On Thursday, President Barack Obama delivered remarks to the National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton and said, “Living by the principle that we are our brother’s keeper, caring for the poor and those in need.”
But according to National Review columnist Mark Steyn, author of “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon,” Obama’s comments leave much to be desired, particularly when it comes to the president’s own brother, George Hussein Onyango Obama who lives on $12 a year in Kenya.
“Oh give me a break,” Steyn said on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show on Thursday night. “For a start, when he says, ‘I am my brother’s keeper,’ his brother is back in Kenya living on $12 a year. That’s what he was living on at the time of the 2008 election. So all the president has to do in terms of shared responsibility is put a $10 bill in an envelope and mail it to Nairobi or Mombasa or wherever and he will double his brother’s salary.”
At issue is the Obama administration’s effort to require Catholic institutions to provide contraception. Steyn explained this is part of “big government” trying to supplant the church as a source of “moral authority.”
“This version of shared responsibility means the state should be your ‘brother’s keeper,’” he said. “And this is the point for the Catholic Church. Separation of church and state is one thing, but big government means the state as church, the sole legitimate source of moral authority whether it’s on contraception or gay marriage or abortion or any of the rest. And that’s what you see in Europe. Big government drives out other sources of moral authority.”