A former writer for the New York Times has published a book with a title referring to America’s Christian conservatives as Fascists. I heard this clown speak on a panel. He discussed his book. He also talked about what he seems to view as some sort of Christian conspiracy in the White House.
I suggest he is quite wrong. At least he is wrong regarding Bush. Bush is not a fascist, he’s an Apostle. And that ain’t necessarily bad, but it isn't all necessarily good.
First, however, the positive side:
When Bush first ran in the 2000 campaign, his handlers were amazed that part of his platform included huge amounts of financial aid for the fight against AIDS in Africa.
Yeah – Africa.
You didn’t hear about it? I’m not surprised. It wasn’t the type of thing on which the petite fascists at the New York Times would spend much time.
And, did Bush do what he promised?
Indeed, he did.
In fact, the contributions made to Africa through his initiatives have been so large and thus, so embarrassing to the lefties, that they don’t know how to handle it.
A few months ago the Boston Globe ran an article – not by an in-house writer – describing an international AIDS conference that featured – of course – our Ambassador to the World, Bill Clinton. The writer noted that, though the Bush administration had done more than any other administration and/or country to assist in the fight against African AIDS, Bush’s name was barely mentioned at the conference. It was as though he didn’t exist.
The Warm and Fuzzy Brigade just did not know what to make of it all. The article made the Brigade’s position clear: They looked at the undeniable success of much of Bush’s program just as one would regard one’s drunken uncle at the party. Bush was an embarrassment.
I suggest that they missed the point.
Bush regards himself as a practicing Christian. As such, he felt compelled to make financial aid to Africa into a part of his platform in his first campaign. And, though it could not benefit him much in America, he went ahead and fulfilled his pledge upon election.
Now – with no constituency left – with the right deserting him and the left hating him, what has he done?
This week he’s announced he’s doubling his aid to Africa for the war on AIDS! You didn't hear about that either? I'm not surprised.
Which brings me to a digression: You also probably have not heard that one of the Bush twins is starting her own book tour this summer. And why have you not heard much, if anything, about that event?
Wellllll......you may ask....What’s her book about? Her book is about a teen-age girl whose life she followed for about a year in Central America. This girl’s parents died of AIDS. She has the disease. Reviewers say it reads like a novel.
I must make a snide aside while I’m in this neighborhood: Note that the Bush twins are not in the news anymore. Once they stopped going to parties and started living exemplary warm and fuzzy lives – living as the democrats say we all should live – they dropped from sight.
One of the twins has been teaching in the Washington D.C. school system. This is a school system to which no one: not Clinton, not Gore, not anyone in the capitol will send their kids. It isn’t just because of poor educational standards – it’s because they don’t want their kids getting shot.
And what of the other twin? She’s been doing the equivalent of missionary work in Central America.
Chelsea Clinton? We paid for her repeated tours of the world with Mom when Dad was president. As soon as she got out of college, she started working with some publisher for $110,000.00 per year starting salary. Like her parents, she knows how to translate fame into fortune.
The Bush girls are – well – liberal types, apparently. Or – perhaps put another way – they are Christians actually trying to live a New Testament style of life. Hence, they have completely fallen off the front pages. You have not seen, nor will you, a documentary on a Bush daughter’s day in the life trying to teach and survive in the D.C. schools.
Anyway – let’s move on.
The various conservative groups in the country have been astounded by Bush’s insane immigration policy. At first I was disturbed. I couldn’t understand it. But, considering his religious propensities, it makes sense: it is part of a perfect whole.
As the President said this week as quoted in the Houston Chronicle:
"I feel passionate about the issue. It's something I have felt strongly about ever since I was the governor of Texas. Texas is a very diverse state, Houston is a very diverse city, and through that diversity, if you're open-minded, you get a great sense of how it invigorates the society," said Bush, a Houston resident in the 1960s and '70s. Growing up in Texas, Bush said, "you recognize the decency and hard work and humanity of Hispanics. And the truth of the matter is a lot of this immigration debate is driven as a result of Latinos being in our country." [Houston Chronicle, May 31, 2007]
I have no doubt that Bush’s stand is a result of his Christian world view. That stand has prevented him from enforcing the laws on immigration. Why? Because employers have used and abused the labor pool for years. Because of that abuse, some Americans [if we ignore the crime costs and lack of tax payments] have benefited from the illegals’ labor.
But more than that: I think Bush's immigration stand is a direct reflection of his Christian principles. I think he believes that - the law be damned - it is not moral to enforce the law against these people.
Add to that that we are all sinners and you hit a moral stalemate: No one is able to cast a stone in this situation so no one can win.
For Bush it IS a personal matter. And I have no doubt his view is through the lens of a Christian Apostle. He knows the Latinos. He thinks anyone who disagrees with him doesn’t understand Christian values. He thinks we are haters.
He is not a statesman. He is not a politician in the classical sense. Bush doesn’t interpret Plato – he doesn’t act as a mouthpiece for a particular political view – No! He is a practicing Christian, as he views that role.
It carries over into his world view of terrorism: there is good and there is evil. Evil must be fought and good must be promoted. In this, I believe he is 100% correct.
Unlike Jimmy Carter, he is not a Bible thumping Baptist Sunday school teacher. [We always hear about Bush’s Christianity but everyone’s forgotten that Carter was almost rabid on the topic of religion. It permeated his world view. It still does. It’s one of the things that made him an idiot rather than a statesman. But he was so extreme that he never understood the need to use force. Bush’s Christianity has a little more ‘realpolitik’ to it.
Far from being a fascist, George Bush is Christian gentleman. The world has reaped some good and some bad from this fact.
He is sadly mistaken – tragically for our country – if he prevails on the immigration issue. His hope now is to use the left’s tactic of trying to convince people that those opposing illegal immigration compromises [read: Amnesty] are haters.
Far from it. For most people I know it is an issue of fairness and not an issue to be analyzed through the lens of Christianity's charitable principles.
Another reason he favors the amnesty has to do with his being a wealthy man. Mind you, I’m not a class warrior. I’m glad for him that he’s rich. [Really - hell, I wish I had his money.]
But rich people have something most middle class and lower class people do not have. That ‘something’ is a corral filled with professionals to help them comply with every goddamned little creepy law that the federal and state governments foist upon us.
The case of Senator George McGovern's Bed and Breakfast business is instructive. A few years after the country handed his head to him in the Presidential election of 1972, he and his wife retired from public life.
It had been their ambition to open a quaint little 'B and B' to accomodate travelers.
With McGovern's talents - the skills of World War II Bomber Pilot, a career as a college professor, and the campaign organizational skills of a U.S. Senator and former presidential candidate - running a 'B and B' should have been child's play.
Not so. McGovern later wrote about the experience. He was shocked at the amount of paper work required to run this little business. Of course, as a person serving the public [not as a Senator, but as a concierge] he was astounded at the number and complexity of the regulations with which he and his wife had to comply.
It was all too much for this highly intelligent man. The business went under. [It is no wonder that the U.S. Congress usually exempts itself from all the restrictive laws it imposes upon us regarding employers' obligations and liability.]
As for the rest of us?
We have to sort through our trash like land-fill workers trying to make sure we don’t get fined for violating recycling laws.
We follow our little doggies with sandwich bags so we don’t violate the pooper-scooper laws.
We fasten our seat belts so a state trooper doesn’t have the authority to pull us over and start asking a ton of questions.
We install car seats for babies so we don’t violate the law against leaving the hospital with an unrestrained baby.
We get permits to burn piles of leaves in our yards so we don’t get fined.
We put smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors in our houses so we don’t lose our fire insurance for violating the detector laws.
We submit plans, land surveys, percolation test results, and in some cases environmental impact statements just to build our own little house on our own little piece of land.
We put up business signs that don’t exceed ‘so-many-square inches’ so we don’t get fined or have the neighbors dragging us into court.
We don’t smoke cigarettes within – pick one - : fifty feet of a public entry; in a public park; in a barroom; probably in a brothel; in a casino – all so we don’t get fined for violating laws.
We go through rigorous car inspections so we don’t get fined. If we run restaurants in certain cities, we stop using trans-fats so we don’t get fined.
If we live on a ‘scenic way’ in a ‘Scenic Way’ jurisdiction in Massachusetts, we have to get permission from a town panel of idiots to cut down one of our trees on our lawn, in our yard just so we can clearly see our children while they await the bus. If not? We get fined.
If we are employers we obtain Workmen’s Compensation Insurance so we don’t get fined or charged under some criminal statute.
In Massachusetts, when a father and son go fishing, they'd best comply with all licensing and limits laws lest the fully armed Ecology Police - complete with cruiser and siren - show up to investigate a suspicious looking trout.
The list is just endless.
But the last and most important thing is this: We file our tax returns every year. We are taxpayers. It is the price of being a member of Club America.
We pay these taxes to the same governments that impose so damned many restrictions on every aspect of our daily lives.
And then what happens? We’re told that people who broke the law, people who haven’t paid taxes to our government, people who have stolen identities, committed all sorts of frauds and violations of significant and insignificant regulations – should be ‘forgiven.’
It’s ‘the right thing to do.’ ‘It’s only fair.’
Many years ago I was a classroom teacher in an urban public school. I learned the hard way how to run a classroom.
The rules must be clearly stated. They must be evenly enforced. The punishments must be uniform. No one – NO ONE must ever be allowed to get away with a violation.
And why?
Because if you are not fair and just, your class will fall apart. They will turn on you like rabid tigers.
They will be demoralized.
There will be no uniform classroom culture to which they belong.
It will be ‘every kid for himself,’ and the teacher be damned.
Bush the Apostle does not understand this. Nor does Kennedy or any of the other culturally suicidal idiots such as Lindsey Graham.
I do not know a single person in Massachusetts who regards this as a racial issue.
It is an issue of what is right and what is wrong.
Bush the Apostle and his allies are determined to prove we have been fools for trying to obey every single little goddamned crapola regulation and law that has been foisted upon us.
We are to be the silently suffering brother who watches the ‘Prodigal Son’ get all the special treatment.
Y’uh know, I always had trouble with the story of the ‘Prodigal Son.’ I think most people do.
That’s because it’s a story about forgiveness, not about fairness. Furthermore, it's not a story that is literally meant to be applied to a family nor to a culture. It is a metaphor. The 'father' in the story is, in fact, God. The 'Prodigal Son' represents 'sinners.' When the 'Prodigal' returns home, he is returning to God.
The lesson of this little story has absolutely nothing to do with a culture or a society. It tells those living a 'Godly' life that they should not resent those who have sinned and return to the fold. God will accept them.
Forgiveness of a ‘Prodigal Son’ may be fine in a family that doesn’t care about it’s internal order and the cooperation of other family members.
In the American culture – a culture founded on the rule of law – such forgiveness will tear the culture apart.
Another Christian dictum comes to mind: Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesars and unto God, the things that are God's.
Implicit in this admonition to pay one's taxes is the command to obey the law of the state while remaining true to God.
Bush should remember that his oath as President, sworn in God's name, is to uphold the laws and constitution of this country as President.
Bush is still a relatively young man. If he wants to be a priest and dispense forgiveness, there'll be time for that later.
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