Fox News' Garrett falsely claimed the Golden Rule, Obama's "favorite Scripture," is not, in fact, "exactly rooted in Scripture"
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SUMMARY: Reporting on Sen. Barack Obama's answer to a question about his "favorite Scripture," Fox News' Major Garrett asserted that "Obama's answer [was] not exactly rooted in Scripture but [was] in the ballpark," and then aired a clip of Obama saying: "[T]he Golden Rule. It's very simple. I mean, it's a very simple concept. I think what he asks of me is that I treat my brother as -- and my sister -- as I would have them treat me." Contrary to Garrett's claim, Obama's answer is, in fact, "rooted in Scripture."
On the April 28 edition of Fox News' Special Report, Fox News correspondent Major Garrett noted that Sen. Barack Obama was asked for his "favorite Scripture" at a town hall campaign event. Garrett then asserted: "Obama's answer not exactly rooted in Scripture, but in the ballpark." Garrett then aired Obama's answer: "[T]he Golden Rule. It's very simple. I mean, it's a very simple concept. I think what he asks of me is that I treat my brother as -- and my sister -- as I would have them treat me." Obama's answer is, in fact, "rooted in Scripture." The Gospel of Matthew 7:12 states that Jesus, during his Sermon on the Mount, said, "In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets" (New Revised Standard Version). This verse is described by the Vatican as the "Golden Rule": "This saying, known since the eighteenth century as the 'Golden Rule,' is found in both positive and negative form in pagan and Jewish sources, both earlier and later than the gospel."
The Gospel of Luke contains a similar verse. Luke 6:31 quotes Jesus as saying "Do to others as you would have them do to you." Additionally, in Leviticus Chapter 19, God instructs Moses to tell the people of Israel that, among other things, "[y]ou shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself" (verse 18) and "[t]he alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt" (verse 34).
From the April 28 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume:
[begin video clip]
GARRETT: Barack Obama will not debate Hillary Clinton before the May 6th primaries in North Carolina and Indiana. That's likely to spare him tough questions on his former pastor Jeremiah Wright's current national media tour.
OBAMA: We've got a gentleman right here.
GARRETT: Obama prefers town hall events like this, places where inquiries on Wright or other hot topics often take a backseat to softball such as this:
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is your favorite Scripture that you kind of lean on that sort of keeps you going?
GARRETT: Obama's answer not exactly rooted in Scripture but in the ballpark.
OBAMA: -- the Golden Rule. It's very simple. I mean, it's a very simple concept. I think what he asks of me is that I treat my brother as -- and my sister -- as I would have them treat me.
Of course it's rooted in scripture...
And Faux News is rooted in evil.
I assume you mean me, Dex. Let me help you; I have no problem with talking about good and evil, only with those limited to seeing everything in the world as either 100% good or completely evil.
But, not surprisingly, you had trouble with that grey area.
Way to go MMFA!
Although you are going to tick off a lot of my atheist friends here who regularly disparage the Bible and all things religious.
AA, I for one don't disparage the Bible, I believe it is a good collection of stories that form sound moral judgement, I just don't think it came from God. You make it sound as if we atheists and agnostics treat the Bible like it's a piece of trash.
That being said, if Fox News didn't actually know this, I'll give everyone here 5 Media Matters bucks. (Void where prohibited. Not valid anywhere.) ;)
Note how AA is either careful not to name names, or lacks any grounds to make such an accusation.
I regularly see people here disparage politicians and faux theologians who have perverted the Bible for their own selfish purposes, but I don't recall a group of people regularly using MMFA boards to berate the Bible.
Of course, my assessment will likely be met with, "go back through the archives and you'll find your atheists," as though the burden of proof is somehow on me.
Pete,
Go back through.... aw heck. Just forget it. If the shoe fits, fine. If not, it was not meant for you.
Have a good one!
DB,
We've been down this road before. If you have not disparaged the Bible on numerous occasions, then you need not feel my comment referred to you.
That being said, your description of the Bible being a work of fiction is inaccurate on many levels. So the answer to your question is no, you did not meet my standard of quality. But you already knew that.
You're saying that, to even suggest that mere mortals may have influenced the content of a book, is not a valid observation but rather a disparaging comment? Are there other books in your library that should never be questioned in public or just the one? How do you tell them apart?
If Christians don't want their brand to be so heavily scrutinized maybe it would be better to not market it and position it so aggressively. You know what I'm talking about. Just a thought.
What are you even trying to accomplish here, anyway? Don't get me wrong, i love reading your posts. Your exploits here must be legendary among your circle of neocon apologists.
For my part, i've started work on a hilarious little song parody calling to burn down Limbaugh's house. As a Denverite i thought I should return the favor. Did I mention it's hilarious?
Do your "atheist friends" bear any resemblance to "the usual lemmings" or "many of the posters here"?
Pete,
Personally, I've never called anyone here (or elsewhere) a lemming. But if the sea is calling out.... :-)
So he's a man of three separate religeous identites.
1) CyrptoIslamoFashist
2)Racist Black Christain
3)Ethical Pagan
His position on Pastafairianism is unclear. What about the religeous agenda of the Real Small Furry Beasts from Alpha Centuri? Huh, you never hear him say anything about these important issues, and until he comes clean here, he'll never get my vote. Or my goat,or my collection of mint 1930's National Geographics.
I keep thinking of the character Major Major in Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (played brilliantly by Bob Newhart in the movie).
It's a Milo Minderbinder world, folks.
It's the fundamental concept of Law, forbidding us to do those things to others, that we would not want them to do to us.
It's the concept behind all Laws that protect us in our Person, and in our property.
As a concept, it's Religious only if you prefer it in that context. It's really just Civil though.
So Fox News is going to interpret Scripture for us? That'll be the day.
Chances are, if Jesus ever really said it, he probably borrowed it from some other tradition.
Everithing in the Bible is borrowed and/or stolen from some other tradition. Same thing with Christianity - including the holidays. Christmas is celebrated in december to coincide with Saturnalia, the pagan celebration of the winter solstace. And have you ever notices that nowhere in teh Bible does the word "Easter" appear? That's because that was the name of an earlier pagan holiday that was appropriated by teh Early Christians.
Care to guess what that pole represented in Pagan cultures?
Does it have anything to do with the Washington Monument? :-)
Obilisks have a rich symbolic content. One interpretation was of a ray of light made visible.
Whats really weird is the facination they had on westerners. Rome, London, and NYC all have egyption obilisks brought at great expense and effort to their present locations.
Here's what I'm dying to know.... how many of FOX's braindead viewers will take this comment and run with it? How many of the so-called "values voters" will believe that the Golden Rule is not, in fact, in the Bible? It presents quite a dilemma for them..... anything bad about Obama has to be true, doesn't it?
It is true, that when those people who stand for the Offices of our Legislators and Administrators of our Government, when they open that door and try and impress upon us their Faith, they confuse the matter: as we're looking for wise competent Lawmakers and Administrators of our Civil Government, and not for Priests and Reverends and preachers, which we look for elsewhere thank you very much.
And when they open that Religious door, they then let in also all manner of false prophets and preachers and wolves in sheep's clothing, and televangelists like pat robertson, to further confuse the matter, and make us look like a Congregation seeking a Minister, instead of a People seeking someone to make and administer our Laws.
In the above example, it wasn't Sen. Obama who volunteered his opinion on any matter of Scripture, but an UNIDENTIFIED MALE who solicited it... which is yet another thing these candidates for Public Office do wrong (in addition to opening up a door to Religion, that we're all left better off if it were closed in these Civil matters), when they lose the management and dictation of their own campaigns, and have their thoughts and words steered for them, by celebrity "debate monitors", or in this case, by some UNIDENTIFIED MALE (and who knows what he's up to, or why he asked that question about Scripture)...
These are important political campaigns, and the campign message of the candidate should be dictated by them, and no other... if that message doesn't satisfy us, then they'll know about it soon enough, from opinion polls and election results, and they can adjust that message accordingly... but this idiocy of having UNIDENTIFIED MALES steer the candidates thoughts and words wherever they have pre-determined, for the benefit of a camera, makes about as much sense as allowing a celebrity "debate moderator" do the same.
If these candidates continue to allow their message to get away from them, and be dictated by others, then we and they will forever be burdened with their opinions on Scripture, and flag pins. and how you stand or hold your hands at the playing of the National Anthem or the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, or stuff about incendiary fools in the pulpit, or former "black militants" so old they now cash Social Security checks, and so on, I don't have to remind you because you already know as well as I do.
Nerzog, excellent point. The Dems have tried to prove that they're as holy as the Repubs, and look where it's gotten them.
Although the "golden rule" is really just logic, I thought the original wording of which is traced back to Confucious (sp)? Not the old or new testament?
No you were right Thomp this is pretty close:
Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself.-Confucius
I only meant that even I'm correct on rare occasions . . . .
Nerzog,
There is a term in my religious tradition called, "natural law".
The rules, although created through God are manifest in nature. One does not need a priest to tell one what is right and what is wrong. Each person has natural law ingrained in them. True religious and civic laws must be in conformity to natural law. So religious leaders, if acting according to God's will, (obviously some do not,) do not hand down laws from above, but only articulate natural laws that are already a part of mankind's makeup.
That is true. Liberals and Catholics have a long shared tradition of Natural Law. Age of Reason philosophers Hobbes and Locke secularized the ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas (although the earliest accounts of the theory appear to come from pagans).
Thomas Jefferson was influenced enough by Hobbes and Locke's view of Natural Law and the idea of "Nature's God" to incorporate many ideas of Natural Law into the Declaration of Independence and it became the underlying reasoning in the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.
My theory is that the "Golden Rule" probably evolved as one of our earliest moral precepts. It is, in fact, based on logic, and wouldn't take long to test by trial and error.
It precedes logic and arises naturally by evolution even in species which do not have language. It is a common trait in animals which require a social structure for the species to succeed and reproduce successfully.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/22/opinion/polls/main965223.shtml
To be fair, King, many of those responding to the poll were too busy flinging their own feces at the pollster to understand the question.
And Old Ben, since we've really slacked off on the gratuitous Clash lyrics lately, may I remind you that;
I believe in this and it's been tested by research,
that he who fvcks nuns will later join the church
Ahhh, Death or Glory.
The Clash are always appreciated in a political discussion (if that's what this is).
So apropos of nothing...
When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun
When the law break in
How you gonna go?
Shot down on the pavement
Or waiting on death row
In the past, I haven't been able to get the name Richard Simmons past the guard dogs.
Col, I wish parish priests did in fact stick to f'n nuns . . .
Can we still claim to be "the best country in the world" when 51 % of our citizens believe that god created human beings in their present form, and that we haven't evolved?
The number of people who voted for Bush is proof positive that we have not fully evolved....
The number of people who voted for Bush is proof positive that we have not fully evolved....
Amen ;-)
The number of people who voted for Bush is proof positive that we have not fully evolved....
That would explain why many Bush voters lack opposable thumbs. ;>)
The Bush administration revoked the "Golden Rule' in 2005 as part of the FISA renewal. You must have missed it because they didn't tell anyone due to National Security issues.
Alberto Gonzales wrote a memorandum that argues a new paradigm of the war on terrorism has rendered the Golden Rule quaint and obsolete on some of its provisions.
I have upgrade to the platnuim rule.
Did you get any Frequent Flyer Miles with that upgrade? :-)
The only "Golden Rule" at Fox is:
"He who has the gold, makes the rules."
"He who has the gold, makes the rules."
At Faux News, that would be Rupert Murdoch....
GARRETT: "Obama's answer not exactly rooted in Scripture but in the ballpark."
"Yet I'm going to go out of my way to mention it anyway..."