Columnist.
Article VI of the U.S. Constitution prohibits a religious test as a qualification for any public office in the United States. This was a topic of interest just before the presidential election in 2012. And why? Because Republican candidate Mitt Romney was an active leader in the Mormon Church, and to millions of conservative Christians, Mormonism was not part of the Evangelical movement in America. They applied their own informal religious test to Romney's religion. It did not measure up. On election day, millions of them stayed home. Romney lost.
Over the weekend a reporter on Fox News said something that struck my attention: "There is a move to have the Republican Convention Rules Committee enact a measure that would prevent bound delegates from abstaining from votes on the first ballot, based on their conscience." This reference to conscience got my attention because I have studied the subject for decades, having also written a history of liberty of conscience. Wanting to make sure that the reporter had her facts straight, I tracked down the source for the reporter's brief remarks. It turns out that Virginia has a statute that requires delegates to the national political conventions to vote for the winners of the primaries. This year for the Republicans that would be Donald Trump.
President Obama's address at Hiroshima, Japan on May 27 provides us with a good opportunity to examine his foreign policy attitude and contrast it with the views of one of America's most courageous war-time presidents — Harry S. Truman. This exercise has three steps: a look at Obama's thought, a briefer summary of Truman's views, and then a comparison of the two.
Donald Trump was, of course, famous long before he began his presidential run. That fame rested on his decades-long career in real estate. Though there are heated arguments currently between Trump and commentators regarding his net worth, there is no question that he has made tens of millions of dollars. Before dealing with that controversy, I would like to note how his father and paternal grandfather each made a fortune before him, largely in real estate. Thus, the question, "Is it in the genes?"
President Obama and his administration's spokespersons continue to explain the eruption of bombings and mass shootings as "lone wolf attacks" or "work place violence." The cause, they often say, is too many guns in society. Their response is a further demand for sweeping gun laws. Many others, however, refer to these events as radical Islamic terrorism. Is this a game of semantics or is there a real difference between the two terms? As the title implies, there are two terms involved here: "Radical Islam" and "Terrorism." Defining each will tell us much about the president's confusion and the reality that has him befuddled.
On June 17, 2015, a young man entered Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina and was welcomed by members of the Bible study and prayer group. He sat with them for most of an hour and then got up and went on a tirade about how African-Americans were destroying the white South he loved. Brandishing a handgun, he began to fire at the crowd. By the end, he had killed nine people. He was soon taken into custody and charged with nine murders and related crimes. This event, of course, made headlines all over the nation. Now, a few months later, it has all but disappeared from public consciousness. Other events, like the increasingly frequent shooting of on-duty police officers, have replaced it in news headlines. Yet, people still want to know what causes horrific events, like the Charleston church tragedy. Why do they happen? Pundits, politicians, pastors, and many others all have ready explanations for such events. Thus, in the days following the Charleston church murders, many explanations were offered. Consider the following.
