No one, and I do mean not one human being, could imagine Trump even knowing who Reinhold Niebuhr was, let alone understand what his philosophy was about.
We once admired intelligence, leadership, rationality, honesty, and decency in our presidents. Not all of them had those qualities in equal amounts, but most of them had at least one or two.
In my opinion, and millions and millions of people in America and around the world, Trump hasn't one of them.
If I'm wrong in my opinion, please explain.
The person who interviewed Mr. Obama when he explained why he loved Reinhold Niebuhr was David Brooks, a columnist for The New York Times.
In a 2007 interview, Brooks asked Obama an off‑the‑cuff question: “Had you ever read Reinhold Niebuhr?” Obama responded, “I love him. He’s one of my favorite philosophers,” and then went on to discuss Niebuhr’s ideas with enthusiasm and insight.
18 comments:
Niebuhr taught that in the political realm, one is rarely choosing between pure good and pure evil, but rather between competing "lesser evils."
Pretty tough stuff for binary people, those unable to hold two competing ideas in their heads at once.
How things change when one sees, with clarity, the truth of things.
First an Obama detractor, I came to understand, like, and support him.
Living the reified beliefs of a closed mind is tantamount to living in chains.
Exactly where a significant share of our society lives.
James Comey's nom de plume...
Moralists often make terrible Civil Servants. Their personal morality tends to spill over into their organizational ethics and seldom reflect the general interests (in the Bataillian sense) of their represented constituents (In Comey's case, a non-partisan FBI)
Barack's chosen "lesser evils" were always Democrats and ethnic minorities, never the Nation and American People (as a whole).
Meden agan!
BTW... Niebuhr had a brother, Richard. He too was quite a theologian. His seminal work was Christ and Culture.
Together the two of them shaped a generation of real thinkers here in the states.
Law is the epitomy of reification of beliefs. They represent dualistic absolutes. Men are meant to apply them with "mercy" in mind, NOT retribution. For the quality of mercy is NOT strained.
The oft-ignored "Authoritarianism" in the midst of the Democratic Party
retributive justice niebuhr
In the framework of Christian Realism, Reinhold Niebuhr argued that retributive justice is a necessary, unavoidable reality in human society. Because collective human nature is inherently self-interested and sinful, pure, unadulterated love (agape) is an impossible standard for nations and social structures. Therefore, retributive justice serves as the "second best" way to restrain evil, maintain order, and enforce accountability.
Niebuhr’s views on retributive justice, detailed in foundational works like Moral Man and Immoral Society, can be broken down into a few core concepts:
The Fallacy of Pure Love in Public Life: Niebuhr criticized naive pacifists and idealists who believed society could be run solely on the law of love. In collective and political life, human egoism is too dominant. Therefore, the enforcement of justice—including retributive punishment—is required to protect the innocent from the powerful.
Justice as the "Proximate Solution": Niebuhr viewed justice generally as "a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems". Because perfect, harmonious love is impossible on a global or societal scale, retributive and corrective justice mechanisms are pragmatic, "approximate" forms of relative justice.
The Tension Between Justice and Grace: While retributive justice is necessary for social order, Niebuhr also recognized its limits. It is morally inferior to love and forgiveness. He warned that societies often fall into the trap of confusing their retributive judgments with absolute divine justice, leading to self-righteousness, cruelty, and uninhibited vengeance.
Proportionality and Restraint: Although he supported the use of coercive power to balance conflicting social groups, Niebuhr argued that justice must continually be informed by a humble awareness of one's own sin. This means that while retributive punishment is necessary, it must always be measured, recognizing that no human judge is completely objective.
Ultimately, Niebuhr viewed retributive justice as a tragic necessity—an essential tool for holding the chaotic, egoistic forces of humanity together in a broken world, while recognizing that the ultimate Christian ideal points toward grace and reconciliation.
He sounds a lot like Herbert Marcuse (Father of the New Left) and his arguments calling for Repressive tolerance
Reading this makes my heart hurt thinking how far the Office of the President, and with it all of us, have fallen.
You're wrong. Obama's own words belie what you stated. He is on record often stating the very opposite of what you claim.
Former President Obama frequently addressed the nation as a whole and defined his political mission around the American people rather than exclusively siding with specific factions. A core theme of his presidency was the ideal of a united country, emphasizing common goals and collective progress over strict partisan or ethnic division.
I remember his 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention here in Boston where he said: "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America; there is the United States of America."
From AI:
"Throughout his career, Obama made numerous public statements that refute the idea that he ignored the broader American public:
The "One America" Vision: In his foundational 2004 Democratic National Convention address, he explicitly stated, "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is the United States of America," directly challenging the idea of an irreconcilably divided nation.
National Unity: In his addresses to the nation, he often highlighted the courage, optimism, and ingenuity of the American people as a whole. He consistently invoked a shared American creed.
Farewell Address: During his final speech as president, he urged Americans to move beyond political bubbles and recognize that their fellow citizens "love this country just as much as we do" and share the same core values. While his policies focused on expanding civil rights and addressing economic inequalities—which particularly benefited minority communities and working-class families—his overarching political philosophy framed these efforts as steps toward achieving a "more perfect union" for the entire nation."
One more thing. I see Mr. Obama's words as aspirational, not the exact reality of what America was when he spoke them. Obviously there is tribalism and there are red states and blue states.
The official motto of the US was E pluribus unum (Out of many, one -- side note: The Latin phrase has 13 letters, which represents the original 13 colonies) until the Red Scare of the 1950s got it changed to "In God We Trust," which, for a secular nation, is a curious motto.
"E pluribus unum" is still aspirational, otherwise it would have been eradicated from our currency and Great Seal of the United States.
Trump is the complete and depressing opposite of every admirable human quality we witnessed in Barack Obama.
If true, why would Obama revise the National Intelligence Assessment performed at the end of his term to falsely claim the Putin favoured Trump? It was an act of partisanship intended to cripple the incoming administration, nothing more.
Acta non Verba!
Google AI: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified and released intelligence documents regarding the 2016 Russian election interference. She accused Barack Obama and his administration of running a "treasonous conspiracy" to fabricate intelligence, which she claimed was used to delegitimize Donald Trump's 2016 victory.
Gabbard's Declassification and Allegations
Tulsi Gabbard released a series of declassified documents, which included a years-old Republican staff report from the House Intelligence Committee and internal Obama-era correspondence. She alleged that the Obama administration and former intelligence officials—such as former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey—politicized the intelligence community's 2017 assessment. Gabbard asserted that the released records show there was an improper reliance on the Steele dossier and that agencies ignored intelligence contradicting their conclusions that Russia intended to help Donald Trump.
Criminal Referral and Security Clearances
Gabbard sent these declassified materials to the Department of Justice. Attorney General Pam Bondi directed federal prosecutors to convene a grand jury to investigate these Obama-era intelligence conclusions.
Furthermore, at President Trump's direction, Gabbard revoked the security clearances of 37 former officials—including prominent Democrats such as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden—citing their alleged involvement in politicizing intelligence.
Political and Public Response
The accusations triggered a massive political controversy and debate. Former Obama aides and intelligence officials heavily criticized the claims, dismissing them as an attempt to rewrite history and a mischaracterization of intelligence methods. Critics noted that these allegations echoed long-standing efforts by Donald Trump to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2016 Russia investigations.
Tulsi was a Democrat. Why would she lie?
"Treasonous conspiracy" is a pretty damn serious accusation. Why hasn't there been a grand jury convened to hear the evidence and bring indictments?
Why? Because this is nothing more than Trump retribution BS.
Neither Pam Bondi nor Tulsi Gabbard, while they held office, brought any treasonous conspiracy charges against Mr. Obama or his people, because there is no there there!
You, of course, buy into nutty conspiracies, so here you are claiming one again, which is going nowhere, because it is a lie.
"No credible or legal consensus supports the claim that Barack Obama and his administration orchestrated a "treasonous conspiracy".
While Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and President Donald Trump have used this phrasing to accuse the Obama administration of manufacturing the Trump-Russia election interference narrative, bipartisan investigations and independent reviews contradict the characterization of a treasonous conspiracy." --BBC
"Congressional sources, independent fact-checkers, and representatives from the former Obama administration strongly rejected the "treasonous conspiracy" label, calling the narrative a misleading rewrite of history. Their counter-evidence includes:
Distinction in Cyber Definitions: Critics note the declassified documents conflate two different things: hacking into physical voting systems to change vote tallies (which the intelligence community never claimed happened) versus disinformation and email hacking campaigns designed to influence voter perception.
Bipartisan Consensus: A 2020 bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigation—co-signed by prominent Republicans—affirmed the original intelligence findings that Russia did execute an extensive influence campaign to damage Hillary Clinton and aid Trump's candidacy.
Rebuttal by Obama's Office: Representatives for Barack Obama dismissed the claims as "nonsense and misinformation," pointing out that nothing in the newly released documents undercuts the reality of Russia's interference campaign." --BBC
I will not publish anymore comments on this conspiracy.
Why would Tulsi lie? Maybe it was her best qualification, in Trump's estimation, for the job?
"Tulsi Gabbard’s career as a national political figure has not been very long, but it has been unusually circuitous: her supporters and her detractors tend to agree on this, even though they disagree about what we should make of it. She comes from Hawaii, where she served in the state legislature and the National Guard; in those years, she campaigned against “homosexual advocacy organizations” and in favor of environmental protections. Gabbard was elected to Congress in 2012, running as a Democrat, and was made a vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee. Since then, she has left the D.N.C., because she wanted to endorse Bernie Sanders; left Congress, because she wanted to run for President; and left the Democratic Party, because she had become convinced that it is, she says, “led by an élitist cabal of woke warmongers.” --Kalefa Sanneh
That last line didn't age well, did it! LOL!
1) She criticized the Democratic establishment as being a "cabal of warmongers," arguing that party policies were pushing the United States into proxy wars and risking nuclear conflict.
2) Gabbard frequently expressed concern over what she deemed the silencing of dissent and the curtailment of free speech and religious liberty by the political left. (Her boss got comedians fired because they hurt his feelings with their humor!)
Your opinion -FJ about Obama and the American people. I disagree.
Intelligence without compassion is no virtue at all.
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