Lieberman's Forum Address

Senator Lieberman's book

On Tuesday I watched the forum address via the JSB auditorium broadcast given by Senator Lieberman titled “Faith and the Public Square.” I was interested to hear his opinions as an Orthodox Jew in government and former VP elect who lost because of the rules of the Electoral College (which he did bring up during his talk. Still bitter maybe?) I liked his belief that Sabbath day observance is important not only for people of Jewish or Christian faith but for everyone who seeks to improve their quality of life. What I didn’t like was his hypocrisy. Maybe I just distrust all politicians, but Lieberman said that he made an early decision never to be involved in politics on the Sabbath, then proceeded to say that he will participate in meetings or voting concerning security issues in the U.S. He justified this by saying that God would want him to value security over religion because to value security is to value life, which is God’s gift to us. Yeah, that didn’t make sense to me either. I’m not a shining example of keeping the Sabbath day holy either because I try to do my homework on Saturday but if I need to I’ll do it on Sunday. When I was younger, however, I played competitive soccer and never played games on Sundays. It’s hard, but possible. I have a family friend who attended law school and never did homework on Sundays. My dad never does anything work-related on Sunday. And none of us wrote a whole book about it. One more thing, Lieberman omitted Christ’s name from the name of our church, and on BYU campus too! The nerve!

Okay, rant over. One more thing I liked from his talk was that he said that the Founding Fathers wrote a great constitution that gave us freedom of religion and also aligned with the beliefs of Americans, thus allowing us to follow it enthusiastically. We learned about constitution-writing in Comparative Government this week, and one quality of constitutions is that they should respect long-standing traditions so that people will not only obey them but readily identify with them. It’s always good to see that what I’m learning in school isn’t just meant to make my life miserable but has real-life application.

photo: blogs.yu.edu