{"id":668,"date":"2009-02-03T08:57:58","date_gmt":"2009-02-03T08:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/points-of-light-20-and-the-ple.html"},"modified":"2009-02-03T08:57:58","modified_gmt":"2009-02-03T08:57:58","slug":"points-of-light-20-and-the-ple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/points-of-light-20-and-the-ple.html","title":{"rendered":"Pledge of Allegiance to Barack &amp; Points of Light 2.0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I share Crunchy Con&#8217;s slight nausea over this video, and especially the line &#8220;I pledge to be a servant to our president and all mankind.&#8221; <object width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/51kAw4OTlA0&#038;color1=0xb1b1b1&#038;color2=0xcfcfcf&#038;hl=en&#038;feature=player_embedded&#038;fs=1\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/51kAw4OTlA0&#038;color1=0xb1b1b1&#038;color2=0xcfcfcf&#038;hl=en&#038;feature=player_embedded&#038;fs=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><\/embed><\/object>This is now tied with <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/10\/insufferable-american-prayer.html\">American Prayer<\/a> for most insufferable Obama video.As for their pledges to help the world through volunteering, I remain a steadfast curmudgeon on this issue.  I mean, I&#8217;m not anti-volunteerism, and hats off to them for organizing so many people on MLK day.  And better that Demi work on ending slavery than, say, a new line of exercise workout clothes. Seriously.But let&#8217;s remember that when George H. W. Bush pledged to transform America through &#8220;a thousand points of light,&#8221; the left mocked him for his naivete.  The Obama folks definitely have cooler graphics and a better website, making their approach Points of Light 2.0.  I don&#8217;t mean to sound dismissive; tapping into the functionality and energy of social networks to promote citizien action and volunteerism may prove to be an important development.But I remain convinced today, as I did then, that encouraging volunteerism without dramatically increasing the opportunity for <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/obama-service-and-mlk-day----w.html\">full-time service<\/a> is not going to change the world.  You need full-time service to achieve better results, and to help harness those unpaid volunteers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I share Crunchy Con&#8217;s slight nausea over this video, and especially the line &#8220;I pledge to be a servant to our president and all mankind.&#8221; This is now tied with American Prayer for most insufferable Obama video.As for their pledges to help the world through volunteering, I remain a steadfast curmudgeon on this issue. I&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Pledge of Allegiance to Barack &amp; Points of Light 2.0 - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/points-of-light-20-and-the-ple.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pledge of Allegiance to Barack &amp; Points of Light 2.0 - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I share Crunchy Con&#8217;s slight nausea over this video, and especially the line &#8220;I pledge to be a servant to our president and all mankind.&#8221; This is now tied with American Prayer for most insufferable Obama video.As for their pledges to help the world through volunteering, I remain a steadfast curmudgeon on this issue. I&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/points-of-light-20-and-the-ple.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-02-03T08:57:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Pledge of Allegiance to Barack &amp; Points of Light 2.0 - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/points-of-light-20-and-the-ple.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Pledge of Allegiance to Barack &amp; Points of Light 2.0 - Steven Waldman","og_description":"I share Crunchy Con&#8217;s slight nausea over this video, and especially the line &#8220;I pledge to be a servant to our president and all mankind.&#8221; This is now tied with American Prayer for most insufferable Obama video.As for their pledges to help the world through volunteering, I remain a steadfast curmudgeon on this issue. I&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/points-of-light-20-and-the-ple.html","og_site_name":"Steven Waldman","article_published_time":"2009-02-03T08:57:58+00:00","author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/points-of-light-20-and-the-ple.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/points-of-light-20-and-the-ple.html","name":"Pledge of Allegiance to Barack &amp; Points of Light 2.0 - Steven Waldman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-02-03T08:57:58+00:00","dateModified":"2009-02-03T08:57:58+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/points-of-light-20-and-the-ple.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/points-of-light-20-and-the-ple.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/points-of-light-20-and-the-ple.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Pledge of Allegiance to Barack &amp; Points of Light 2.0"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/","name":"Steven Waldman","description":"Author of 'Founding Faith'","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}