US-Jesuit Believes that Obama Has “Changed”
By Fr Raymond A. Schroth SJ
Barack Obama has changed. About six years ago I stood two feet away from him in the St. Peter’s College, Jersey City Gym, which he had rented for a campaign rally, and watched him deal one by one with the crowd that squeezed around him and told myself that maybe this was the one we had been waiting for who might restore to America the character that George W. Bush had drained away.
In his major speeches — Inaugural Addresses, State of the Union, etc. and in his heart-felt campaign for gun control— he has come across as a Christian humanist, a man of compassion, deep feeling, high democratic ideals.
But recently as the “war” president he has morphed into an indifferent, pragmatic utilitarian. The man who once taught Constitutional law seems to have forgotten the relationship between law and morality. He seems to have shelved the basic Christian principle of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” which in philosophy resembles a rule from Immanuel Kant’s ethics, known as the categorical imperative: a valid moral principle is an unconditional law which applies to all human beings.
In The New Republic, Jack Goldsmith describes the transformation of the CIA since 9/11, especially during the Obama administration, into “a killing machine, an organization consumed with man-hunting.
”To an almost odd degree, President Obama has assumed responsibility for every drone assassination. I was personally appalled as it became clear that no attempt was made to arrest Osama bin Laden and bring him to trial. Even the Navy Seal who personally shot the unarmed Osama again and again told Esquire magazine this was either the greatest or worst moment of his life. In the aftermath the fact that Obama had killed bin Laden was touted as proof that Obama was a strong leader.
Keep reading in the American Magazine
Barack Obama has changed. About six years ago I stood two feet away from him in the St. Peter’s College, Jersey City Gym, which he had rented for a campaign rally, and watched him deal one by one with the crowd that squeezed around him and told myself that maybe this was the one we had been waiting for who might restore to America the character that George W. Bush had drained away.
In his major speeches — Inaugural Addresses, State of the Union, etc. and in his heart-felt campaign for gun control— he has come across as a Christian humanist, a man of compassion, deep feeling, high democratic ideals.
But recently as the “war” president he has morphed into an indifferent, pragmatic utilitarian. The man who once taught Constitutional law seems to have forgotten the relationship between law and morality. He seems to have shelved the basic Christian principle of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” which in philosophy resembles a rule from Immanuel Kant’s ethics, known as the categorical imperative: a valid moral principle is an unconditional law which applies to all human beings.
In The New Republic, Jack Goldsmith describes the transformation of the CIA since 9/11, especially during the Obama administration, into “a killing machine, an organization consumed with man-hunting.
”To an almost odd degree, President Obama has assumed responsibility for every drone assassination. I was personally appalled as it became clear that no attempt was made to arrest Osama bin Laden and bring him to trial. Even the Navy Seal who personally shot the unarmed Osama again and again told Esquire magazine this was either the greatest or worst moment of his life. In the aftermath the fact that Obama had killed bin Laden was touted as proof that Obama was a strong leader.
Keep reading in the American Magazine
