14. Obama as the standard of divine law
For millennia, theologians have struggled with the concept of sin. Usually, though, the question focused on how one finds redemption from sin, or what constitutes a sin, not who gets to decide what a sin is. It seemed a given that sin, by its very nature, is a transgression against God’s values. What those values are is subject to debate, of course, but the debate is always in the context of divine law and divine will.
Except to Barack Obama. When asked to define “sin,” he stated that sin is “being out of alignment with my values,” whatever those are. So take that, St. Augustine!
13. Announcing the killing of Osama bin Laden
Perhaps the only time the nation has truly been united under President Obama was when he delivered the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed. And why let a great opportunity for self-aggrandizement go wasted?
Just as he had felt compelled to include himself in the report of the Navy snipers who killed the Somali pirates who had hijacked an American tanker in 2009, telling us that he had heroically “given the order” to shoot, in his relatively brief announcement about the Bin Laden killing Obama referenced himself fifteen times, speaking at length of his minimal role: “I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda… I was briefed on a possible lead… I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden… I determined that we had enough intelligence…and authorized an operation.”
Oddly, never once during this speech did he mention the Navy SEALs who actually carried out the operation. But that was a minor detail.
Read the whole list here.
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