As God's instrument, Moses parted the Red Sea. Well, it appears President Obama has a different idea. With a wave of his hand, he's going to reunite our bitterly divided political waters on the hottest of hot-button issues.
Don't get me wrong; Obama's conscious effort to divide Americans on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion and wealth for political purposes is alive and thriving. That's a separate phenomenon.
What I'm talking about here is his apparent conviction that by sheer force of his presence, his charisma, his aura and his gift for supernatural nuance, he can utter magical words on any bitterly controversial matter and instantly reconcile opposing factions, even on matters that do not lend themselves to neat solutions.
This exaggerated sense of self-worth, not just his visceral liberal inclination toward appeasement, is what leads him to believe he can negotiate with terrorists and persuade them to renounce their jihad against America upon witnessing his world apology tour, his outreach to Muslims in Cairo, his witch hunt against CIA interrogators, and his shoutouts to the Muslim Brotherhood. (Don't tell him, but polls show he's even less popular than President George W. Bush was in the Muslim world.)
His stunning absence of any awareness of his own limitations (Socrates' wisdom yardstick) is obviously what convinced him he could deliver a speech at the University of Notre Dame that would induce a bilateral epiphany in which both sides of the abortion debate would finally realize that until he had deconstructed the issue so elegantly, they had been looking through the abortion glass darkly. Henceforth, they would see clearly and bask in the glow of harmonic convergence where pro-life advocates would appreciate the bizarre concept of a mother's sacred reproductive rights and the pro-aborts would come to understand, er, never mind. Only one side in these arguments needs to show movement -- the side that opposes Obama's beliefs.
This robust arrogance is what made Obama believe he could convince freedom-loving Americans that they would love socialized health care. You'd think he might have been discouraged when they still didn't embrace it after 54 speeches, but trapped in his own self-perpetuating personal echo chamber, he had no other options but to keep pummeling us with his propaganda until he decided to just bribe, cheat and steal in order to get the bill crammed through. Through it all, he never lost faith in his ability to place square pegs into round holes.
So it is that we read in The Washington Post that Obama thinks he can lull us into kumbaya over his death-culture assault on Americans' religious liberty with his rule requiring religious institutions to cover contraception as part of their employee health plans. This mandate would require all employers, including religiously affiliated colleges and hospitals that receive federal funds, to provide female employees the full breadth of health care coverage, including birth control, the "morning-after pill" and sterilization services. He deceitfully promised in that Notre Dame speech, by the way, that he would respect the conscience rights of religious institutions and that he would not invoke this abominable rule that he is now vigorously and defiantly embracing.
Once again, he must think he can placate opponents by patting them on the head and telling them they just need to settle down, see the superior wisdom and morality of his position, and understand that everything will be fine if they'll just believe in him. Yes, that's right; the Post reports that administration officials are telling liberal groups and lawmakers that Obama is not backing down from his hard-line position on the rule, but assuring "religious groups that a phase-in period will allow the two sides to agree on an approach to putting the rule into practice."
You see, in Obama's grandiose world -- in which rhetoric, sophism and endless speechifying reign supreme -- every impasse can be breached with his miraculously penetrating silver tongue.
But this time, as has been increasingly the case for the hapless, unreflective Obama, his obfuscation will not work. As Anthony R. Picarello Jr., general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said, "so far, (the administration's promise to) 'work this thing through' is just the sugar-coated version of 'force you to comply.'"
Indeed, this authoritarian administration prohibited a Catholic Army chaplain from reading a letter by Timothy Broglio -- archbishop of the Military Services, USA -- criticizing the mandate because with it, "the Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States" in a way that is "denying Catholics our Nation's first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty."
One way or another -- either by backing down or by facing an electoral spanking -- Obama will not win this one. With the backlash he is inviting, he might finally learn the limits of his mythical magic.
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