Much has been said about the fact that Barack Obama still has left us wondering where he actually stands on many issues. The article below, sheds light on his 'way of Being in the world', that could help us to understand why sometimes he doesn't express hard and solid positions on certain issues. Yet, I've noticed that when he succumbs to the pressure to take a position, as with the rest of us, that reckless acting outside of Cosmic order or time, can produce results that are far from the highest outcome that was possible.
I personally have been trying to pursue a way, that focuses me on staying present to each moment. What this means for me, is that instead of reacting, I get to spend time observing phenomena. If I don't get involved, I can watch what arises, and how it will act, and if I can be patient and stay out of it, I get to watch 'it' subside. All without me doing anything. It's really interesting. Especially since we're programmed to think that we have to be doing something (about it). I know you folks know what I'm talking about.
What this way of living requires, is that one suspends those hard and fast ideas, attitudes, and yes----even those cherished beliefs, that one normally relies upon to navigate existence. It means backing off of one's opinions, so that one can adequately accept what the moment holds, ...offers....presents. It also means that it's okay NOT to have an answer, or a response. That one can just wait....and you'll see....it'll come.
Now, this is really a non-Western way of living, a non-Western way of thinking. We've been programmed to think that we must have answers for everything, and the faster we can shoot them back, why the more clever we appear to others. Think about it. if someone takes the time to consider a question,....in fact if they take too long, average human minds will already begin to judge that person. And the judgement will more than likely be tending to the negative. We even have created minute and stop watches, so that in a game, your answer must be delivered within an arbitrarily decided amount of time, or---you loose! Your're wrong. You're out.
So the idea of listening carefully to a question, or looking deeply into an issue, and contemplating it's meaning, and then seeking the many answers one could utilize in it's resolution, is a dead thing in today's world. It's gotten to the point, that people that normally would follow such measures, give in to social habits, and will just utter back anything sometimes, in order to appease group thinking.
As I think about it.... I'm very unhappy about Obama's position on the issues facing Palestine and Israel. And the fact that he went to speak to American Jews as his first act, after securing the Democratic nomination, I found disturbing. Especially after it was headline news what he'd declared to this important part of the population. And that was that Jerusalem should forever be the undivided capital of Israel. From a man declaring himself about 'Change and Hope', I found these very disturbing comment to my ears and heart.
I immediately wondered, how deep was his understanding of the issues in this quagmire? He obviously was pandering for Jewish support in November. But today (6/23/08) even, Frances' 'President Sarkozky, visiting Israel and speaking before the Knesset, (and only 2 or 3 months after France and Israel 'kissed and made up' after years of distance due to France's displeasure with Israel's activities against the Palestinians - whew! long sentence...but hold on, I'm getting there) CHIDED the Israelis, and said that Jerusalem must be the capital of two nations, living side by side.
I wish that Obama had held his silence, until he'd applied the facts to his heart and mind. I would hope that the world would have heard something different from his lips, than a position that already, is at the root of a tremendous amount of strife in the human family.
Whew again......really didn't mean take you on that ride, but really it speaks to the issue of why I'm sharing the article below.
It is because of his tendency or nature, to see many sides of a situation, that as I said, is not particularly a Western way of seeing, that Obama presents a unique element in American ways of thinking. Black or white, good or bad, settler vs Indian, rain or shine, whatever,... Americans definately live in the world of duality. And that type of reasoning gets this nation into a lot of trouble.
The majority Americans have a difficult time of wresting themselves out of a self-righteous position, to see the effect that this nation's actions have on others. Many also find it impossible to respect the fact that others can feel, or desire a way of living different than what is pursued here.
This is all coming to the surface much more in today's society, as evidenced by the infamous statements of Obama former minister and Clinton spiritual counselor Rev.Wright. White people have been appalled to learn that professional, sophisticated and successful people of color, do not see the world, American society and life, from the same perspective that they do. And despite his Constitutional rights to think and speak his perspective....the media, some Blacks and white public and political arena made the decision to demonize him. I am not condoning his theatrics nor his timing, but I applaud his effort to express his authentic feelings.
It's easy to label and then deal with someone that has loudly proclaimed their stance. But much more difficult when you have a person that is poised, waiting, listening and watching what arises and then more thoughtfully reacts....or doesn't. I'm developing a sense that that description is closer to Obama's true nature. The article below, also hints at that same conclusion. I pray that he will remain strong in resisting the pressure from others to make statements, and take actions, that are 'out of time', that truly are not necessary. Americans need to learn to practice patience and extend mutual respect once again. Perhaps, as a leader Barack Obama can lead us in this regard.
Lastly, the blog before this noted that author Toni Morrison said, that her final decision to support Obama over Clinton was because of his wisdom. And I would like to confirm that that is what his way of taking in, seeing many sides, and offering a solution that has real possibilites to remove the cause of the problem amounts to....these are steps that allow wisdom to arise and rule a situation. Not selfish or self-centered choices that are immaturely clung to and egotistically pursued at all cost.
The fool Bush feeling cocky taunted his foes, "...(to) Bring it on".
And they did.
Now look at us.....
Kentke
Obama kept Harvard Law Review balanced
By: Jeffrey Ressner and Ben Smith
June 23, 2008 04:10 PM EST
Barack Obama's election in 1990 s the first black president of the Harvard Law Review gave him his first moment of national fame, a powerful intellectual credential and a sweet book deal. It was also his first electoral victory, won in part by convincing the conservative minority of law students that he would treat them fairly.
Barack Obama's election in 1990 s the first black president of the Harvard Law Review gave him his first moment of national fame, a powerful intellectual credential and a sweet book deal. It was also his first electoral victory, won in part by convincing the conservative minority of law students that he would treat them fairly.
While the title and election have become well-known parts of Obama's personal story, the substance of his actual work on the Review, where he spent at least 50 hours a week, has received little attention.
Obama might have had it right while he was running the journal, when he reportedly ended minor disputes with the words, "Just remember, folks: Nobody reads it."
The eight dense volumes produced during his time in charge there — 2,083 pages in all — show the Review to have been a decidedly liberal institution, albeit one in transition as its focus on race and gender was contested by liberals and conservatives alike. Under his tenure, the Review published calls to expand the powers of women, African-Americans and the elderly to sue for discrimination.
But Obama, who this March referred to "identity politics" as "an enormous distraction," was not so easily pinned down. He published a searing attack on affirmative action, written by a former Reagan administration official. And when, in an unusual move, he selected a young woman from a non-Ivy League law school to fill one of the Review’s most prestigious slots, she produced an essay focused as much on individual responsibilities as on liberties, criticizing both conservative judges and feminist scholars.
"I was very surprised and honored to receive the invitation, of course, as I was teaching at Maryland Law School at the time, and the Foreword typically is extended to more established scholars at ‘top’ law schools," Robin West, now a professor and associate dean at Georgetown Law Center, wrote in an e-mail to Politico. While other articles are selected by the Review's editors as a group, the Foreword is solicited by a smaller band led by the Review's president.
West worked closely with Obama on her piece, she said, remembering him as gracious and helpful, if a bit polite and even formal: "He would always ask first about my baby," she recalled.
If the editor and author — a black man and a woman — were an unconventional team for the Review, however, West's article challenged the then-prevailing wisdom in a different way, taking as its touchstone the work of Czech freedom fighter Vaclav Havel and the anti-Communist revolutions in Eastern Europe that were then still under way. Havel had written that the citizen’s sense of responsibility — not just of individual rights — was essential to political liberty, and West applied that critique to contemporary liberalism to argue that goals such as tolerance and diversity might in fact be "weakened, not strengthened, by taking rights so 'super-seriously' that we come to stop examining our sense of responsibility."
Obama "clearly agreed with me at the time that a shift in constitutional thinking from a rights-based discourse to one that centered [on] responsibility and duties ... would be a good thing," West told Politico. "Partly because of those conversations, I don't find it surprising at all that Sen. Obama's speeches are often marked by calls to spark a sense of responsibility, rather than a sense of grievance."
That classically liberal approach was hardly the mainstream of legal academia at the time. Under Obama's guidance, the Review underwent a period of relative peace after the turbulent 1970s and '80s, when the publication — like the institution itself — attempted to balance its inherent elitism with some semblance of openness and multiculturalism.
“He was as much a traditionalist as anything,” recalled Susan Estrich, the USC School of Law professor who served as Michael Dukakis’ campaign manager in 1988 — and who broke ground as the first female president of the Harvard Law Review 14 years before Obama took the reins. “It was a big deal that he got the presidency. He was selected because of merit, and he believed in the institution and its history. There are some years [at the Review] that are radical and others that are traditional."
Eleanor Kerlow, the author of "Poisoned Ivy: How Egos, Ideology and Power Politics Almost Ruined Harvard Law School," depicted Obama's tenure as a calm before the storm. Kerlow told Politico she “never heard anything negative about him” while researching her book. “Despite the political and ideological infighting, he maneuvered his way around pretty well.”
Her book is set in the following year, when Obama’s successor circulated a parody of an article by a feminist legal scholar who had been murdered, igniting a crippling ideological power struggle at the Review.In Obama's time, as it is today, the Harvard Law Review was one of the most important and distinguished legal publications in the world. Founded in 1887, it is the rare self-supporting legal publication compiled and edited completely by students, typically those attending their second or third year at the prestigious school.
After winning a spot on the Review, Obama beat out 18 other contenders to become the first African-American president in the then-103-year history of the Review, and his duties included leading discussions and debates to determine what to print from the mountain of submissions from judges, scholars and authors from across the country, supervising the thorough editing of each issue's contents and giving every article what's known as a "P-read" once it was finally considered ready for publication.
Once a piece is set, the president also sends a letter or fax and makes a follow-up phone call to each author. Federal Judge Michael W. McConnell, who was nominated by President Bush and has frequently been mentioned as one of Bush’s potential Supreme Court nominees, recalls receiving one such letter and call in early 1990 for his article “The Origins and Historical Understanding of Free Exercise of Religion.”
McConnell told Politico, “A frequent problem with student editors is that they try to turn an article into something they want it to be. It was striking that Obama didn’t do that. He tried to make it better from my point of view.” McConnell was impressed enough to urge the University of Chicago Law School to seek Obama out as an academic prospect.
Yale professor Vicki Schultz, then an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, wrote a lengthy article for the June 1990 issue, titled “Telling Stories About Women and Work,” which compared the ways in which the courts handled sexual and racial discrimination cases. She was concerned that “some African-American scholars might be offended by the comparison” but says Obama was “incredibly reassuring and smart and nonideological” about the way he approached the piece.
One thing Obama did not do while with the review was publish any of his own work. Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said Obama didn't write any articles for the Review, though his two semesters at the helm did produce a wide range of edited case analyses and unsigned “notes” from Harvard students.
Estrich believes that Obama must have had something published that year, even if his campaign says otherwise. “They probably don’t want [to] have you [reporters] going back” to examine the Review.
(While the Review's contents are protected by U.S. copyright law and aren’t available for free online, Politico is providing all the front covers — which include each issue's table of contents — and a representative masthead from Obama's term as president.)
In recent months, Obama's stewardship of the Review has generated a small dust-up in the blogosphere, with some critics insisting that "Obama's Volume 104 is the least-cited volume of the Harvard Law Review in the last 20 years." The claim has methodological problems, however, including the fact that Obama oversaw only the first four issues of that volume. Review veterans said he would have had an increasing influence on — as well as a final read of — the latter half of Volume 103, then a diminishing influence over the second half of Volume 104, produced after he left the presidency.
Moreover, with the exception of the Foreword, Review articles are selected by a committee of editors, with the president merely the first among equals. Still, the substance of the Review offers a glimpse at the environment in which Obama came to the law, and the eight issues that Obama presided over have enough material to keep the blogosphere busy for months. Among the more interesting pieces:
• March 1990 — This issue, the first of Obama’s presidency, has an article by University of Florida associate law professor Anthony Cook on "the reconstructive theology of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr." The article ends with a theme that would later emerge in Obama's speeches: "With such mutual respect and openness to each others' pain, suffering and faith, we must work out more fully and struggle towards King's ideal of the Beloved Community and thereby hew from our mountain of despair a stone of hope."
• April 1990 — An unbylined note titled "Rethinking (M)otherhood: Feminist Theory and State Regulation of Pregnancy" asks whether the state should consider the potential for endangering the fetus when pregnant women abuse drugs. The author suggests that the problem's positioning as a conflict between fetal and maternal rights is "both illegitimate and counterproductive" and concludes that policies should to be recast to expand, rather than restrict, women's reproductive rights.
• June 1990 — This issue included five responses to “Racial Critiques of Legal Academia,” a highly controversial article published in the Review before Obama became its president. The article — written by Randall Kennedy, a black professor at Harvard Law — argued against the idea that legal scholars of color have a unique and at times uniquely valuable voice on issues related to race.
The first entry in the colloquy is prefaced by a quote from performer and civil rights activist Paul Robeson’s 1934 article “The Culture of the Negro” — "The white man has made a fetish of intellect and worships the god of thought; the negro feels rather than thinks" — and several quotes from the now largely forgotten but once highly controversial racial provocateur Frantz Fanon, among them: “If the white man challenges my humanity, I will impose my whole weight as a man on his life and show him that I am not the ‘sho’ good eatin'’ that he persists in imagining.”
• November 1990 — This issue included perhaps the most conservative piece of Obama's tenure, in which Ronald Reagan’s former Solicitor General Charles Fried attacked race-based affirmative action, calling it "racial balkanization" that would "impoverish the human race." The implications of group rights, he wrote, are "sinister."
• February 1991 — Obama's last issue contains one of its most sharply liberal pieces, a study of race and gender in car sales, which, the editors say in an equally liberal introduction, provides "evidence that seriously challenge faith in the ability of competitive market forces to eliminate racial and gender discrimination in other markets" and calls for more government action.
In the end, though, Obama's time on the Review mirrored other aspects of his life. Even in the staunchly liberal milieus in which he has spent his entire adult life, Obama has managed to lead without leaving a clear ideological stamp, and to respect — and even, at times, to embrace — opposing views. To his critics, that's a sign of a lack of core beliefs. To his admirers, it's the root of his appeal.
"To understand what someone else is trying to say isn't just an editorial skill," said McConnell. "It's a life skill.”
© 2008 Capitol News Company, LLC
Obama article-http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0608/11257.html
Sarkozy article-http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/23/africa/mideast.php
Bush 'Bring it on'-http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-07-02-bush-iraq-troops_x.htm
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