Barak Obama’s ‘faith’

A concise definition of faith: 1: confidence in the value or truth of a thing, idea or person; 2: belief that doesn’t rest on logical proof or empirical evidence; 3: loyalty to a thing, idea or person; 4: body of a religion or set of beliefs.

When one is speaking off-the-cuff, their values come to the fore as they advance those values without a conscious filter. However, there are two sides to the value ‘coin’ as there is the side that one sees – the explicitly declared values – and there are the implied values that show one’s base value system that the conscious and explicit values are based upon. To say that any given thing is ‘good,’ that good is based upon something.

Most politicians speak of goods, but leave them undefined: what exactly ‘affordable housing, health care’ or what is ‘fair’? Those ideas are the seen side of the coin; the manners by which those goals are to be achieved constitute the hidden side of the coin. What methods are to be implemented to achieve the undefined affordable whatever, or fairness?

Obama’s faith can be seen in two key exchanges, both widely televised, but not much connected. The two exchanges involve when he was campaigning and he spoke with Samuel ‘Joe the Plumber’ Wurzelbacher, and in a debate moderated in part by Charlie Gibson.

With Joe the Plumber, after Obama talks [rambles] about justifying progressive taxes, he then makes the (in)famous ‘spread the wealth around’ comment. That comment was important, but more relevant and showing was in the democratic debate when he was asked about the capital gains tax (when rates decreased, revenues increased; when rates increased, revenue decreased), Obama’s response was that “I’d look at raising the capital gains tax, for purposes of fairness…” Two separate comments about the goal of fairness; two separate comments implying his real value of fairness was redistribution through force – by legal plunder.

Fairness is never defined, it is just left floating around so that any politician may come along and try and blow it in the direction they desire for the time. But the hidden values of legal plunder comes through. Even with the premises that revenue goes down when the taxes were raised, and revenue rose when taxes were decreased, Obama still wanted to increase taxes for fairness, that is plunder the wealth from some to give to the others, and that is to punish the more successful for their success.

This is Obama’s faith. It has nothing to do with religion, outside of the religion of the State to rule as a god, with the arrogance and false belief that they can command the laws of nature and economics. There may be some religious base to how he forms his ideas, but in action Obama’s faith calls for the sacrifice of value of the wealthy (notice how wealthy isn’t clearly defined so it can be changed), to be given to others. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t even financially pragmatic, for he didn’t contest the premises of the negative relation of taxes and revenue; for the purposes of his faith, value must be plundered from those who worked for it, and handed out to those who didn’t work for it. This doesn’t mean that people don’t work, for many do. But hard work isn’t enough. Obama’s faith doesn’t care about that, though. It calls for others to sacrifice their value.