Obama on Lessons of Faith

There's an interesting article about Obama's spiritual journey in the Washington
Post today. Pertinent quote:

"The challenges we face today -- war and poverty, joblessness
and homelessness, violent streets and crumbling schools -- are
not simply technical problems in search of a 10-point plan," he
said. "They are moral problems, rooted in both societal indifference
and individual callousness, in the imperfections of man. And so
the values we believe in -- empathy and justice and responsibility
to ourselves and our neighbors -- these cannot only be expressed
in our churches and our synagogues, but in our policies and
in our laws."

I agree with him that many of the things he lists are moral problems. However, it's
when he says "these cannot only be expressed in our churches and our synagogues,
but in our policies and in our laws," I have to disagree with. What laws should we
create that will create more jobs? A government can't force people to work. Also,
we live in a capitalistic society where the free market creates jobs not government.
What laws or policies can we enact eliminate or lessen poverty? Poverty has always
existed. I think we should leave it to non-profit organizations like churches to create
food and clothing pantries and other programs to help the needy. I don't know what
the government can do to help the poor short of forcibly taking away money from
some people to give to the needy.

I also find it ironic that he mentions war on the list of challenges we face but it
doesn't include tyranny and oppression. Sen. Obama seems to find no limit to what
the American government can do domestically but when it comes to deposing a
tyrannical leader like Saddam Hussein, that is something we shouldn't have done.
Here's what Sen. Obama said in his 2002 speech against the war in Iraq:

Now let me be clear - I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a
brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his
own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection
teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.
He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the
United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles,
that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert
with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of
all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.