More on faith and certainty

If you haven't yet checked out Faith-Based Presidency, which I blogged a few days ago, let me encourage you again to look at it. It's the most intriguing article about the President's thinking to come down the pike in quite a while.

As I pointed to in my original post, it's stirred up a lot of talk here in blogistan. Let me point you to two more interesting commentaries on it. They turn out to have a strong resonance with one another, in spite of taking rather different approaches.

The first is a fascinating little article about the implications about the President's theology, in the context of various religious movements: Our Magical President

Believing, it seems, is more important to the President than the substance of his belief. Jesus Christ's particular teachings --- well, those are good, too. But what really matters is that if you believe you can do something, you can.

The second is a long article from Teresa Neilsen Hayden, Motivation and doubt, which talks about the President as an example of a certain type of clueless corporate manager.

They appear to believe that whatever success they’ve had in life is solely due to their own shrewdness and hard work. It’s likewise an article of faith that they have an absolute right to succeed, if only they believe in their own success hard enough and are steadfast in its pursuit; and furthermore, that nonbelievers’ input not only doesn’t matter, but ought to be resolutely ignored.

Facts and mechanisms are not the issue. Their relationship with success is mystical and emotional. Thus, the person who quibbles with the details of their plan is their enemy rather than their ally. Such impediments will of course be overcome if the employee correctly understands and implements the magic ... force of will. After all, that’s what force of will is there for. In the meantime, by expressing reservations the employee has potentially weakened the all-important PHB confidence. That’s not being a good employee.

The witty Ms. Hayden makes some very smart cutting comments about motivational posters along the way; if you've ever seen those, definitely check out her post.