Lou Dobbs vs. Jesus

I have not paid attention to Lou Dobbs in a long time, but this commentary on cnn.com caught my eye. Dobbs claims that religious leaders are "encroaching" on politics, particularly when it comes to illegal immigration, Dobbs' pet topic. Dobbs feels that it's inappropriate for religious leaders to criticize government policies regarding immigration, but at least he includes this great quote:

The Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners Magazine put it this way: "If given the choice on this issue between Jesus and Lou Dobbs, I choose my Lord and savior, Jesus Christ."

I don't often agree with Jim Wallis, but here I say, "Go, Jim!"

Then Dobbs kind of goes off the deep end. He counters Wallis by citing Romans 13:

But before the faithful acquiesce in the false choice offered by the good Reverend, perhaps he and his faithful should consult Romans 13, where it is written: "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established..."

Um, Mr. Dobbs, I hate to break this to you, but the last time I checked, you aren't a governing authority.

If Everyone is Family...

A remarkable passage from Larissa MacFarguhar's profile of Barack Obama:

When Obama, as a young man, went to Kenya for the first time and learned how his father's life had turned out - how he had destroyed his career by imagining that old tribalisms were just pettiness, with the arrogant idea that he could rise above the past and change his society by sheer force of belief - Obama's aunt told him that his father had never understood that, as she put it, "if everyone is family, no one is family." Obama found this striking enough so that he repeated it later on, in italics: If everyone is family, no one is family. Universalism is a delusion. Freedom is really just abandonment. You might start by throwing off religion, then your parents, your town, your people and your way of life, and when, later one, you end up leaving your wife or husband and your child, too, it seems only a natural progression.