Let's Have A Religious Fight Over Widows and Orphans and Refugees

Republicans are upset that Barack Obama used a very few of the very many words in the Bible that condemn their policies and campaign slogans.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday morning in the Philippines, Obama scoffed at attempts to block refugees following the Paris terror attacks as "political posturing" that "needs to stop."

"Apparently they are scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America," Obama said of Republicans. "At first, they were too scared of the press being too tough on them in the debates. Now they are scared of three year old orphans. That doesn’t seem so tough to me."

The phrase that has them upset is "widows and orphans", people who are frequently mentioned together in The Bible as those to whom equal justice and charity are due.  But they aren't the only ones included in those formulas.  If you look at the book of Deuteronomy, in that favorite translation of right wingers, the formula includes exactly those who Barack Obama referred to,  For example:

Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the stranger, fatherless, and widow. And all the people shall say , Amen.  Deuteronomy 27:19

Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless; nor take a widow's raiment to pledge: But thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee thence: therefore I command thee to do this thing.  Deuteronomy 24:17-18

That formula, "the stranger, the fatherless, the widow" appears over and over in that book of Law. If there is any perversion of the judgement of the stranger, the widow, the orphan, of the denial of justice to them in American society, it's the Republican right who are the embodiment of those policies.

I would encourage Barack Obama to be more explicit in his citations of The Bible to support his policies in these areas, giving chapter and verse, consulting with experts who would be able to advise him on that.  As he has reportedly read Marilynne Robinson, she's noted that in detail in a number of her essays.  Unlike so many of the favorite passages used by Republicans, the ones mandating justice to aliens, orphans, widows, poor people, oppressed people aren't really ambiguous at all and the entire range of Republicans and the people who support them are in the most obvious violation of them.   And they are in line with the best of what America is supposed to be, they would be because in the past they are what inspired people to push for changes in American law, making it more equal, more just.

If he's afraid of pissing off those who hate The Bible, well, that's no reason not to do it.  They shouldn't have a veto over that.   They've had a de facto veto on that in liberal politics for the past fifty years and the results have included the Republicans being worse than any time during our lifetimes and controlling the House, Senate and Supreme Courts as well as many state governments. Atheist and anti-religious speech codes have been given the test of time and they have failed in exactly the same way that the idiotic "more speech" nonsense has failed in the only way that matters, in producing government of, by and FOR The People.  It has failed entirely.

I would encourage both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to do the same in their political campaigns.   There is no more potent material to draw on, none that will resonate more in American society.   It's what the Civil Rights movement drew on during the period of its success and strength, the descent into sociological and legal babble in the subsequent period might have made those spouting it feel superior and smug and very modern and sciency but it is impotent in electoral politics.  If atheists don't like it, we owe them equal rights, we don't owe them political failure.  We don't and never did owe them censorship of our political language.

We did a lot better when our politicians weren't afraid to say those kinds of things explicitly.  I doubt we can ever recover from the nearly half-century of  giving up that source of American liberalism until we feed it from the source it sprang from.