Niebuhr Incarnate

Andrew Sullivan gives the Speech high marks:

I've been struggling with some kind of flu and so was unable yesterday to give Obama's Nobel Acceptance speech its due. It's a remarkable address - Niebuhr made manifest. What strikes me about it most of all - and I do not mean this in any way as a sectarian or non-ecumenical statement - is that it was an address by a deeply serious Christian. It was not Christianist. It did not seek to take sacred text or papal diktat to insist on a public policy or to declare that the president of the United States is somehow the instrument of God or good or that America is somehow more divinely favored than any other nation. It was written and spoken in such a way to reach anyone of any faith or none. It translated a deeply Augustinian grasp of history into a secular and universal language. It was an expression of tragic hope.

I would have expected Sullivan to give Obama some credit for his speech. And he is right, it is a speech by a highly educated and serious Christian. I'm not sure however that I agree that it does not seek "to declare...that America is somehow more divinely favored than any other nation." Too many conservatives have been recognizing its 'praise for American values' and 'American exceptionalism' for that to be true.

I think Sullivan sees the Speech through rose colored glasses, rather than as the fairly blatant 'just war' justification for American wars and foreign policy that it seems to me to be.