, better, consider the perspective of Abraham Lincoln as given in his second inaugural address.  Citizens of both the North and South “read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.  It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged…The Almighty has His own purposes.” 

  Think?

*cf the Economist blog “Democracy in America” July 12: “Newt’s Theory of Exceptionalsim.”http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/07/faith-and-freedom&fsrc=nwl

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