archived: 7 - 13 Jan, 2007         Back                 Next

UPDATED: JANUARY 11, 2007

                        “ON GEORGE BUSH AND RELIGION I, REDUX, PART 1”    

Author’s Note. From now through the balance of this year and possibly into 2008, on TPJ I will be publishing an original column for the most part every third week.  For the second of each three week cycle I will be publishing, in re-run, the set of columns written since the outset of my appearance on TPJ that focus on George Bush.  (In the third week of the cycle, for the most part we will be re-running a column or two of mine from BuzzFlash [www.buzzflash.com].)  Stephen Gheen and I thought that in light of the fact that Bush is now in the twilight of his Presidency (that is in the Gotterdammerung, not the gentle, sense of the word), such a series would be appropriate: a backwards look at a backwards man, only the second true reactionary, in the literal sense of the word (Reagan was the first), ever to have occupied the White House.    

The columns will appear in the order in which they were first published on TPJ unless there is some particular Bushevent that calls for taking one or more of them out of order.  The columns will each receive a light edit in an attempt to deal with any severe grammatical problems and any remaining typos in them.  Particularly long ones such as the original of this column (and I went even longer at the beginning of my tenure at TPJ than I do now) will be in this series presented in two parts. But otherwise they will appear pretty much as they did the first time around.  In other words, no updating.  I hope that you will consider these writings an adequate representation of this man who continues to work so hard at achieving what is evermore so obviously his original goal: the overthrow of US Constitutional Democracy, to replace it with a Georgite version of theocratic fascism.  And now to Part I of that fist Bush column, that appeared in TPJ on April 8, 2004. 

Introduction 

Organized religion and its exploitation is an obvious major feature of the Bush II Presidency, the one that I like to refer to as the Georgite regime.  There is a view held in some quarters that this is simply cynical politics: that many Right-Wing Republican policies fit into and/or reflect the agenda of the Christian Right, which then forms the electoral center of the Bush Base.  Certainly, many of the top Georgites appear to be anything but True Believers: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Perle. They all seem eminently secular. As for Karl Rove, who knows if he has any true beliefs, one way or another.   

But does that view apply to the top-dog Georgite, G.W. Bush himself?  Is he simply a cynical politician, mouthing phrases to take advantage of a group of Right-Wing voters who just happen to hold, very strongly, to a particular brand of hellfire and brimstone old-fashioned Protestant theology?  I don’t think so.  I think that this George is a true believer, himself.  And that makes him even more dangerous. 

In this column, you will find some evidence to support my position (and one or two other observations on political religion as well).

On Bush and God 

If you think that Bush is just “playing to his base” for votes, and doesn’t really believe the “God put him there stuff” that Gary Bauer shares with us (see the next item below), take a look at this (if you have not already seen it):

"According to [Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud] Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: 'God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.'"
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=310788&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

If this is not some sort of joke, this is beyond what even Jonathan Westminster predicted in his book The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2002-2022.  Westminster’s fictional Republican/Religious Rightist President was simply using the religious fanatics to further his own political aims.  He didn't really BELIEVE the stuff.  Bush apparently does (see next item).  Oh my! 

George Bush and his Personal Religious Beliefs 

On Independence Day, 2002, President Bush attended services at the West Ripley Baptist Church in Ripley, West Virginia.  As is well known, the Southern Baptists are at the center of the Christian Right.  Clearly demonstrating the level of his commitment to ecumenism, tolerance, understanding, and personal sensitivity, the church's Pastor, one Rev. Jack Miller, had the following to say in his invocation that day (Newsday, July 5, 2002): 

"We have ridiculed the absolute truth of your word in the name of multiculturalism.  We have been forced to honor sexual deviance in the name of freedom of expression.  We have exploited the system of education in the name of the lottery.  We have toyed with the idea of helping end human life in the name of medical research.  We have killed our unborn children in the name of choice." 

Now Pres. Bush is nominally a Methodist.  That he chose to attend that particular Baptist congregation on that highly symbolic day is highly symbolic.  Among other things, he was clearly demonstrating what his own commitment to ecumenism, tolerance, understanding, and personal sensitivity, and so on and so forth, really is.  Further, in remarks subsequent to those of the Pastor, in which he took no exception to anything the latter had said, President Bush clearly set forth his own position on the matter of the appropriate relationship between church and state.  Changing that relationship, as it is spelled out in the Constitution, is (again as is well known) the prime focus of the Christian Right.  

Next, commenting on the then recent Federal appeals court ruling that including the words "under god" in the Pledge of Allegiance as recited in a public school violates the Constitutional separation of church and state, Bush said: 

"No authority of government can ever prevent an American from pledging allegiance to this one nation under God."  (See also below.) 

Bush, whether by mis-direction or misunderstanding, did not deal with the question that that court addressed and the Supreme Court is now addressing: whether government, in the form of a public school authority, can force someone to recite the Pledge with the words "under God" in it.  As documented at length in Westminster’s book, the Christian Right has as its ultimate goal the declaration of the United States to be what it would define as a "Christian Nation" (see esp. chap. 10 of that book; see also Katherine Yurica’s “The Despoiling of America,” www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism).  To his base in the Christian Right, the words that Bush did utter were more music to the ears than even the most sacred of hymns could be.  

Forgetting about theology for the moment, and forgetting that there are many Christians in the United States who have an entirely different views on “morality” and what public policy concerning it should be, the Invocation by Pastor Ripley and the support given to its thoughts by Pres. Bush, present a clear picture of what the United States of America as a "Christian Nation" as the Christian Right would define the term would look like. 

George Bush obviously believes this stuff.  He is not just “going along with it” to “appeal to his base.”  He IS his base. Gary Bauer, one of the leading ideologues of the Christian Right has told us that “God was working to put into the White House a man whose life had been transformed by accepting Christ. . . . God put George Bush there for a time like this [post-9/11].'" And George Bush, doesn’t just say “thanks Gary,” when statements like this are made.  He believes them himself (see also below). This is really scary stuff, and somehow, it has to become a major issue in the upcoming Presidential campaign, if Constitutional Democracy as we know it is to be preserved. 

To be continued next week.

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