Bush and his Father

[daryn]

personally i think lewis black said it best when he said:

"what's the difference between republicans and democrats? republicans suck and democrats blow."

[BruceZ]

This is precisely why the government finds it necessary to lie. You f***'n people can't handle the truth.

[andyfox]

Bravo!

[John Cole]

I wonder if he taped the conversation.

[Josh W]

Andy -

You know I respect you. And, you know I don't jump into this forum that often. So, if this thread is in reference to something that it doesn't reference, please forgive my ignorance.

And, please understand that I am in no ways a Bush supporter.

But, I am a Christian. And, I believe in giving credit where credit is due.

It seems that this quote is just Bush giving credit where it is due.

Now, I don't know the entire context of the quote, but I'm guessing that the 'strength' he is referring to isn't so much the muscular ability to curl a 12 oz. brew. Instead, I'd guess it has something to do with mental and emotional strength.

Whether you love, hate, or are indifferent towards Bush, you have to acknowledge that he hasn't had the easiest 4 years in office. I'm not saying he's done a glowing job, but after 9-11, it would require a lot of STRENGTH for any president. And, if he gets his strength from God, so be it.

So, I really don't see why this upsets you so much. To help me understand your point...are you more upset at the source of his strength? or him verbalizing the source?

[andyfox]

God has no place in government decision-making. Nobody's God. When a person says, as Bush has, that he takes his primary considerations on what to do in a crisis from his religion, when his best friends says he sees the war on terror as an Armageddonesque religious crusade of good vs. evil, this is scary. This is the same attitude Osama bin Laden has. It leads to a Manichean worldview in which whatever we do is right because simply because, we, on the side of right as ordained by God, have done it.

When a person's God tells them that pre-emptively invading another country is the correct thing to do, that is scary. Base your decision on facts, on reason, on politics if you will. But please don't base it on what your God tells you to do. Isn't that what the radical Islamists do?

While I am no fan of the president's father, I'd much rather he take advice and get strength from him.

I remember Mehachem Begin saying that he wasn't going to give back any land because it had been promised to his people by God. How can such a belief be reconciled with justice for other people? The case is already closed: God has decreed it so.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

From my favorite libertarian columnist:

CATHY YOUNG
The attack on secularism
By Cathy Young | April 26, 2004

THE NEW BOOK "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism," by writer and social critic Susan Jacoby, is a historical work but it is also an unabashed polemic on an acutely topical issue: the role of religion in public life in modern-day America. In the opening pages, Jacoby cites President Bush's presiding over an ecumenical prayer service at Washington's National Cathedral three days after the Sept. 11 attacks as evidence of "the erosion of America's secularist tradition." The book's publicity emphasizes this theme: The publisher's press release and four of the six blurbs (including ones from eminent writer Arthur Miller and historian Arthur Schlesinger) assert that free thought in America is under "unprecedented attack" from a rising tide of official religiosity.

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The history in Jacoby's book is fascinating. She makes a convincing argument that, contrary to the assertions of many conservatives today, the Founding Fathers did in fact intend to create a secular government. The Constitution's lack of any reference to God or divine sanction was not an accidental oversight, or an omission of something that everyone implicitly took for granted anyway. On the contrary, the godlessness of the Constitution, along with its rejection of a religious test for public office, was a source of major controversy during the ratification debates. Religious traditionalists warned that the Constitution's irreligiousness would bring God's wrath down on American citizens -- in language reminiscent of claims by some of their modern-day descendants after Sept. 11 that God withdrew his protection from America because Americans have turned away from him.

Jacoby also cites evidence that Thomas Jefferson championed religious liberty not only for different religious denominations but for nonbelievers, and that James Madison wanted not only the federal government but the state governments to be prohibited from making laws that would either interfere with or promote religion.

And yet Jacoby's account also demonstrates that today's antisecularist backlash is far from unique -- rather, it's part of a cyclical pattern that has persisted throughout American history. At the end of the 18th century, the climate in which the Founders' Enlightenment rationalism flourished, gave way to the first "religious reaction." Indeed, Jacoby acknowledges that "had the Constitution been written in 1797 instead of 1787, it is entirely possible that God, not `we, the people,' would have been credited with supreme governmental authority." Jefferson's and Madison's secularist views became a political liability; Thomas Paine, the British-born American patriot, was vilified and ostracized because of his opposition to organized religion.

Of the Civil War, Jacoby writes that "the intensity of the Christian imagery associated with the Union cause [was] never equaled before or since the war." ("The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is a prime example.) Even in the late 19th century, which she calls the "Golden Age of Freethought," when outspoken atheists and agnostics such as attorney and orator Robert Ingersoll enjoyed success as public speakers, tolerance definitely had its fairly narrow limits. In an editorial after Ingersoll's death, The New York Times noted -- with approval -- that his irreligion had effectively barred him from a career in public service for which he was otherwise highly qualified.

The present-day backlash against secularism is a reaction to the decline of traditional religion in the 1960s and '70s, and to the secularist victories in the courts -- from the ban on school prayer to the legalization of abortion. Despite the religious revival of the past 20 years, in some ways our society is more secular than it ever was. With a few exceptions, the courts have maintained fairly solid barriers to religious intrusions in the public sphere (sometimes, arguably, to the extent of discriminating against religion). Jacoby deplores the use of tax-funded vouchers for parochial schools as an unprecedented breach of the church-state wall -- but it's useful to remember that for most of our history the curriculum of public schools was explicitly infused with Protestant Christian teachings.

Jacoby makes a powerful plea for a civic language that does not exclude nonbelievers. She notes that while religious references in public life today are emphatically nonsectarian and inclusive toward Jews, Muslims and Hindus, the nonreligious constitute a far larger segment of the population than any of these religious minorities. This is an important reminder. Intolerance toward atheists and agnostics, who are often viewed as less moral or even less patriotic than believers, remains one of the few forms of socially accepted bigotry.

But, for better or worse, there is nothing new about this bias. We live in a time of tension and conflict between secularists and religious traditionalists. As "Freethinkers" demonstrates, this tension is as American as apple pie.

Cathy Young is a contributing editor at Reason magazine. Her column appears regularly in the Globe.

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

[Josh W]

[ QUOTE ]
God has no place in government decision-making.

...

While I am no fan of the president's father, I'd much rather he take advice and get strength from him.



[/ QUOTE ]


Ah, I thought as much. I agree, that, in this world, you are right. God shouldn't play a role in governmental decision making.

But that's not what Bush said in his quote. He didn't say he got his DIRECTION from God. Just his strength.

Like I said, if this whole thread is referencing something else altogether, then forgive my ignorance. But it really looks to me like you dislike Bush (fair enough), and are using that as an excuse to dislike everything he says.

And I still don't see how what he said is wrong. He didn't say he gets his direction from God. He didn't say his foreign policy is based on God's will. He didn't say he passes bills based on what God tells him to do.

Am I missing something?

Josh

[andyfox]

I had posted before on Bush's belief that he is getting direction from God. But I also find danger in him getting strength from God.

Throughout history, those who claimed they were getting either strength or direction from God have wreaked havoc on those who they felt were non-believers in the correct God. Bush speaks like both an out-of-control cowboy and a man on a mission, a crusade, and I find this dangerous. It manifests itself in an obsessive secrecy that pervades the administration's decision-making process and in a holier-than-thou attitude that says if you're not with us you're against us. There's no room for shades of gray in this worldview, only black and white.

I do dislike Bush. But I didn't make up my mind to dislike him a priori. It's what he says and what he does that I don't like often enough.

BTW the Bush quote is in Bob Woodward's book. Woodward told Bush that Tony Blair had told him (Woodward) that when he gets a letter from a family that has lost a loved one, it pains him and he has doubt. Bush said he never has doubt because he gets strengeth from not his [biological] father, but from a higher father.

Dangerous stuff, IMO, whether it is sincere (which I believe it is) or feigned.

[MMMMMM]

Andy, I really can't agree that someone saying they get strength from God is dangerous stuff. The other stuff you are referring to may be closer to the danger zone-- but come on, there are millions or billions who draw strength from mere belief in God, and IMO that in itself doesn't make them any more or less dangerous than anyone else. I don't even think you can rightly say that on average it makes them more dangerous--because if you want to compare numbers, the atheistic communists murdered more people than possibly all others combined in the history of the world (no other numbers even approach the 80-100 million murdered by the communists, although combined they might). So I think you may be falling into the fallacy of using the special case (or cases) to generate conclusions about the general case.