No, Obama Is Not an Anti-Catholic Mexican Dictator
Now on our homepage: “Bad History,” in which Julia G. Young challenges comparisons of Barack Obama to Plutarco Elías Calles, the infamous anti-Catholic president of Mexico who in the 1920s waged a brutal campaign against the clergy while outlawing public worship.
The comparison between Plutarco Elías Calles and President Obama is erroneous and misleading. It is also ahistorical. Several Catholic leaders have framed the contraception mandate as an infringement on religious liberty–a “slippery slope” that could lead to wider religious restrictions, just like those in Mexico in the 1920s.
But equating the anticlerical laws of 1920s Mexico with the contraception mandate today is nonsense. … The “Calles laws,” as they were known, were so comprehensively oppressive that they would be completely unthinkable in contemporary America.
As Young notes, the inapt analogizing is fueled in part by actors and consultants associated with the film For Greater Glory, which stars Andy Garcia and Eva Longoria and depicts the uprising of militant Catholics (“Cristeros”) against the Calles government. Eduardo Verástegui, who plays Anacleto Gonzalez Flores, a Cristero beatified in 2005 by Benedict XVI, warns that we ignore the similarities between Obama and Calles–not to mention a certain sixteenth-century monarch–at our own peril.
“I don’t see any difference between Plutarco Elías Calles and President Obama or Henry VIII,” Verástegui says in an interview. “I almost see the same pattern repeat itself.”
Read all of “Bad History” right here.
Maybe it’s time these guys gave hypobole a whirl; his brother must be worn out by now.
George Weigel wrote on this with the same allusion, but then saying that Obama is no Plutarco, but…
The juxtaposition of the movie with the Fortnight for Freedom is laughable and shameful at the same time. I found it astonishing that the Cardinal of Boston attended the premiere with other church leaders. “Vivo El Cristo Rey?” Will the Muslims be next and isn’t Obama really a Muslim? This is the Empire church at its worst. There are an increasing amount of Catholics in orthodox circles who are saying the Crusades were a good thing…s I have been trying to get a handle on this action against a sitting president by Catholic bishops and orthodox commentators. It is baffling. What it looks like is that the funding that the church lost hit the center of the patronage the bishops dispense while they use the funds to sustain other programs not related to the particular funding. The church has always had huge influence and access to federal fund precisely because of the White House’s respect for the Chruch’s power. I was once associated with a multi-million dollar program funded by the Federal government. In discussion with a top adminstration official he stated clearly that “we are funding “Father so and so”, making it clear that without this person’s presence there was no program to be funded. W, with his faith based programs, securely cultivated the bishops. My sense is Barack does not cater to them in the manner they are accustomed to.
I don’t see any difference between Eduardo Verastigue and John Wilkes Booth. But I haven’t looked very closely. Either.
I originally thought I wanted to see this movie. The San Francisco Bay Area is wide and extensive – but I was only able to find a very few cinemas that were showing this movie, and non whatsoever in San Francisco itself. It is getting moderate showing in the ‘burbs.
Glad that I missed it.
I had a post about this movie myself – http://povcrystal.blogspot.com/2012/05/for-greater-glory.html
Another bad history movie (at least I think so) was There Be Dragons, about the Spanish Civil War and the founder of Opus Dei.
I had hoped the film would be good, because it could really fill in a gap in historical knowledge for a lot of Americans. A trip to Rotten Tomatoes, though, persuaded me that it wasn’t worth a trip to the cinema.
The suggested comparison with the Obama Administration needn’t be dignified with a response. Recall that, on balance, the Obama Administration has a pretty good track record defending religious liberty.
In the preparation for the fortnight of freedom, at least there is no mention about the Catholic assassination of Mexican president Obregan 1928…
Every time I visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I make a visit to one of my favorite works of art, the fresco or, better, portable wall painting, “The Liberation of the Peon” by Diego Rivera. It depicts several violent looking men (and their accusatory horses looking at the viewer) releasing the bonds of a peon who has been beaten to death by the owner of the hacienda, which the heavily armed men have just burned down. The allusion to a taking down from the cross of an innocent man is inescapable.
It is a true expression of the injustices in the Mexican society of the 1920s.
And the HHS Mandate is not a worse restriction on religious freedom than the systematic stripping of religious freedom of African Americans in the 1830s. I am with Dominic–it is time to push back against the over the top language of many conservative evangelicals and Catholics on this. I did a piece just tonight on the way that African American CHurch history is being conveniently and completely ignored by Cardinal Dolan and Eric Metaxas in their rhetoric. http://debatingobama.blogspot.com/2012/06/frederick-douglass-to-cardinal-dolan.html
Whatever the discussion and principles at play with regard to Obama’s approaches to Catholics (and other Christians) freedom of religion one can at least be assured no one has claimed his background or citizenship is Mexican. Nevertheless one can say to that partly because of his experiences as a ”community organizer” from Chicago, and his own ideological predilections, there does seem to be a ‘desire for the imposition of Utopia’ which is a liberal/socialist tendency.
@Philip Sanderson (6/20, 4:26 am) Thanks for your comment. What is there about President Obama’s “ideological predilections” that leads you to the conclusion that he has a “desire for the imposition of Utopia”?
From what we know about Obama’s training and experience as a community organizer, it seems it would be more accurate to say that his organizing experiences make him distrustful of Utopian schemes, realistic about the limits of human nature, and disdainful of ideologues who refuse to compromise with their opponents.
P.S. Why the quotation marks around community organizer?
Oops. I meant @Philip Sandstrom. My apologies.
First about the quotation marks — ‘community organizer’ is a job title with a particular series of action steps — especially in Chicago and under the influence of the ideas of Saul Alinsky. And secondly, if one reads Saul Alinsky the socialist/Utopian impulses are quite obvious. Obama’s approaches to ‘social management’ are evidently strongly influenced by the Government/your governors know best for you’ (top down) re-formation of the whole of society. [He seems to be intent on applying nostrums which Daniel Patrick Moynihan pointed out as failures concerning the War on Poverty and the Great Society. These failures managed to destroy the societal fabric for those these programs were meant to help.] His anti-constitutional disdain of the built in ‘checks and balances’ in the polity of the United States is just the sort of attitude that the founders of the United States were rebelling against. Some three hundred years earlier than the American War of Independence Saint Thomas More wrote his book to illustrate the logical conclusions of an overly organized ‘top down’ secular society, and he pointed out many truths useful and applicable even in our present time.
@Philip Sandstrom (6/20, 6:52 am) Thanks for the detailed response.
Having read Alinsky thoroughly, and having some knowledge of the field of community organizing in general, and the approach taken/taught by Gamaliel (as well as IAF, PICO, DART, IVP and others) in particular, I’d suggest it’s a huge misreading of Alinsky’s writings and work to put him in the “socialist/Utopian” camp.
Alinsky’s harshest and most scornful words were reserved for so-called “liberals”, “progressives” and “Idealists” who refused to understand and engage with “the world as it is”. Alinsky saw himself, and is seen by most others, as one in a long line of American pragmatic idealists—influenced more by American civic republication traditions than European socialism.
Rather than “applying nostrums (of) … the War on Poverty”, Obama’s demonstrated over and over again throughout his career a willingness to negotiate and compromise with his opponents, and an openness to (even a preference for) market-based solutions to public policy problems (e.g., the Affordable Care Act expanding and strengthening private health insurance markets, cap-and-trade as a key component of energy reform).
If you’re opposed to President Obama’s actions and to his re-election, that’s fine. But misreading Alinsky’s political philosophy and legacy, and misunderstanding Obama’s influences and record make your arguments less, not more, persuasive.
I perceive Alinsky’s complaints against “so-called liberals, progressives, and idealists” as a withering put down for ‘not going far enough’ against the ‘powers that be’ and ‘the world as it is or should be’. I also see Obama’s so-called style of ‘compromise’ as an example of a form of negotiation which approaches the disputed points with ‘what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is negotiable’. [This is the typical Alinsky approach.] As is obvious, this attitude — typified by “I won, tough on you” — is not real negotiation. This attitude has shown up in the very examples cited: Affordable Care Act, and the Cap and Trade questions, not to speak of other occasions.
@Philip Sandstrom (6/20, 9:51 am) Thanks for your reply. You’re welcome to have whatever perceptions of Alinsky you want. It’s just that there’s no real evidence to support those perceptions. Alinsky regularly and repeatedly wrote and taught about the importance of being willing to settle for “half a loaf”, because it’s better than nothing at all. If anything, Alinsky’s successors in the 1970s and 80s (from whom Obama learned) were even more emphatic about the importance of that lesson.
To take one small example, from Alinsky’s 1971 book, “Rules For Radicals”: “But to the organizer, compromise is a key and beautiful word. It is always present in the pragmatics of operation. It is making the deal, getting that vital breather, usually the victory. If you start with nothing, demand 100 per cent, then compromise for 30 per cent, you’re 30 per cent ahead.”
As both a state and US senator, Obama built a short, but impressive track record of negotiating compromises on difficult and important issues. The first major legislative accomplishment of his administration was the Recovery Act, passed with the support of 3 Republican senators after the bill was cut in size and weighted more heavily towards tax cuts that they wanted. The individual mandate in the ACA was a conservative policy idea from the 1990s and the centerpiece of Gov. Romney’s health care reform law in Massachusetts. (Liberal policy preferences—including single payer and a public option—were dropped from, or never included in, the ACA.) The Cap and Trade proposal in Obama’s failed energy reform bill was modeled on the H. W. Bush Clean Air Act cap and trade provisions.
Again, you’re welcome to your own perceptions and biases. (We all have them.) But if you’re going to bring them into the public arena, it’s best to be prepared to have some solid evidence to back them up. With all due respect, so far you’ve offered none in this thread.
– “getting the vital breather, usually the victory” is an interesting and characteristic phrase — it is an effective form of negotiation — ‘keeping up the pressure’ always for more and more in one’s own gain. ‘Liberal policy preferences’ are not yet included but they will be aimed for and pushed for — rather ‘a pause in the ultimate arrival at the goal, similar to the methods used in mountain climbing. I admit to perhaps biases, because I think I can see the model in operation. On another point, I also find it interesting to hear Obama using the ‘mantras’ of a certain form of ‘Chicago Cultural Catholicism’: 1) common ground and 2) seamless garment — sometimes explicitly but more often implicitly — and practically always to bolster ‘his point of view’.
@Philip Sandstrom (6/20, 11:40 am) Two things to note here:
1 – Neither Alinsky nor Obama is a socialist as the word is commonly defined. (So that’s settled.)
2 – Alinsky’s understanding of politics is that it is, basically, part of the human condition. He draws from Aristotle and from Catholic social teaching and from the Hebrew Scriptures and from Enlightenment political philosophers, and ends up with the conclusion (sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit) that politics is never-ending.
This is, in part, why he argues it’s worth settling for 30% of what one want. You can always come back next month, or next year, or next decade to try to get another 30% (or 20%, or 10%). You will never get 100%—but if you do, you’ll probably lose a chunk of it fairly soon.
3 – It is this understanding and acceptance that politics is part of being in human society that makes Alinsky and Obama non-Utopians. (So that’s settled too.) Utopians, of whatever bent, imagine a society in which everything is perfect and unchanging. Since there’s no need for change, there’s no need for politics.
4 – Particularly in “Rules For Radicals”, Alinsky is at great pains to make this point. His primary audience in “Rules” is young activists of the 1960s and 70s, many of them fired with the zeal and idealism of youth…and thus in danger of being crushed by the realization that, no, you can’t change the world all at once. In fact, you can’t change it into your own vision of Utopia ever. What you can do is learn how the “world as it is” operates so that you can build the power to accomplish some of your goals, to make the “world as it is” a little bit more like the “world as it should be”.
5 – Alinsky’s point is that in the “world as it is”, anyone with power is going to keep pushing for their goals. That’s why, for example, coal companies are willing and able to block environmental regulations for decades after a law is passed. They don’t settle for the partial victory embedded in the law that they compromised to create. They immediately start pushing for a larger victory by slowing and blocking regulations and enforcement of the law. Then when the regulations are finally in place, and the law is being enforced, they file lawsuits to get the regulations (and sometimes the law) overturned. Alinsky’s self-conception is that he’s teaching the “Have-Nots” and the “Have-A-Little-Want-Some-Mores” how to play the game of politics that the “Haves” play.
As for your other point about Obama, given the extent to which both the city of Chicago and the field of community organizing have been influenced and permeated by Catholic culture over the past few decades, it’s not surprising that even a Congregationalist like Obama would be influenced by that culture.
Oops, I guess that was five things, not two. (Sorry, I got carried away.)
Ooh – whatever anyone does – do Not watch the movie “For Greater Glory”; it makes the Mexican clergy look good the government look bad and we can’t have that. But do not miss the Diego Rivera exhibit – now That is inspiring!
Ugh – Heaven forbid one might learn something.
The comparisons do not stop coming in and being more and more reckless. A leading evangelical ally of the Bishops on religious freedom issue explicitly compares HHS Mandate to early Nazi laws in a speech at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. I explain here: http://debatingobama.blogspot.com/2012/06/metaxas-mantra.html
@ Luke Hill.
Thank you for your insights. I will have to watch Obama and his application of the ‘Chicago style of politics’ more closely in the future and apply those insights to what I see and hear of Obama’s actions. Because, perhaps because I live in Europe, I am not close enough to perceive how he can seem to act more ‘regally’ than the King of Belgium &/or the Queen of England in regard the laws and Constitution of the country, that is, the United States, especially involving the ‘separation of powers’ and the role of the Congress.
Philip,
If you are looking for a president who flouted the law you might look at W. Bush. At the same time you might widen your circle of info you are exposed to.
About the Church in Mexico under Calles — there are usually two sides to each story.
In many people’s opinion, Graham Greene’s greatest novel is “The Power and the Glory”, the one about the Mexican whiskey priest in the 1930s who still hears confessions and brings Communion to the people and is killed for it. Greene does the almost impossible — he makes a very holy but flawed man extremely believable.
Greene was no friend of totalitarian governments, but he even saw a bit of humanity in the policeman. Complexity, complexity. It’s also, I think, an anti-celibacy novel, but I digress.
Why is it whenever the Church messes with temporal power bad things happen. Pride, greed, avarice were all on display among the hierarchy in Mexico before Calles. Calles was wrong——but let us not forget the sins of our own hierarchy which set the Church up for persecution.
Susanne –
I think you’re turning the Church into a person, as we often do but shouldn’t. It’s not the Church that is greedy, proud, etc. It’s certain members of the complex entity, the RCC, who are. There are positions of great potential influence in the Church, and lots of money to be given away, and power-mad and greedy people will always be attracted to that. Maybe we need another way to talk about the Church as a whole — or more ways to talk about its parts.
Further, we should remember that the Church supported the oppressive government over Romero. Which means that the Church considers it bad when the hierarchy is not recognized. Not when its people are not fed and housed. Apologists for the church are now trying to say that there were many bad things about the French Revolution. No question the subsequent rulers did some nasty things. None worse than the rulers did before the Revolution whom the church supported. The church did little to fight the oppression by the kings. Further democracy in Europe really came from the French Revolution.
So what the bishops are commemorating with the Mexican war is the hierarchy’s survival. Certainly the government then went overboard like forbidding worship. But the reaction of the leaders then was to the Church’s undue influence. A church which canonized everyone under the sun except Oscar Romero. So when you think of this movie and the Fortnight for Freedom think of the poverty of Mexico and the other countries in South America and Oscar Romero.
Phillip and Luke – sorry for this late response but might want to expand what feels like a black and white approach to Saul Alinsky. Most historical figures are more complicated and nuanced than we make out.
A few things to add and consider about Alinsky:
- one of his good friends was Jacques Maritain, great neo-Thomistic philosopher. Maritain is not exactly what I would call a socialist or ultra liberal catholic. They spent a lot of time together and critiquing each others’ ideas, writings, plans. Maritain helped write the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- another of Alinsky’s good friends was Msgr Jack Egan. Egan was instrumental in social justice in Chicago using many of Alinsky’s techniques. I was educated and trained by some of Egan’s and Alinsky’s students and attended lectures by both at Depaul University in Chicago. Egan was invited to head social justice at Notre Dame when Cody became cardinal of Chicago. He was invited to return by Bernardin to head up social justice in Chicago again. A few years later, he transitioned to DePaul University. Egan and Alinsky developed lots of combined catholic community justice initiatives.
- Obama actually spent time assigned to a catholic parish on the south side of Chicago and was very familiar with the catholic application of Alinsky’s/Egan’s methods.
Bill deH. ==
A point of history. No, the mature Maritain was not a socialist. But he was brought up in the home of his maternal grandfather, who was President of France. However, even as a young boy he had sympathy with the poor. He respected the family gardener, who was a socialist, and he sided with him politically, not with his grandfather. (Sorry, I don’t remember where I read that.)
@Bill deHaas (6/21, 12:58 pm) and Ann Olivier (6;22, 4:41 am) Thanks for these helpful additions to the conversation.
In my experience, one of the most remarkable and interesting features of Alinsky’s work (and of his successors) is the depth and breadth of intellectual curiosity and openness. If you ask veteran community organizers for book recommendations, you’re likely to get a list that runs into the hundreds—everything from Greek philosophy to Christian theology to Enlightenment political theory to 20th century economics to second-wave feminist theory to best-selling business and self-improvement books to history and biography to novels and short stories. While they have, as Alinsky did, definite ideas about how to understand and operate in the world, it’s the opposite of a utopian/ideological approach.
Ann – you might want to read a biography of Maritian and his family. His maternal grandfather was not exactly a revered politician. He was a rep for Paris and was vice-president during the ignominious Franco-Prussian defeat. He made a number of grave political mistakes during the war and during the peace – Bismark made him look like a novice in the world of policy.
Maritain was actually raised in a liberal Protestant family – married a Russian and converted to Catholicism per Maritian because of Bloy’s efforts.
Bill –
The Barre’/Doering biography (2005) is quite a good one — called “Jacques and Raissa Maritain: Beggars for Heaven”. Their home was a mecca for many first-rate French intellectuals and not all of them Catholic. He taught at Princeton during WW II, and was French ambassador to the Vatican afterwards. He was one of the few Catholic intellectuals in the U. S. who was well-known and highly respected here. But, unlike many Catholic intellectuals of the day, he was quite open to learning from thinkers other than Aquinas. In fact, the point of my thesis was that in fundamental ways he wasn’t a Thomist at all, at all. He was highly influenced by many different sorts of mystics and theorists of art, though he started out as a biologist and was much intrested in philosophy of science. Interesting man.