?Rick Warren Schools President Obama on Freedom?

Posted on April 9, 2012 at 5:08 pm, by Jon Sanders

Kathryn Jean Lopez at NRO adds more on Rick Warren?s interview with ABC?s Jake Tapper (which Sanera posted about this morning). Tapper asked if the president was right in certain remarks (which, incidentally, were made at the annual prayer breakfast; the president twisted the biblical injunction to care for the poor for use as justification for his ?Buffett Rule? on taxes).

Warren responded:

Well certainly the Bible says we are to care about the poor. There?s over 2,000 verses in the Bible about the poor. And God says that those who care about the poor, God will care about them and God will bless them. But there?s a fundamental question on the meaning of ?fairness.? Does fairness mean everybody makes the same amount of money? Or does fairness mean everybody gets the opportunity to make the same amount of money? I do not believe in wealth redistribution, I believe in wealth creation.

The only way to get people out of poverty is J-O-B-S. Create jobs. To create wealth, not to subsidize wealth. When you subsidize people, you create the dependency. You rob them of dignity. The primary purpose of government is to keep the peace, protect the citizens, provide opportunity. And when we start getting into all kinds of other things, I think we invite greater control. And I?m fundamentally about freedom. You know the first freedom in America is actually the freedom of religion. It?s not the second, third, fourth or fifth.

I linked to my column dissecting the president?s flawed attempt to make Jesus sound like a Marxist in ?Obama: Jesus said I can take the money.?

Written by Jon Sanders

Jon Sanders (twitter.com/jonpsanders) is Director of Regulatory Studies at the John Locke Foundation. A columnist for TownHall.com, Sanders has also been published in The Wall Street Journal, National Review, ABC News online, FrontPage Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, the Philadelphia Inquirer and numerous newspapers throughout North Carolina. A native of Garner, N.C., Sanders has been an adjunct instructor in economics at North Carolina State University, and he holds a masters degree in economics with a minor in statistics and a bachelors degree in English literature and language from N.C. State.

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