I have long since reached the conclusion that Eric Metaxas, best known for his biography of Bonhoeffer, is dangerous. Metaxas is very smart, very funny, very savvy. He has an essay posted at CNN's Belief Blog that displays all those traits and also indicates why he is dangerous. He writes:
But the reason I'm writing now is that during the past election I was disappointed to see the president's campaign utterly abandoning these ideals of treating your opponents as you yourself would wish to be treated. Good people with principled and profound convictions about when life begins were cynically demonized as "enemies of women." Americans who had worked hard to build businesses, and who had given millions to charity and to the government, were denounced as fat-cats who weren't "paying their fair share" and whose wealth was ill-gotten gain.
Lord knows I am not going to defend President Obama's campaign insofar as it looked at times like his running mate was Planned Parenthood. But, I do not recall, not once, President Obama suggesting that the wealth of the wealthy was "ill-gotten gain." Yes, the Obama campaign noted that Governor Romney's company, Bain Capital, was part of a culture, a full participant in a culture, of vulture capitalism that cared more about securing profits for itself than about the human consequences of decisions about downsizing. To the degree that these business practices reflect a skewed sense of values, and that such values may work in the modern economy but do not reflect the values desired in a leader of a government, it is undoubtedly fair game. I am reminded of a famous line by Harry Truman during the 1948 campaign. Truman said, The Republicans think I am giving them hell. I am giving them the truth and they just think it's hell."
And, if Metaxas is going to have his pants in a knot over what he thinks was the President's mendacity, he might wish to consider the mendacity of both parties.
