The head of Focus on the Family, Colorado Spring’s bigot-in-chief, James Dobson, has dismissed Sen. Obama’s more liberal biblical interpretation as wrong.  Obama has correctly noted before that one cannot simply cite certain passages in the bible as God’s will while ignoring all the other inconvenient passages.  Just as Leviticus condemns homosexuality, it also condemns eating shellfish and it permits slavery.

I have long wondered whether the recent Evangelical movement is really just a bible-thumping wing of the G.O.P., abandoning any apperance of non-partisanship.  James Dobson in particular has denounced many evangelicals’ call for a torture ban and “creation care” (environmentalism).

Jacques Berlinerblau in the Post says that Obama’s Christianity is a humbler sort that doesn’t profess to have discovered the exact will of God.  Dobson, Berlinerblau asserts, is arrogant in his Christianity:

For Obama, the Bible is ambiguous, multi-faceted, difficult to interpret, subject to many readings. It is so complex, so multivalent that it demands humility. A believer–especially one who is a politician– should never arrogantly presume to have identified God’s inscrutable message.

Many conservative Evangelicals tend, by contrast, to believe that there is a right interpretation of the Bible. This proper reading may be attained through faith, intense biblical study (“Scripture interprets itself”), and guidance from the Holy Spirit.

The more demagogic ones, however, raise the ante. They assume that they have actually discovered the right interpretation. Equating their interpretation with divine truth, they try to impose God’s word on the social body writ large. Their focus is not hermeneutics, but politics.

Dobson falls in the demagogic category.  It is interesting to note that his latest criticism of Obama was produced by the taxable arm of Focus on the Family.  Since this arm is taxed, it may pursue political advocacy. What is Focus on the Family, afterall, other than a political extension of the G.O.P.?

Paul Krugman asserts that much of American’s political discourse over the past forty years has really been a disguised discussion on race. The Right, Krugman states, has more effectively taken advantage of this new, disguised racism since,

Without racial division, the conservative message — which has long dominated the political scene — loses most of its effectiveness.

Krugman asserts that the following political mantras are really racially charged code meant to quietly reinstate Jim Crow:

Thank you, omniscient Paul Krugman, for translating these political code words of the bigoted masses. Here I was under the impression that all the people who wanted reduced government spending simply didn’t want to saddle their children with enormous debt. Little did I know they wanted to cold-heartedly snatch welfare payments from blacks.

I was also under the impression that people who were fed up with heinous, incivil, urban violence merely valued human lives and the safety and civility of civilization. Little did I know they were merely looking for an excuse to incarcerate blacks.

Leave it to Paul Krugman to trivialize and dismiss the political beliefs of others as mere racism. Maybe he’ll next take a page from the Obama playbook and write a column about guns and religion.

Future cultural divides, writes David Brooks, will not be along religious lines, but between the theistic and the atheistic:

In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day.

Today’s New York Time editorial appears to agree with John McCain on issues of trade:

Blaming Nafta and other trade agreements for American workers’ pain may play well on the campaign stump. But it will not solve the country’s economic problems. It will only make them worse.

A cynic would argue that editorial board writers face little competition from cheap labor abroad, but the editorial is right, nonetheless, for various reasons explained in the article.

I’ve also been wondering lately why people criticized international trade, but not interstate trade. Southern states, for instance, have attracted many auto manufacturing jobs even while Michigan has shed them.

All three candidates have promised the impossible: to cut greenhouse gas emissions and to lower the cost of gasoline.

McCain wants a gas tax holiday from Memorial Day to Labor Day. His rationalization is that the slight savings would encourage consumer spending. He also avers that such boosted spending would bring about economic recovery to offset losses to the Treasury. Yeah right.

The Clinton and Obama camps have added an anti-corporate flare to their equally populist proposals, promising gas tax reductions to be compensated by a “windfall profits” tax on “Big Oil,” the Democrats’ favorite bogyman.

But what about the environment? Any gas tax reduction incentivizes consumption of gasoline and thus the production of greenhouse gases. Cheap gas, often mistaken for being listed in the Bill of Rights, is entirely antithetical to curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Like President Bush’s belief that Americans need not sacrifice one bit to pay for war, the Democrats believe Americans need not sacrifice one bit for clean air or to reduce CO2 emissions. They prefer to shift the burden to “Big Oil” and the auto companies, whom they demand to produce more fuel efficient cars. Candidate resort to rhetoric demanding in increase in the CAFE standards, expecting the auto companies to deliver.

Sadly, raising mileage standards is unlikely to reduce emissions anytime soon. Blaming mileage standards does, though, provide politicians with convenient political cover as they shift the burden of environmentalism to car companies. This is unwise for several reasons.

First, raising mileage standards takes years and does nothing to address the emissions of existing vehicles.

Second, the moment a president signs a bill mandating high standards, the auto industry’s lobbyists will shift into top gear, lunching and golfing in full force to dull the bite of any CAFE legislation either by obtaining extensions or all-out waivers.

Third, a high-mileage vehicle, though emitting less CO2 per mile, can still emit an overall large amount if driven frequently.

The simplest and most effective solution is also the least politically popular: increasing the gas tax to act as a carbon tax. This would immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions since gas consumption would decline as the price rose. However, while the Democrats like to bash the Bush administration for doing precious little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they know that the public would not tolerate any intentional increase in gas prices.

Though the president displays a weak commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, his aversion to Kyoto and other initiatives is more honest than the Democrats’ double-talk. He states correctly that the nation is neither willing nor prepared to pay the economic price of reducing emissions. This is true.

Too many Americans believe they are entitled to cheap oil and Democrats and Republicans have long realized that these people vote. Half of Americans live in suburbs, which are notorious for their car-dependency and whose very existence is due largely to cheap gas and free highways. Are the people who drive to the store, to school, to work, to the mailbox—everywhere!— going to appreciate paying $7.00 per gallon? Not likely.