His move to Cat hardly evokes the kind of jobs most people think about when they hear President Barack Obama or his challenger, Mitt Romney, talk about bringing back manufacturing. The days when workers earned enough money to buy a car, a boat or a second home while supporting their families no longer exists for a growing number of people employed in manufacturing.

Jim Ellis had a job with benefits but gave it up for a shot at something with a bright future, if he could just get his foot in the door.

In this part of the country, that meant he wanted to work for Caterpillar Inc., the construction equipment powerhouse. Now the Canton, Ill., resident is on the morning shift at the company’s East Peoria plant, installing fenders on tractors and working on hydraulic lines, a manufacturing job description that once promised an American middle-class lifestyle.

The reality for Ellis is nothing like that.

With the new job he started in January, Ellis’ pay jumped by $5, to $15.57 per hour, but he has no medical benefits for himself or his 3-year-old daughter, whom he shares custody of with his ex-girlfriend. Between rent and child support, he acknowledges falling back on his parents for support.

“If you talk to my mom and dad, they would tell you I’m an idiot because I’m barely making ends meet,” Ellis, 38, said.

Reflecting on his pay, Ellis recalled the years he worked as an assistant manager at a fast-food restaurant. “It was one of the easiest jobs I’ve had,” he said. It was also the best-paying job he’s had. He earned up to $34,000 a year — a little more than $16 an hour.

He is not going to address any of the issues that affect America at all. He won’t touch the banks, he won’t stand up to Isreal, he won’t end the empire.

Yawn.

Trump’s talking precisely about the most critical issue–who your fellow citizens are. The actual human beings who make up a nation, their IQ, conscientiousness, social trust–essentially their race and culture–are what matters, far and away, light years beyond anything else.

We can tweak banking regulation to hither and yon. (Personally, i’d like to abolish fractional reserve banking altogether … but it’s not a critical issue.)

Israel is not important at all. Yeah, it’s embarrassing that US policy is jacked around by an ethnic lobby. (George Washington warned about such evil.) That’s a good lesson about letting in people who will not have an ethnic loyalty superseding loyalty to the nation–a lesson about the stupidity of multiculturalism. But Israel as a big issue–please!

The American “Empire”–i.e. the post-war, open American system–is a much better thing than it’s predecessors. To take the most obvious situation, it’s been able to peacefully accommodate the rise of China which the old British\French imperial system sure didn’t do with Germany or later Japan. Our current penchant for tossing–or at least encouraging the tossing–out thuggish Arab dictators to see them inevitably replaced by even more thuggish Islamic dictatorships is … stupid. But hardly a critical issue.

Fact is 100 years from now my great-great-grandchildren aren’t going to be giving a crap about what our 2015 banking regulation was or our silly middle eastern misadventures. It will have precisely *zero* effect on them.

What will matter is that they’ll be living in dumber, low-trust, corrupt, balkanized America–no longer have a white-Christian identity and culture; sort of a higher-rent version of Brazil–while more coherent high IQ nations like China, Korea and Japan have world leading technology and utterly kick our ass. Their patrimony and with it the opportunity for world leading prosperity having been squandered by our elites now … and they will hold their ancestors in justifiable contempt.

@ Anon

Donald responded hilariously saying: “he’s okay. He’s actually a Trump guy. He’s just got a lot of energy … he’s on our side.”

The obvious message of this is: “yeah, my guys hate Jews, but don’t worry, they’re cool.”

So Anon, you admit there were Jews, Israeli Mossad agents, in fact, who were arrested while high-fiving and filming the collapse of the Twin Towers. But if anyone mentions the fact, then they must be anti-Semitic. Is that your logic?

Obama criticizing Trump as exploiting is like ISIS saying Christians are murderers.

would have been shredded into aluminum confetti and fallen to the street below the point of impact.

Nonsense. As the plane hits the building the side of the building is “shredded” as well. Everything in the fuselage area is slamming into the impact zone adding its damage to what was done ahead of it and pushing the whole mess forward.

It is very weird for all the truthers , etc. out there to go on and on about 9-11. That is exactly what the jews, neocons, liberals want you to do. Waste your time and keep runnin’ around instead of focusing on the current Jewish Wars in the ME and the immigration crisis both in Europe and the US.

9-11 happened because of Israel. It does not matter Who Dun it? The Arabs probably did it, but WHO CARES now. All that energy wasted while the jews laugh all the way to Tel-Aviv, with your money.

Your country is being taken away from you by jews, globalism, liberals, mexers and now increasingly, central Americans who are even dumber. Then Europe…taken away by Arabs/muzzies who are far worse than mexers.

Grow up, get some courage to go after the Jews and the Liberals, support Trump, and hammer folks who hate Trump. Demand that they offer reasons, rather than just bilious hatreds.
That goes right here on this list.

The Columbus Syndrome is evident on this list….you cannot tell that kind of person anything, they need to figure it out for themselves, which is egotistical and a profound waste of time.

How many real books do you read each year, as opposed to clicking away …click-heads…if you have not read the books on race, like Rushton, Lynn, Jared Taylor, Michael Levin, and many others….at least read Rushton and Lynn…the science.

A knee-jerk anti-semitism seems to be the norm here. What is important is the survival of the White race. If you don’t get this, you are relatively hopeless.

Joe Webb

An interesting contribution. Thanks.

Obviously having only a few labels being bandied about creates its own problems but it might be worth seeing whether the Murdoch empire (apart from The Times, The Australian and ???) qualifies as Populist, and if not why not. If so, why is Trump being opposed?

You are not allowed the simple answer that Murdoch only backs winners!!:)

From afar where “liberal” and “conservative” are almost equally unhelpfully used as in the US (where their meanings seem amazingly protean) I offer one reservation to the author. That is, for reasons explained at #20, the apparent unfairness in criticising Obama for what he said in the quoted passages.

Couldn’t you see yourself returning to your hotel in India and speaking briefly but eloquently of the desperate lives which must be lived by the decrepit beggars you have seen in the street? And how much would you really care?

“In 1900 newspapers in Anglo countries were full of pro-populist, letters, cartoons, opinion columns etc.”

All is not lost – most people have powerful cell phones and social media – put them to work for yourself and your country – elect D Trump – Prevail.

Why do choose the pejorative word feign? Isn’t it the duty of a leader, particularly a country’s first citizen, to reach out with carefully crafted oratory beyond anything he can possibly be expected to weep quietly about after Christmas Eve’s midnight mass or secular or other equivalent occasions for heightened emotion and consideration of one’s fellow creatures?
What effective person wastes time on personal agonising or even mildly emoting about something he can do little about?

What makes you think Chicago Jews have any influence on a man elected as POTUS and re-elected for a second term which has to be his last? Some dark secret that only they know about and can blackmail him with? Or just plain BS?

At a rally in Grand Rapid, Michigan, a Trump fan yelled “Jews were arrested on 9/11!,” presumably referring to the Mossad agents who were arrested for dancing and filming the towers coming down.

Donald responded hilariously saying: “he’s okay. He’s actually a Trump guy. He’s just got a lot of energy … he’s on our side.”

The obvious message of this is: “yeah, my guys hate Jews, but don’t worry, they’re cool.”

Just show me a photo that contains wings, jet engines, bodies, luggage, airline seats, or any other debris that indicated than an airplane collided with a building on a lawn. That’s all I need.

@Groovy Battle for Blair Mountan says:

…The 9/11 Truthers have been annihilated in debate over and over again-and they know it. Just take a look a You Tube debates with the Truthers on the collapse of the TT in the comment section:utter total complete destruction of the 9/11 Truthers.

If the 9/11 Truthers can’t get it right on the physics and engineering of the collapse of the TT…ignore all the jibberish about building 7..Shanksville..and the Pentagon.

You just jeered at those who question the official 9/11 narrative without the giving slightest rationale for your assertion. Are you one of Cass Sunstein’s agents of cognitive infiltration, paid to write this kind of comment, or just a mindless adherent of whatever the US Government tells you without regard for questions raised by intelligent well-informed people such as:

The late Ruth Margules, US National Acad Sci., National Medal of Science Winner, etc. who characterized the official account of 9/11 as “a fraud” and called for a new investigation.

Or Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, U.S. Air Force (ret.) – Director of Advanced Space Programs Development under Presidents Ford and Carter; U.S. Air Force fighter pilot with over 100 combat missions; (PhD in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering, Cal Tech); Former Head of the Department of Aeronautical Engineering and Assistant Dean at the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology; etc., etc. who has said:

Scholars and professionals with various kinds of expertise—including architects, engineers, firefighters, intelligence officers, lawyers, medical professionals, military officers, philosophers, religious leaders, physical scientists, and pilots—have spoken out about radical discrepancies between the official account of the 9/11 attacks and what they, as independent researchers, have learned.

They have established beyond any reasonable doubt that the official account of 9/11 is false and that, therefore, the official “investigations” have really been cover-up operations.

Then there’s Thomas H. Keen, Chair of the 9/11 Commission who wrote in his book Without Precedent:

Fog of war could explain why some people were confused on the day of 9/11, but it could not explain why all of the after-action reports, accident investigations and public testimony by FAA and NORAD officials advanced an account of 9/11 that was untrue.

Well, photos can be staged and wreckage can be planted, but the laws of physics cannot be violated, nor can the principles of aeronautics, say, or ballistics due to some mysterious “9/11 or Bin Laden Transformation Effect”.

It is quite possible that some type of flying objects hit the buildings, but these were not commercial airliners. A commercial airliner is mostly a hollow aluminum and fiberglass tube filled with air. Compare the fuselage and wings (mostly hollow as they are used to hold jet fuel) of a Boeing 767 with an armor piercing round able to penetrate 1/2″ steel; the projectile has a hardened alloy nose, a tungsten jacket and a solid steel core. The wings and fuselage of the 767, when impacting with structural steel and concrete, i.e., the massive perimeter box columns and the concrete floor pans of WTC 2, would have been shredded into aluminum confetti and fallen to the street below the point of impact. It is conceivable that the titanium engines and landing gear could have penetrated the building, but oddly enough, the only engine found at the site was manufactured by Rolls Royce. Boeing 767′s use engines manufactured by Pratt and Whitney.

If you google the best live and uncensored footage of the impact on WTC 2 (News Chopper 4) which had a wide angle shot of virtually the entire air space around the building, you will see a small, barely visible object (whether a helicopter, drone or cruise missile is unclear) descend steeply and diagonally towards the building, followed by an explosion on the opposite side of where it would have impacted. There was no commercial airliner to be seen.

The Kennedy worshipping is disgusting. JFK was agitating for White race-replacement in a book he wrote in the 1950′s. The 1965 Immigration Reform Act was reprobate Teddy’s permanent monument of White Genocide on US Soil to JFK.

The 9/11 Truthers have been annihilated in debate over and over again-and they know it. Just take a look a You Tube debates with the Truthers on the collapse of the TT in the comment section:utter total complete destruction of the 9/11 Truthers.

If the 9/11 Truthers can’t get it right on the physics and engineering of the collapse of the TT…ignore all the jibberish about building 7..Shanksville..and the Pentagon.

9/11 was completely avoidable and here’s how:1)No passage of the 1965 Immigration Reform Act…2)A National Origins Immigration Policy that completely excluded all Muslims….1)+2)=0 probability of 9/11 ever occurring..ever…Fort Hood Shooting also..and the rest of the massacres carried out by Muslim “American” Male Yoots….

“Antiwar” Writer…the filthy homosexual degenerate Justin Raimondo…wants to import more Muslim Legal Immigrants-because: the Muslim Legal Immigrants are part of the Democratic Party Voting Bloc. And they will never be asked to bake a wedding cake for two homosexual bikers….this is part of the deal.

I congratulate you on your ability to un-see all the photographs that do show the aircraft wreckage in great detail. I won’t bother posting the links to any of them since I presume that you would just see a blank screen if you opened them.
There is a scientific term called “un-falsifiable premise” which has been repurposed in psychology to describe memes that no amount of proof can ever change.
I do however enjoy reading all the truther sites on 9/11, Kennedy, moon landing etc. Far more creative than any episode of the X-files.

In 1900 populism was arguably the most popular (pardon the pun) political ideology, followed by conservatism/right liberalism with socialism and anarchism on the margins. Back then there were a number of politicians with Trumpish personalities and agendas, and plenty of classical liberals attacking them for opposing open borders and free markets.

Today we only have two related ideologies – right liberalism and left liberalism. Thanks to Trump, Le Pen etc populism is now starting to push its way back into the mainstream. However, I’m not sure how far the populist revolt can go without MSM media representation. In 1900 newspapers in Anglo countries were full of pro-populist, letters, cartoons, opinion columns etc.

It’s great to watch the left liberal media apoplectic over Trump success. The left liberal media has gone berzerk. Somebody needs to count the number of times the lying liberal media have used racist, xenophobic, sexist etc to describe Trump in the last six months. The liberal media’s lies are no longer working.

Amen. Thank you for showing these mindless iStevers who flock to Trump how silly they are.

It’s astonishing that a group of men who spend much of their online time touting their IQ’s can’t see through this silly, transparent fraud.

It’s like on another thread a few weeks ago, I showed pictures of the 9/11 pentagon “plane crash” in which it seemed fairly apparent that there was no plane, and yet I had poster after poster after poster, try to explain how the wreckage had “disintegrated” (actual word used) do the the speed of the crash.

Truly astonishing.

Good article. An example of objective journalism.

The issue of what Trump would do if elected, is still very important. I would like to see something in this regard, the mind of Trump, etc.

My sense is that as usual there are folks on this list for whom Nothing is never/ever enough.

Whatever happens with Trump and the European migrant scene, Things have changed forever. Race has entered center stage but this time with representatives of both paties, instead of just the Left’s freaks and midgets tumbling out of the tiny fiat and scurrying around with signs that claim their equality, all the while the audience fidgeting, embarrassed or hooting.

This time Our side get into the act, big time. The fourth estate is not the audience, it is the tyrant-king whose Word is Law. The King will be deposed and maybe executed, although, it will not ever be quick enough for the juveniles.

Joe Webb

Trump has challenged the lie that both the Republican and Democratic party leaders are paid to tell, which is that free trade with input factor mobility, i.e., mass immigration of cheap labor to the West, and the outflow of capital and technology accumulated in the West through the sweat of generations to cheap labor areas whence finished goods can be imported, is somehow good for ordinary people. The lie, which is obviously ridiculous, is sold by the New York Times and other propaganda organs of the corporate elite by deliberate distortion of David Ricardo’s theory of what is now called comparative advantage. Ricardo, in fact, stated explicitly that free trade was good only insofar as it excluded input factor mobility, which at the time of Ricardo’s writing was not even a practical possibility for reasons that Ricardo states.

Having challenged the lie at the heart of America’s political life, Trump has, inevitably, been targeted for destruction by the entire political establishment and the Presstitute media. The attack is being made chiefly on the specious ground that Trump is somehow a white supremacist serving only the interests of Euro-Americans. However, the greatest victims of globalization have been those at the bottom of the economic pile, many of them blacks and hispanics who have to fight for work against illegal immigrants working in the underground economy, paying no tax and accepting below minimum wage jobs. This, can never be admitted, since it would mean oblivion if not jail for the existing political elite. However, many blacks and hispanics have no doubt as to the cause of the difficulties under which they labor, hence the widespread support for Trump among the plebs, so loathesome to the elite whenever they decline to be led like sheep to the slaughter.

The president occasionally does feign empathy for working whites even as he condescendingly inserts little digs at them within the same statement. He identifies some of the problems as if he understands but yet has no intention of doing anything about it. His policies only make things worse for the majority of people who are productive, mostly white but also negatively impacts others all across the board. He might talk about corporate culture but yet is closely aligned with them on just about anything. He just talks out of both sides of his mouth. The Repub Inc party pretty much does the same thing in their turn, throwing lines toward the cheap seats even as they have contempt for them. They hate them because they need them as spear carriers, voters, taxpayers, etc even as they would never want to live around them. For them the average person is just an economic unit meant to produce value like a cow that gives milk. The Dems, on the other hand, also offer nothing. They bring out the mobs of riff-raff onto the streets to make noise but that’s about it. Work, not welfare, is what people really want but can’t get. Just handing out more and more Food Stamps, free school lunches, Section 8 as substitutes for being gainfully employed is the Dem approach.

Alexander Hart doesn’t need a PhD to understand that Barack Obama has no “race or religion” issue. He is anglo-African, and Muslim-Christian by birth. But, who has followed Obama’s political career, would tell Hart that Obama is a poodle of Chicago’s Jewish crime mafia.

“Although he would be the first Black president, don’t expect Obama to abolish slavery,” – Canadian Arab News

“I think when it is all over, people are going to say that Barack Obama is the first Jewish president,” – Abner Mikvaner, former Chicago’s Zionist Congressman, a Federal Judge and White House counsel to former president Bill Clinton.

I believe Abner did not mean that President-elect, Obama, is a Crypto Jew – but that he will be more obedient to US Jewish Lobby than any earlier US president had been – which he has already proved by selecting some of the most anti-Muslim Jews and Christian for his administration – for example, Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Staff; David Axelrod, senior presidential advisor, and Ron Klain, Chief of Staff to VP). On the other hand, according to Jewish Law, Obama cannot be a Jew, because his mother was a Christian and not ‘Jewish’. According to ‘Jewish Virtual Library’ website – “A person born to a Jewish mother is considered a Jew, but he doesn’t have to practice any of the laws of the Torah to be Jewish. However, in Reformed Judaism – a child, whether born to a Jewish mother or father, must be raised as Jew, to be accepted as Jewish. According to Orthodox Judaism – the father’s religion and whether the person practices is immaterial. No affirmation or upbringing is needed, as long as the mother was Jewish.”

http://rehmat1.com/2008/12/13/obama-the-first-jewish-president/

Last time America votes in a president whose main accomplishment was that he ran a bakesale for blind coloured midget agitators once.

The majority nonwhite Demorcatic Party has made an open declaration of a race-war against The Historic Native Born White American Majority.

There is only one viable option for Native Born White Americans:Highly Racialized Native Born White American Anarcho-Syndicalist Populist Race Revolt against the MEGA-CEO and the Israeli owned Democratic and Republican Parties.

With 100 percent certainty…Hillary Clinton is going to be announced as POTUS at 8pm Nov 3 2016…the violent taunting of our people will commence with an unprecedented savagery. Tomasky’s comments are a warning shot.

Vdarism=resurrecting the Cold War Corpse of Ronnie Reagan. This is not a viable option.

Take note of this:The Cold War against Russia was, and still is, inseparable from the passage of the 1965 Immigration Reform Act and subsequent post-1965 Immigration Policy….and the homo-pedophile norming of post-1975 Vietnam by US MEGA-White Male CEOs. Don’t worry English Foreigner Peter Brimelow:AMERICA WON THE VIETNAM WAR!!!!! Gay Tourism to Vietnam coming soon!!!

The Wall Street/Pentagon empire team, for which Obama is a spokesman, is playing the race card to smear Trump. From my blog:

Dec 22, 2015 – Trump is a KKK leader!

Have you noticed the childish smears by “reputable” new organizations as they try to take down populist Donald Trump? They run stories that “a Trump supporter” was arrested, or is a felon, or a supporter said this or that vile thing. These are people who have never met Trump and have nothing to do with his campaign, but are used to imply Trump endorses their view. I saw one today and wondered what vile propaganda rag published it, so I clicked the link.

How America’s dying white supremacist movement is seizing on Donald Trump’s appeal

And it was the “esteemed” Washington Post!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/12/21/how-donald-trump-is-breathing-life-into-americas-dying-white-supremacist-movement/

The article is filled with proof that Trump is a racist because of statements made by a few of his supporters. I expect to be in the news soon: “Supporter states that Trump is a KKK leader.”
_______________________

Trump often makes outrageous statements, like threatening to use nuclear weapons, but he’s just playing the tough guy role. I don’t know if Trump is for real, but daily attacks by both our political parties and our corporate media suggest he is a threat. He should start using a bus to campaign. Aircraft “accidents” are a favorite method for disposing of serious troublemakers.

Obama is really using circular reasoning. Whites are incapable of perceiving their best interests because they are racist. If only they agreed to his policies and stopped being racist then they could recognize their best interests, but we cant even get to that point because of racism. Working class whites must give up their privilege even if they are relatively disadvantaged but wont because they are racist. Successful organizations can be criticized if they are too white and male but unsuccessful whites who would like to drop the ban on iq tests do so only out of racism.

Obama seems to have a pretty good grip on the problem, but seems unable to envision or deliver a solution.

Buchanan used to channel Teddy Roosevelt’s line against America becoming a polyglot boarding house.

Theodore Roosevelt’s ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907.

“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American … There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag … We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language … and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”

Theodore Roosevelt 1907

“This is a nation — not a polyglot boarding house. There is not room in the country for any 50-50 American, nor can there be but one loyalty — to the Stars and Stripes.”

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/troosevelt.asp

Amen. Thank you for showing these mindless iStevers who flock to Trump how silly they are. Trump is just like every other political out there. He is picking a couple wedge issues that will make him stand out and deflect the fact that he is indeed more democrat than republican at heart.

He is not going to address any of the issues that affect America at all. He won’t touch the banks, he won’t stand up to Isreal, he won’t end the empire.

He is just one of the same.

MR OBAMA DOES NOT KNOW TRUMP IS SUPPOSED TO DO THAT IN A DEMOCRACY.

Thanks for the article, Sir. I am shocked that Obama has such severe MR (mental retardation) that he does not realize that, in a democracy, that is the job of our REPRESENTATIVES to understand our problems and solve them.

For example, a few weeks ago, I was driving and I was hungry and wanted to eat pizza. So I looked around and did not see a pizza place but kept driving and thinking “I wish this town had pizza places.” A bit later, I found a pizza place and was so glad!

I got the pizza and even wanted to thank the workers there and wanted to tip them, over and above the price of the pizza! So that is why there are (pizza) restaurants—because people like to eat food and businessmen know and try to meet that demand.

So according to Obama’s logic, businessmen exploit people by opening restaurants because hungry people will then eat food? Or does it mean stores exploit the public by selling coats in winter, because people would need coats in winter? So every time you buy something you need, you are exploited, is it?

Ohama does not know this, because he does not have a brain and does care about people, but is an illegal alien posing as President and appointed by his Jewish owners and operators and he is just barking their scams. The Jewish Oligarchs specifically prefer puppets without brains so they can control them more easily, like Obama, Reid, Hillary, etc.

I think that’s a bit hyperbolic Ronald. Lots of Presidents don’t appear to have been terribly religious. There certainly is a kind of resurgence of religion in the country but that ebbs and wanes over time. In any case I think religion is far less dominate in society now than through much of the previous history of the US. Seeing us on the cusp of a theocracy seems a bit silly when we don’t have school prayer and when there isn’t anything like the religious persecutions of the past. In the 19th century there were sometime de facto religious requirements to even teach in many colleges. There are still a few now – primarily religious run institutions. But it’s not like you’ll be persecuted at Harvard for not being religious now.

Our nation will come of age as a truly secular, enlightened democracy when we elect a president who is openly an atheist or agnostic. Instead, it appears we are headed toward a theocracy led by politicians who do not understand why our founding father’s wrote and ratified the first amendment. The evangelicals think they can turn us into a religious state that will not repeat the terrible repression the Iranian people suffer. History begs to differ.

“[Mormons are] far less white than Jews”

What?? This is an absurd statement, as few Jews consider themselves ‘White’ in this context.

Considering that Christians can’t agree on what makes a TrueChristian, the only way you can tell is indeed if someone says they are. Then watch all the other Christians scream “no true scotsman” fallacies trying to claim only “their” version is the “right” one.

Perhaps it’s because I come from a country where most Christians are secular and liberal (Australia), but I have no trouble accepting that Obama is a Christian. He seems very similar to a lot of people I know here – having a basic Christian outlook, but open-minded about it and not really into displays of overt religiosity.
The debate about Obama’s religion is a construct of US society and politics, which seems to place heavy importance on whatever it is a “proper” Christian should do.

Personally, I find the Christian-ness of Gingrich and Romney more questionable than Obama. I find their general attitudes to wealth to be anathema to the teachings of Jesus.

@Razib,

Kerry’s Jewish ancestry is a better parallel, I agree.

All the talk about whether politicians are hypocritical or not isn’t particularly helpful if one wants to deal with religion from an anthropological or sociological perspective or from a political scientific standpoint. I’ve yet to see where Obama has strayed beyond what would be considered appropriate for a liberal, urban, but still politically centrist Christian.

@isamu, Certainly, with text-based religions like the Abrahamic faiths, which also historically emphasis communal concensus, it is easy to delineate, theologically speaking, who or who is not a Christian, Muslim or Jew, and therefore a statement like post-Christian or a denial of LDS’ Christian status has merit. Within a religion like Christianity there is room for divergence, but at a certain point it no longer makes sense to include extremely heterodox movements within the parent faith. However, if a large enough community makes claim to a certain identity, and are accepted as such by outsiders, then those claims must also be respected. It all depends on which academic discipline you are using to analyze the group in question.

isamu (12) I think often the distinction between an atheist, deist and liberal Christian is how they choose to define terms. Lots of atheists I talk to seem willing to have something in their thought that sure sounds to me like the God of the deists. They’re just unwilling to use the god term. By and large though all of them reject the same sort of things within theism – i.e. an interventionist God and claims to revelation, miracles and so forth. The move is to a kind of allegorical reading of religion to give rise to some sort of ethical basis. However this move (as opposed to the commitment) seems kind of hand waving. Much like many literary critics talk about truths of the human condition discovered in great works of literature. Which isn’t to say many don’t appeal to ethics in more formal ways – like say Utilitarianism. However there appears to be this attempt within liberal Christians to instead draw them out of tradition.

What’s funny is listening to squabbles amongst these groups. The atheist attacks on agnostics in particular remind me a lot of old inter-Protestant theological battles. (Here thinking of some of Penn Juliet’s writings – and for the record I love listening to him but some of his attacks on agnostics seem pretty weak)

There was interestingly a similar move to all this back during the rise of philosophy as a movement among the Greeks. Many refused to break from religion but the old Greek religion became highly allegorized. What was fascinating is how even in late antiquity there were many religious rites practiced by people we’d probably call atheists. (Here thinking of the neo-platonic tradition in particular)

I’m particularly fascinated how how religion remains in Europe among many atheists where the content is removed but the rites and traditions remain. (Look at how many Anglicans love to go to Church yet appear fine with saying they are atheists – ditto for Lutherans in the more northern countries) In many ways it appears to parallel what I see in the ancient world in my limited knowledge of it.

I tend to credit a politician’s professions of religious belief only when they would seem to go against his interests.

I think, for example, that Romney is a genuine Mormon.

My evidence:

1. Being a Mormon is major obstacle to his election.
2. The man is obliged to tithe, and apparently has done so. Since, supposedly, he’s worth a quarter billion dollars, he must have given about 25 mil to the Mormon Church. That’s sincerity.

In contrast, Newt “Open Marriage” Gingrich is quite another matter.

Religion holds no interest for me at all.

The only times I knowingly met Mormons were twice people calling to the door to proselytize, and then the time at Burning Man when I met a Gay Chinese Mormon from Utah – who went on to tell me that he was embittered by the fact that church elders forced him out, as they didn’t accept gays as members.

Apart from President Obama and Trinity in particular, the UCC has an interesting history in its own right.

After the Puritans stopped being called Puritans, the established church (i.e. official state religion) of most of New England was the Congregational Church. Over time, the Puritan fervor faded and this established church was known for its overeducated very theologically liberal ministers — too liberal for average New Englanders. Those pastors continued to have legal control over their local church buildings when the Congregational church was disestablished. Majorities of the local congregations allied themselves with what would become the United Church of Christ (which took its current name after a series of mergers with a number of small immigrant denominations in the Reformed tradition in an echo of the United Churches of Canada and Australia which managed to merge in almost all non-Roman Catholic and non-Episopalian churches in their respective countries — Canadian and Australian Presbyterians denominations were rolled into those country’s respective United Churches). Since the proto-UCC didn’t legally own the church buildings they had to build new ones and the liberal ministers who got to keep the old New England establishment church buildings became the Unitarian Church.

Two notable non-Catholic dissenting churches emerged in New England not long after the direct ancestors of the UCC and the Unitarian Church arose. The Universalists got their start in Boston in the early 1800s and was demographically comparable to the store front Pentecostal churches of a few decades ago, but much more theologically liberal (everyone goes to heaven). The other dissenting denomination that emerged in New England at that time and survived to have an impact was the Church of Latter Day Saints, which was and is conservative and radically outside the theological mainstream in unique directions.

The Unitarians stagnated (like most mainline white New England protestant churches) and the Universalists never got very big. In the 1960s, they merged to establish the Unitarian Universalist denomination that exists today, which is doctrinally a mix of religious humanists who are not specically Christian, secular humanists, and Unitarian Christians. The denomination as a whole at this time is ecumenical to the extent that it is not a Christian religious denomination even though some people who are affiliated with it are Unitarian or Universalist Christians.

The upshot of all of this is that both Mitt Romney and President Obama are formally affiliated with denominations that have their genesis in New England.

Razib (2) It’s certainly true there are many parallels between universalists and Mormons. I think a lot ends up being that Mormons tend to see everything in degrees rather than black and white. The whole universalist debate makes best sense in a binary sense which is largely alien to Mormon theology. It’s kind of hard to explain to people with more traditional conceptions of the debate.

Observer (12) I think that’s true. I’m really skeptical of what most politicians say. They are self-selected for a certain personality type. I think even a lot of people who wear religion on their sleeve are really adopting a more Straussian view dividing the private from the public. i.e. religion is important for the coarse masses but not for elites but elites have to portray themselves as part of the masses. (Note here claiming to know much about Strauss – more just what goes under that label a lot)

Politicians are, from my view, a kind of necessary evil. They have some very important skills for democracy to function but their very strengths are often regarded as flaws which leads to some weird selection forces. I think we could have very different sorts of politicians but the public wants someone like them. Given the relative diversity of the public that leads to the types of figures we see.

Patrick, several wards (local congregations) I attended were more than 50% African American.

Jeez.

Why on earth would anyone take any of Obama’s professed religious views at face value?

He’s a politician, for Christ’s sake. He will say what he needs to say to get ahead with the voters, so long as it doesn’t come back to bite him in the posterior. What he really believes about God is, of course, well hidden in the recesses of his cranium. He has, then, free rein to claim any damn thing he wants on the subject.

So why try to get to the bottom of his “actual” views on a subject upon which he most likely has no views?

#7
What is the difference in belief between a liberal Christian and a liberal atheist?

Nothing.

Liberal Christian theology has evolved to the point where it has rendered all spiritual and metaphysical claims as vestigal. The liberal atheist (and 99% of high-church atheists are liberal atheists) has simply opted to remove the vestigal God-appendix from his belief system. Otherwise, he functions just like a good little insane liberal Christian. Sorry, but your mind is “poisoned” with belief too.

No one can look into a man’s soul to see if he “really” believes. But that does not mean one cannot look at statements and actions and make a reasonable guess. I wouldn’t consider Obama to be a Christian even if he were sincere in his statements because his theology is post-Christian. However, I don’t think he is sincere about his spirituality to begin with.

Is Obama’s religious affiliation that surprising? He is, after all, the child of an anthropologist, and he was raised in a series of cosmopolitan environments. His mother, who was physically and socially removed from her Midwestern roots, was part of the 1960′s general break with tradition. Obama has no ancestral connection to the African American community, or its religious traditions, only joining the community as an adult.

Michelle is Obama’s real connection to the black community; indeed, I suspect she proved very helpful for him, politically speaking, with the black community. That said, I don’t mean to accuse Obama of a Gingrich-style politically motivated marriage.

On the Muslim question, not to go all postmodern, and call identity simply a relative, contextual category, I do think that a person’s self ascription isn’t enough. Group affiliation is a three way street, with self, group members, and outsiders all playing a role. Look at the debate about whether or not Romney is a Christian.

I am under no illusions as to the negative, bigoted motivations of those who would call Obama a Muslim, but they aren’t the only ones.

Late in the race, when it seemed that Obama was on the verge of winning, I was at a dinner party with a bunch of Turkish guys. They all regarded Obama as a Muslim, Obama’s personal statements notwithstanding, because of his father.

Dwight,

“walk the walk”? You’ve gotten into the man’s head? Save if for Sunday morning or revival week. Based what is known of Obama’s bio, personal and political behavior, it isn’t a stretch to say Obama’s religious affiliation conforms to what one would expect.

Let’s be fair, people join churches for socializing and networking purposes. There’s a reason why doctors and bankers have historically been Episcopalians, not becoming Evangelicals until the later had become more economically respectable. Politicians are social creatures; hermits don’t tend to do very well, politically.

If Obama had gone extremely socially conservative Baptist, that might be seen as a cynical political move above and beyond typical politician behavior, if not an act of rebellion against his mother. And re: “walk the walk,” let’s discuss the personal morality of any number of other church going politicians.

@#4 How many Christians do you know that “walk the walk”? And how many of them that do walk the walk solely do so because of social pressures?
If Obama joined the church for political reasons, he might be even more like people who “inherited” their religious affiliation.

Obama has a liberal Christian theology. I don’t see how this is at all in question. Anyone who has questioned that isn’t evaluating the facts.

And it’s ridiculous to say that Obama joined the black church for political reasons only. Bill Mahr has made similar statements suggesting that Obama doesn’t really believe all that religious nonsense. That’s just as ridiculous as liberals who say that conservative politicians don’t really believe all that religious nonsense, they’re just pandering to their Christian conservative base. It’s atheist wishful thinking at best but more closely resembles paranoid comspiracy theories.

If Obama were really a secret atheist/agnostic, he wouldn’t have appointed Francais Collins to head the NIH. That appointment fits perfectly into his liberal Christian world view there are no conflicts between science and religion.

Look, any religious belief is poisonous. Liberal athesits who like Obama just have to accept that he’s poisoned too (as is most of the electorate). Conservatives would be more successful if they spent more time attacking his true wishy-washy liberal Christian theology rather than making up ridiculous stories about being a Muslim or a black nationalist.

I find it plausible that people do the Christian thing for group identification reasons. We are all very political in our daily lives.

So we’ve had our first black president. I’m looking forward to the day when religion is no longer an issue in politics.

Positions like #3 don’t make sense to me – sure, that’s what he says, but what exactly would you expect him to say if he didn’t believe it? I myself find the case that he’s doing the Christian thing for political reasons quite plausible (subjective p=0.6). Not calling him an atheist/agnostic of course, any number of spiritual/higher power/deist/all-religions-are-valuable type views are just as plausible. One data point that may be of interest – UCC officially supports gay marriage.

Obama says a few things when it is politically expedient but does he walk the walk?

I think he joined an African American church as part of his neosocialist political activism because of the historic role the African American Church plays in the black community and is more or less agnostic.

Obama: “I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life.”

Seems pretty cut and dry.

But what may surprise is that the denomination into which Barack Obama is baptized has a higher proportion of white members than the Latter-day Saints!

I don’t know if this is a mistake, but you link to the Obama entry instead of the United Church of Christ entry here (so the post doesn’t explicitly make the contrast):

Whiteness
United Church of Christ 91%
Latter-day Saints 87 %

= Obama’s church is whiter

Went to high school with a large number of Mormons, and I never encountered a black Mormon. The ones I have met have been almost all white (mostly of British/Northern European descent) with the remainder being Polynesian.
As for Hispanic Mormons, the LDS church has been doing missionary work in Latin America for decades. I had two close friends whose older brother went on a mission trip to Uruguay and married a woman he met there.

Pconroy (9) I can’t quite tell in that case how to distinguish provincial identity politics from race issues. I suspect for many American blacks it’s much more about supporting someone from their community much as I bet many Mormons are supporting Romney because he’s a Mormon finally getting accepted. Although interestingly many Mormons are unwilling to do the same for Reid – so identity politics goes only so far. It’s too bad Colin Powell never ran back in ’96 for a variety of reasons. But I sure would have loved to have seen how the identity politics would have played out if the first black running for President with a chance to win did so on the Republican ticket. (Before Iraq turned into a mess some were hoping for a Condi run along the same lines)

LeoMarius (27) even back when I was at BYU it wasn’t terribly hard to find non-athletic blacks. They still are a small minority and I know many non-whites I knew felt uncomfortable in that sea of whiteness. For others it was not a big deal. When I lived in an area where I was the only white I felt out of place initially but adjusted pretty quickly to the point that when I moved to Utah I hated seeing mainly whites. Interestingly back then there were a fair number of middle eastern non-Mormons at BYU as well. Not as many as at the Canadian college I went to earlier but a surprising number. Honestly I think most would love to have many more people of African descent (either recent or old) at BYU. There aren’t a lot in Provo. I’d love to see many more. But it’s not uncommon to see such diversity. There are several children of partial African descent in my daughter’s dance class.

Certainly Provo’s a pretty white city. But it has been changing. It’s far more diverse now than 20 years ago. Hopefully that’ll continue since the Church is very much international now. I suspect in a fairly short time there will be more hispanic Mormons than those of primarily northern European or British descent.

The leadership issue is a bit more complex as typically leadership has been in the Church a long time. So there are some black leaders although I believe most come from the Brazil area. I think everyone looks forward to having more. Certainly there are lots of very well regarded black Stake Presidents and so forth. The more surprising statistic is the lack of polynesian leadership given how many polynesian Mormons there are – even in Utah. Also the polynesian sub-community has a bit of a reputation as super-Mormons in some ways.

That’s fascinating. In all the silliness in how the liberation theology was being reported I didn’t even realize it was a United Church. Good call about the theological liberalism.

It’s interesting that if Romney becomes as expected the R. nominee that we’ll have two religions a lot of conservative Christians are rather uncomfortable with.

BYU is over 95% white. Try finding a black man on campus who isn’t on an athletic scholarship.

Look at the LDS GAs. Of the 100 top leaders, there is one black man in the group. Of the top 15, the only “diversity” is German Uchtdorf. The rest all American white men, largely from Utah, Idaho, Arizona or California.

Yes, Mormons may baptize a few Hispanics, but it’s adherents are nearly all white.

Sorry if this is a dumb question – I might be having a brain fart. What is the “N” value in the chart that you posted?

@18 I’d offer by comparison the church that my wife grew up in, formally affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA), a predominantly white denomination, even though their church was made up almost entirely of Korean immigrants and their families with all but one service each day in Korean, etc.

While it never came out and defied the Presbyterian Church on any issue of doctrine, had a set of hymnals that it bought from the denomination, and bought its English language bibles in the translation preferred by the denomination, the bottom line is tht they were affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA) rather than the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, the Church of Christ, or the Southern Baptists, mostly because the Presbyterian Church (USA) was ready, willing and able to guarantee a favorable church building mortgage to a small congregation.

My wife’s church, which was far more Evangelical in tone and practice than any predominantly white Presbyterian Church, with fire and brimstone sermons (infused with a healthy dose of Confucianists flavored Biblical interpretation), testimonials, Bible camps that featured episodes where teens would publicly swear off punk rock music or sexy clothes and toss them when they got home (to their great misery a few weeks later when the fervor wore off), wouldn’t be recognizably Presbyterian but for a few logos of the denomination scattered around.

They wouldn’t have affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church or Episcopal Church or even the Lutheran Church under any circumstance, because the minimum level of conformity necessary to affiliate with those denominations in anything like good faith would have been too great. These minimum thresholds of daily practice are probably one of the reasons that the Lutheran and Episcopal Churches, together with modest immigration from places where these churches are predominantly non-white, probably help explain why these churches have remained so white. Liturgical Christians who aren’t Roman Catholic haven’t been a major Evangalism source in countries that have had major immigration in the 20th century to the U.S. (Then again, consider, e.g., The Storehouse Evangelical Covenant Church in Chicago, which has a Lutheran affiliation but also fits the affiliated rather than organically derived from model).

There is a history/geography factor as well — the regions where the more white churches were predominant did not have significant number of black residents until the Great Migration well into the 20th century, and long after Emancipation, and even then there were very few rural blacks since the Great Migration was driven by big city industrial jobs. Also, many of the white denominations split on North/South lines around the time of the Civil War, making the rump Northern parts of the denominations much more white.

But anyway, the practice of an ethnically atypical church affiliating with a denomination, despite the fact that it is deeply atypical of that denomination in a wide variety of other respects when it could have affiliated with any number of similar churches and doesn’t really have organic origins in that denomination, which is what I mean when I talk about an affiliation being mostly “a matter of convenience”, isn’t all that unusual and seems to be what happened in this particular instance.

@14,

I’m not going to argue why people voted for Obama, except to say that everyone I talked to, race was the salient decider. Women especially were drawn to the supposed underdog emotional message, and were prepared to vote against their rational interests.

As regards the other potential Black candidates, I’ve never liked Keyes at all, Cain seemed interesting initially, and Powell might have been someone I would have voted for – he seemed to be level-headed and smart.

razib were actually referring to me and not 4 when you cited #5?

Obama is no Christian. Cathleen Falsani interviewed him in 2004 — its online, google it — focusing on his religious beliefs. He gave answers that no sincere believer would ever give. They were very calculated to please a secular liberal audience. His church attendance was purely social/political.

At what age did he “get religion”? Whatever the age, I agree that it is rare, and in his case it was a good idea. Had he not, it’s very unlikely he would be president today.

“Trinity United Church of Christ is a predominantly black church with more than 8,500 members, located on the southwest side of Chicago.” The affiliation with the UCC is as much as anything a matter of convenience rather than a deep statement about the doctrine espoused in the local parish, which is sometimes described as black liberation theology.

Also, far more interestingly, when it comes to religious belief, is the fact that both his father and mother were quite secular, that he grew up basically secular, and that President Obama is one of those rare cases in this day and age (particularly in Chicago of all places) of an adult convert to Christianity, not just an adult convert to a new Christian denomination, or an adult gaining baptized status among someone who grew up in an adult baptism denomination, but an adult convert to Christianity itself. That is exceedingly rare and tells us much more about the man than the affiliation of convenience of his home megachurch in Illinois.

@ pconroy:
So I say, “What do you like about his policies?” and he says, “He’s Black, gotta support a brother!” Similarly many Liberal SWPL types give basically the same answer, the main/only reason they voted for Obama was that he was Black?!

Yet I don’t think very many of those same Blacks/SWPLs would vote for Herman Cain or Alan Keyes, had they somehow become candidates. By contrast, Colin Powell hypothetically could have drawn a large percentage of this vote. Keyes and Cain are both more “authentically Black” than Obama in the sense that they are descended from slaves, and are not half-white.

So it’s definitely a plus for some voters, but I think the amount of people who would vote for ANY black candidate solely on the basis of race is pretty small. Smaller, almost certainly, than the amount of people who wouldn’t vote for Obama because they think he’s a Muslim/foreigner/Black Revolutionary/etc.

Bear in mind as well that the Black community has voted solidly Democratic for years, and all the previous candidates were white. Whatever you think of Obama’s policies and performance, it’s objectively not hard to see why a lot of people supported him – he appears intelligent and charismatic, and most people didn’t want 4 more years of Republicans. Hillary Clinton would have also won had she got the nomination.

pconroy:”For me:

Racist = basing a decision solely or mostly on the basis of Race

I use this in a value neutral way”

Unfortunatley, most people seem to use it as an all-purpose perjorative.E.g., I was once chatting with a colleague who refered to someone as a “racist” because of his antipathy towards Islam. Now, people can dislike Islam because of the ethnic/racial composition of many of its adherents (i.e., for racial reasons), but the individual in question had revealed no such bias; his negative views, to the best of my knowledge, were entirely theological in nature. When I pointed this out to my colleague, making reference to the fact that he had made similar noises about fundamentalist Christians, he simply refused to acknowledge my point.

For me:

Racist = basing a decision solely or mostly on the basis of Race

I use this in a value neutral way

#9, I agree that I make decisions fairly rationally, and expect too much of other people…

But my main point is that the very act that SWPL/Liberal types unthinkingly see as being anti-Racist is the very definition of Racist – needless to say I’ve never got very far explaining that to SWPL’s, as they generally just can’t comprehend it…

The thing I consistently notice concerning Obama and Racism is this…

A few years ago when Obama was running for President, I asked a Black friend who he was voting for, he says without hesitation, “Obama!”. So I say, “What do you like about his policies?” and he says, “He’s Black, gotta support a brother!” Similarly many Liberal SWPL types give basically the same answer, the main/only reason they voted for Obama was that he was Black?!

Doesn’t anyone realize that this is the very definition of Racism???

Most SWPL’s – largely women, feminized men, and historically liberal minorities – get a cozy feeling inside thinking that voting for a Black man is flipping the bird to White people, especially White men – but I would go as far as saying that their actions are the very purest form of racism.

I count myself among the Rationalist minority and based on Obama’s stated policies I predicted he would be a bad president, and unfortunately for the US, he is even worse than I could ever have imagined – yet I can be certain that racists will still gleefully vote for him…

2. I concur.

Is it accurate to say that whites have a strong revealed preference for marrying other white people? It is clearly correct for *blacks*; if blacks married without regard to race, then 7 out of 8 marriages where one partner is black would be to a non-black. But the actual number is much lower than that.

So, given black preferences, how many blacks are available for whites to marry? Much less than one in eight.

(Leaving aside some complications that males and females have different patterns, and that social class is also a factor.)

By the way, “invariably” is too strong. The Lutheran church here (in Minnesota, and historically with a largely German and Scandinavian membership, though not so much now) has a number of counterexamples.

Funny, I think of Baptist as black and white (somewhat like Peter’s surprise). But I guess 1) when I’ve lived in Baptist areas it’s been where the 8% are traditionally found, 2) my memory doesn’t care about SBC vs other “Baptist” churches.

As someone who’s never lived in the US, looking at articles such as the Romney NYT articles I sometimes feel deeply uncomfortable. The implicit use of a picture of his otherwise pleasant family (the picture looks somewhat choreographed but family portraits always are) as somehow disturbing indicator of “Witness” and that that’s somehow nearly immoral or disqualifies one as a politicians, strikes me as at the very least hinting that *the very existence* of European American families or ethnic groups is somehow immoral. Or that being of predominately European descent by default incriminates you and you must prove to be free of sin before being fit for public life.

I’m sure that as an American I’d find this just a normal part of the quest to find and diagnose signs of implicit racism/ethnocentrism in a society that has tabooed explicit expression of such feelings, but from the outside it just looks unhealthy. I guess taboos always do.

Even so, the West is a pretty weird society by human standards.

Maybe it’s just because I live in the New York area, but I definitely question the very low Asian percentages for Methodists and Presbyterians. Around here those seem to be predominately Asian (mostly Korean) denominations.