Obama's World-View

A friend asked the interesting question: if Bush and McCain have a Manichaean world-view -- "those who are with us" vs. "those who are against us," "those who put the country first" vs. "those who are selfish and corrupt" -- what is Obama's world-view? Or, at least, what is his moral framework? Well, here goes. The first thing to be said is that it's not Manichaean: Obama does not divide the entire world up into two simple moral categories, one of which must fight and defeat the other. Second, he separates religious morality from secular morality: he has said that religious values should be part of public debate -- they're an important part of the culture and can't and shouldn't be avoided -- but they should be translated into a universal language that can form a basis for universal communication. You can't say, "I believe this is wrong because the Bible says so," in democratic debate; it just ends the conversation. Third, Obama is pragmatic in his politics because he is not someone who grew up in the culture wars of the 60's and so doesn't have an emotional investment in ideological purity -- he has less of a problem incorporating elements of right and left in his policies than other politicians. Lastly, he is self-reflective: In Rick Warren's Civil Forum back in August, when asked, "Does evil exist and if so, should we ignore it, negotiate with it, contain it or defeat it?" this is what Obama said:

... one of the things that I strongly believe is that, you know, we are not going to, as individuals, be able to erase evil from the world; that is God’s task. But we can be soldiers in that process, and we can confront it when we see it.

Now, the one thing that I think is very important is for us to have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil because, you know, a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil.

[Warren: In the name of good?]

In the name of good.

And I think, you know, one thing that’s very important is having some humility in recognizing that, you know, just because we think our intentions are good doesn’t always mean that we’re going to be doing good.

Obama chose to become a Christian, and that's key to understanding him. As a child, he grew up exposed to several different religious points of view, including Islam and secularism and later came to Christianity after much searching. He understands that a person's identity, and world-view, can evolve and change. As a man who is half-black and half-white, he is at heart a reconciler and a compromiser. He sees the world in fluid moral terms because his whole life has been fluid, constantly shifting from one world to another.