While my initial inclination is to say that I agree with Dori, let the reader make his or her own choice, I still have to wonder.

Michelle Malkin, while only covering this in passing, notes another angle that I think is related:

Barack Obama: Soul-fixer

Michelle Obama wants you to vote for Barack Obama because she thinks what America needs is a healer-in-chief. Via transcription from Ed Morrissey:

We have lost the understanding that in a democracy, we have a mutual obligation to one another — that we cannot measure the greatness of our society by the strongest and richest of us, but we have to measure our greatness by the least of these. That we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done. That is why I am here, because Barack Obama is the only person in this who understands that. That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.

I disagree with her, for many reasons.  And at the same time I think she is right for all the wrong reasons.

I disagree because Obama is not the solution to the brokenness of our country and our culture, and I agree that our culture is indeed scarred and damaged, but I feel personally liberals with their insistence on overriding values with their “pseudo freedoms” are more of the problem than anyone.

Obama is called (in mocking derision) by many “the Messiah” because he seems to generate that the image of America’s savior.  The savior against the evil backwards conservatives, the misguided sellout Democrats and pretty much anyone you can imagine.  HE saves us from racism, from sexism, from war and even from ourselves if necessary.

Now, all politicians swear they are the answer to America’s problems, but the followers of Obama seem to throw themselves into it with a religious fervor, including the falling out swooning so typical in the more emotionally driven churches.

Michelle Malkin observes one hypocritical bit:

When Republicans talk about broken souls in the context of civil society, the nutroots start screaming about the obliteration of the church-state line.

When the Obama campaign uses the same rhetoric to get him elected to the White House, everyone swoons.

And she is right, because at the least, Obama is becoming the religion of the left.

Captain Ed retorts:

But it’s the notion that only Barack Obama can save our souls that is the most offensive part of the speech, by far.  Government doesn’t exist to save souls; it exists to ensure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense. If I feel my soul needs saving, the very last place I’d look (in the US) for a savior would be Washington DC or Capitol Hill. I’ll trust God and Jesus Christ with my soul, and I’m not going to mistake Barack Obama for either one.

This, though, is the religion of statism distilled to its essence. Only a government can rescue people from the consequences of their own decisions. Only government programs can provide for your every need, and only government can use your money wisely enough to ensure that your needs get covered. Individuals cannot possibly manage to help their neighbors through their churches or community organizations, let alone encourage people to do for themselves.

And all you need to enter the statist Utopia is to sell your soul. So that it can be fixed.

And Sister Toldjah notes:

This is, in a nutshell, the radicalized, stripped-bare-of-the-platitudes version of any speech you’ll hear her husband make. America sucks, we’re not “sacrificing” enough for each other, our souls need be “healed,” and the only man who can do it is … Barack Obama. He is the “only man” in the race who has dealt with the toughness of the “streets” as a “community organizer.” Go here to listen to the speech, and Hugh Hewitt’s commentary in between clips, where he takes her to task for everything she asserts. The whole segment is about ten minutes long, but please, please, listen to it - and send it on to your friends, family, anyone who is even remotely interested in this election.

YouTube has clips from her UCLA speech - it’s the one where she spoke alongside Oprah and California First Lady Maria Shriver.

For anyone on the fence about whether or not to support Barack Obama, this speech should throw up red flags and have the alarm bells ringing. But, some might say, this is his wife speaking, not him. Bzzt: With all due respect, get a clue - as I noted earlier she’s saying the same thing Barack Obama does when he speaks, only he does it in platitudes and pretty words, all the while also promising to “heal this nation.” This is something our eventual nominee, John McCain, understands:

I do not seek the presidency on the presumption that I am blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save my country in its hour of need. I seek the presidency with the humility of a man who cannot forget that my country saved me.

What an absolutely startling contrast to how Barack Obama and his wife view his own candidacy.

So to tie this all together, IF - and I am clearly saying IF - if Obama is orchestrating these fainting episodes, he can only to have hoped to appear venerable, and to appear mature and calm in the face of calamity.  He is the healer who gives his own water to the fainter, calms her and organizes her rescue.  All powerful images that a leader and commander would want to encourage.  And quite frankly images that would not shock me int eh midst of a campaign where the leading parties are so vested to winning.

And those images are consistent with his wife’s representations of his being America’s hope to cure it’s broken soul.

To them, America has fallen, and only HE can help it rise again.

But to be honest, if he did not choreograph them, it may be more concerning.  Maybe the religion of Obama is growing more then we realize.  Maybe his followers do love him with a zealousness rivaling that of a charismatic preacher.  Maybe.

And if so, what could a man do with that following?

Clearly he is comfortable with being seen as that of the Saviour of our Nation.

The question is, are you?

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