To anyone who saw the Presidential news conference on Monday this week, as I did, you may or may not agree with my assessment that it was the worst display of hubris I’ve ever seen publicly by any President of these United States. For some time I have watched an increasingly imperialistic attitude on behalf of Mr. Obama. It’s no secret that I disagree with many of his moral policies, but that isn’t the issue. It’s the attitude. He has a right, case in point, to invite whoever he wants to pray at his inauguration. But to dis-invite an evangelical pastor, Louie Giglio of Passion City Church in Atlanta, because of a 20-year-old sermon on homosexuality is arrogant, considering the logic behind the cancellation. Addie Whisenant, the spokesperson for the Presidential Inaugural Committee explained the awkward situation by saying that Giglio didn’t properly celebrate the strength and diversity of our country. Yet President Obama listened to the sermons of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, for more than a decade as Wright used God’s name in vain to damn America, and Obama never flinched, until Wright’s statements were outed. The President might at least have had the courtesy to ask Giglio how he feels now about what he said 20 years ago and requested that he not express those particular views in his anticipated Inaugural prayer. That would have been reasonable. To imperially declare Giglio guilty without a fair hearing is unacceptable.
Alexis de Tocqueville was the 19th century French political thinker who is reputed to have said, America is great because America is good. He also commented on his anti-monarchial views by decrying imperial despotism, even in a democracy. He loathed a nation such as America degenerating to a government driven by a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules that destroy individual incentive by making ordinary citizens nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd. We’ve all seen it with the EPA, Obamacare, entitlement society, building codes, IRS, and the endless red tape of any honest citizen trying to start or run a company. Perhaps we need to remind our President and all those in Congress that they serve us, we don’t serve them; and that we have a right to our Christian conscience and the freedoms “endowed” upon us by our Creator.
