U.S. / President Obama on the borderline

His State of the Union speech showed this as in issue after issue he was closer to the political views of traditional moderate Republicans than to those of the leftist wing of his Democratic Party. Indeed, The American Conservative magazine this week has an article with the title: “How Obama Lost the Left.”

I think Cardinal Walter Kasper has captured well the deepest nature of the present political unrest when he writes that “the attempt to pick out from this dizzyingly vast multiplicity” arising from globalization “a thread that could unify and hold it together seems to be more and more hopeless.” As a result, “postmodern philosophy has drawn certain conclusions from this situation. It consciously abandons the postulate of unity that until now has shaped Western thought as a whole. It advocates, not only acceptance and tolerance of plurality.” It also calls for “a fundamental option in favor of pluralism in which there are no longer any absolute values and norms. Reason has become plural in itself. Truth, humanity, and justice exist only in the plural” (cf. The Uniqueness and Universality of Jesus Christ, Eerdmann, 2001).

Obama is on the borderline between modern and post-modern thought, trying to hang on, I think, to the modern side and somehow rescue unity and certainty from post-modern radical relativism. The country somehow senses this, both moderate conservatives and moderate liberals. More than any other national politician, the President personifies the present cultural clash.

Barack Obama is not a Catholic, but Chris Matthews is. I hope Chris may find someone who will help him see the beauty of the relation between the Church’s social doctrine and the liberation of reason from both modern and postmodern thought brought about by faith, hope, and charity.