Wednesday, October 06, 2004

The Prophet Bush

I just found this opinion piece from a few weeks ago.

Some quotes from the piece:
Bush's fusion of a religious outlook with administration policy is a striking shift in modern presidential rhetoric. Presidents since Franklin Roosevelt have spoken as petitioners of God, seeking blessing and guidance; this president positions himself as a prophet, issuing declarations of divine desires for the nation and world. Put simply, Bush's language suggests that he speaks not to God, but for God.

The writer compares other's presidents use of God in their speeches:

Consider just one example: Roosevelt in 1941, in a famous address de-lineating four essential freedoms threatened by fascism and Nazism, said: "This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God."

Contrast that with Bush's claim in 2003 that "Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity." This is not a request for divine favor; it is a declaration of divine wishes.

Such rhetoric, consistently emanating from this president and administration, has transformed Bush's "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists" policy to "Either you are with us, or you are against God." To the great detriment of American democracy and the global public, the president's view looks and sounds remarkably similar to that of the terrorists we are fighting.

This is what scares me about President Bush. He strikes me as a religious fanatic. Is he as crazy as the terrorists we're fighting? No, because he was raised here, in the United States where freedom is a given. Had George W. Bush grown up in Afghanistan or Iraq or Saudi Arabia, would he have grown up to be a terrorist? Who knows? But he definitely possesses the fanatical religious attitude necessary.

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