OPINION:
Take the image we have of Jesus — of Jesus as the Shepherd. Taking that face and transposing it onto the face of every child we see, then we would ask ourselves, ’Would I turn that child away from the health care that child needs?’
Last week, Hillary Clinton proclaimed that in her America every newborn would begin life with a $5,000 government bond — an added plus to the gift of government health care from cradle to grave.
What inspires Hillary to this big-government impulse, to look to the state as caregiver? Is this the politics she learned in the 1960s, hatched by ideological mentors like Saul Alinsky?
Surprisingly, Hillary is a product of radical-left politics and religious-left thinking, the latter of which was brought into her life as a teen by a Methodist youth minister named Don Jones. At times, the politics and religion seemed an unlikely marriage: After being introduced to Mr. Alinsky by Mr. Jones in the early 1960s, Hillary went on to write her thesis on Mr. Alinsky, who, in turn, offered the Wellesley girl a job in the spring of 1969.
Mr. Alinsky was assimilating his final master work, “Rules for Radicals,” which no doubt excited Hillary. And yet, as a self-described “old-fashioned Methodist,” Hillary must have raised an eyebrow when she opened Mr. Alinsky’s book and found this dedication: “Lest we forget an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical… : Lucifer.”
How would Hillary, the daughter of a conservative Republican father, reconcile her new left-wing faith with her new left-wing politics? She found a match in the “social justice” politics of the American left, where liberal Democrat politicians from Nancy Pelosi to Barack Obama have deduced that what Jesus wants them to do is raise the minimum wage, subsidize day care, ratify Kyoto, and demonize and tax the rich (but not protect the unborn).
Their Jesus does not call for private help for the poor but insists on a federal Leviathan that champions collectivism and forced wealth distribution.
This describes Hillary Clinton to a tee. It also explains her big-government initiatives on behalf of children. Consider her reflections on the thoughts of two Jewish rabbis, one never forgotten and the other having fallen into obscurity: “We know so well what Jesus said to his disciples,” said Hillary in a revealing but forgotten April 1996 speech as first lady, “holding a small child in his arms, that whoever welcomes one such child in my name, welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me, welcomes not me, but the one who sends me. Take the image we have of Jesus — of Jesus as the Shepherd. Taking that face and transposing it onto the face of every child we see, then we would ask ourselves, ’Would I turn that child away from the health care that child needs?’ ”
The other rabbi is Michael Lerner, who grabbed headlines in 1993 as the new first lady announced her infatuation with his “politics of meaning.” Mr. Lerner, a Berkeley Ph.D. who founded the Institute for Labor and Mental Health, where he focused on the “psychodynamics of the working class,” became editor of the liberal Jewish magazine Tikkun.
Fully explaining Mr. Lerner’s “politics of meaning” is not easy. More important is how Mr. Lerner translated the nebulous notion into nuts and bolts. He wrote: “A progressive politics of meaning seeks to level the playing field by creating economic, political and social incentives for social and ecological responsibility.”
What would this mean in practice? Mr. Lerner proposed that every government office be required to justify budget requests by answering questions like: “How do our programs foster caring, concern for others, ecological awareness, spiritual sensitivity, and a sense of mutual responsibility?” For example, “the Department of Labor should create a program to train a corps of union personnel, worker representatives and psychotherapists in the relevant skills to assist developing a new spirit of cooperation, mutual caring and dedication to work.”
In the private sector, Mr. Lerner continued, “it would mean goals like these: Mandating workplaces that employ 50 or more people to allow their workers the option of electing occupational safety and health committees empowered to make changes in the workplace to make it less stressful, more concerned about workers’ intelligence, creativity and ability to cooperate with others, and hence ultimately more productive. … Encouraging schools to give equal (but not greater) importance to teaching empathy toward others.”
This short list of Lerner examples helps explain Hillary’s latest overtures. Today, Hillary again is looking for meaning through politics, for salvation through political action — most recently by using the mighty arm of the government to give every child both government health care and bonds.
As we watch Hillary announce new ideas in the months ahead, we cannot neglect the influence of her religious-left thinking in her policies and politics. As Mrs. Clinton is fond of saying, “The world is my parish.” That means she considers America’s children her flock.
Paul Kengor, author of spiritual biographies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, has just published “God and Hillary Clinton” (HarperCollins, 2007). He is a political science professor at Grove City College in Pennsylvania.
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