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Boris Johnson wakes up in a Tel Aviv and remembers he backed the contender who “only narrowly escaped selfassassination by pretzel”….

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This is a quote from George H W Bush, 41st president of the united states, father of George W Bush, current US president.

http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/arguments.html#bush

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I dare say he can live with the cost of the bandwidth, Lori.

And, thank you for addressing it to me, that’s a very interesting post.

Quote:

“No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”
(interview with Robert Sherman, 1987)

Yes, if he said that, that’s a bad one.

But I don’t care for a lot of the snide anti-Americanism one hears now. We had the same here, when we were “top nation”. Envy’s all very well – but … I don’t like it. America’s a nation that tries to be democratic in a way that even other nations in the West don’t. And I don’t think it’s going too far to agree with George Santayana:

“In his affections the American is seldom
passionate, often deep, and always kindly.
If it were given me to look into the depths
of a man’s heart, and I did not find goodwill
at the bottom, I should say without any
hesitation, You are not an American.”

And who are bien pensants over here to dispute the judgment in an election of nigh on 60 million people, as that interesting Canadian argues?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/11/07/do0704.xml

As far as I’m concerned, Richard Dawkins and Lady Antonia can go and boil their heads.

You can see why I don’t care for that, surely?

As for Mr Blair. I confess I like him, too. Not sure I trust him, but there’s genuine feeling there. I’m not convinced by the nay-sayers on Iraq.

Blair told the Guardian that he would have urged Bush to act, if Bush had been less keen. He has said several different things, and I’m not sure that accurately reflects the situation. But though it is not in our interests to become estranged from the U.S., Blair is clearly acting out of deep conviction here. I heard him speak on this, and it was a tour de force. He’s a Gladstone, isn’t he? Disraeli might well have taken out Saddam on strategic grounds; Gladstone would probably have wanted to have a go at him merely on the basis of what he was like. Blair is the same – this is on the No. 10 site:

“In December 1996, a Kurdish businessman from Baghdad was arrested outside his house by plainclothes security men. Initially his family did not know his whereabouts and went from one police station to another inquiring about him. Then they found out that he was being held in the headquarters of the General Security Directorate in Baghdad. The family was not allowed to visit him. Eleven months later the family was told by the authorities that he had been executed and that they should go and collect his body. His body bore evident signs of torture. His eyes were gouged out and the empty eye sockets filled with paper. His right wrist and left leg were broken. The family was not given any reason for his arrest and subsequent execution. However, they suspected that he was executed because of his friendship with a retired army general who had links with the Iraqi opposition outside the country and who was arrested just before his arrest and also executed. (Source: Amnesty International)”

You can understand why I’m cooling towards Michael Howard, no?

But you have some stuff there to think about, I agree.

> Bush recently told a group of Amish farmers that God speaks through him.

Did he? So he believed that but only thought it safe to say so to them? Or he was feeding them a line? I suppose neither is too impressive. Is the comment well-attested?

> Bush has repeatedly referred to his “war on terror” as a crusade.

Well that one *is* a bit thin. There certainly is a threat here – even if some would like to deny it. Repeatedly? Ate you sure? And as for the use of the word “crusade” – on the one ocacasion I know he used it he withdrew that comment out of sensitivity. But that’s normal English usage anyway – crusade against drugs, crusade against chewing gum … against litter-dropping – you name it. Means nothing in contemporary English.

And how do you explain this one?

“Soon after arriving in the White House, he invited a Muslim Iman to the launch of his faith-based initiative program, appointed someone to work on “Arab-Muslim outreach,” and has routinely added the word “mosques” to his list of religious institutions. This rapprochement naturally took a battering after September II, but Bush has still resisted demands from Protestant fundamentalists to make Muslims organizations ineligible for government grants.” (Micklethwait and Wooldridge, op cit.)

In the current situation, and as a agnostic, I’d probably pass on that one myself! Hardly makes him a hardline proponent of a single-minded religious viewpoint, though, does it?

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Absolute unadulterated twaddle. That is so uninformed it is not believeable. This again is out of the Michael Moore/BBC school. (Did you know, by the way, that the BBC News room had an effigy of President Bush hanging up in it for months?) Can’t you actually put some effort into researching and finding out about what you write about?”

I’m surprised that you seemed not to spot the obvious hyperbole in the comparison between President Bush and an Islamic theocracy. Maybe there are people out there who actually believe that Bush is some kind of Christian Ayatollah, but they would have to be severely divorced from reality to believe that.

I never claimed that the President was trying to impose his faith on the country. I claimed that he was trying to impose his faith-based moral values on the country. There is a difference.

The shift in federal funding away from youth programmes that promote contraception and towards those that promote abstinence is an example. It may surprise you to learn that I am a Christian, and do believe that abstinece is the way forward for young people. Unfortunately, many of the abstinence programmes make their case by lying about the efficiency of correctly-used contraception, with the consequence that kids who do not manage to abstain from sex tend not to use contraception. I don’t consider that helpful.

Similarly, his rhetoric about “defending marriage” from “activist judges” is rooted in moral condemnation of homosexuals. My marriage is a vow made before God. It is not affected by the actions of any state, nor is it affected by what other people who consider themselves married do. It doesn’t need defending from anyone.

I am somewhat uneasy about homosexuality: I suspect that it is probably sinful, although it comes down to the question of the meaning of a couple of words of greek in the New Testament. With the recent actions of the Episcopal Church, this is a subject that I pray about often, but I am still unable to come to a clear view.

Nevertheless, I have no right to impose my morals on anyone else. If two gay men are a couple, it would be quite wrong of me to deny them the right to denote each other as their next of kin. If, for example, one of the couple was taken into hospital, it is right that the hospital should talk to the patient’s lover, and quite wrong that the hospital should ignore the lover and talk to the man’s estranged parents (assuming that that was the wish of the hospitalised man).

The state provides an easy way for a heterosexual couple to make such an assignment of next of kin. It’s called “marriage”. It should provide a similar way for a homosexual couple to make such an assignment. Anything else would be the state passing a moral judgement on people’s private lives. The only reason that homosexuality could be immoral is if God says it is. I’m sure you can join the dots here.

Now, the state does provide a small number of financial benefits to married couples. In the US (where I live) the biggest one of these is the ability of a married couple to file a joint tax return. In the UK, about the only benefit is the fact that transfers between spouses are free of CGT and IHT. One could also consider the provision of a spouse’s pension for state employees here.

The usual argument made in favour of these benefits is that couples have children, and if (the wife) stays at home with them, she should be able to use her lower tax bands against the family income, and she’ll need a spouse’s pension because she won’t have been working because she’ll have been at home with the kids.

I have some sympathy with such an argument, although I note that we apply the benefits to all married couples, not just those that chose to have children. If children were really the reason, it would make more sense to attach the benefits to the presence of children in the family unit.

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George Bush:
“No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”
(interview with Robert Sherman, 1987)

Bush recently told a group of Amish farmers that God speaks through him. Bush has repeatedly referred to his “war on terror” as a crusade.

I do not think that it is at all unreasonable to refer to Bush as an authoritarian who seeks to impose his faith on the nation (and indeed the world).

In the NY Times Magazine there’s an October 17 article by Ron Suskind, “Without a Doubt.” Take a look (registration is free). There’s quite a lot about Bush’s take on faith and authority in this article based on inner-circle reports, and it clicks with what I’ve read elsewhere about him.

As a South Carolinian by birth, I’ve developed a bit of allergy to this sort of thing from long exposure. I voted against him twice (not for Kerry or Gore, so much as against him). I would do it again in a heartbeat.

I still feel a bit disappointed in Boris for supporting Bush, as it seems idealogically they occupy different planets.

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Bush won becuase majority rules and the majority of Americans are not stupid or hypnotized. You sound like a permeanantly defeated party of middle of the road-ites. Only instead of waiting to be hit by traffic from both directions, as Maggie said. Only difference is you guys are already road kill.

The truth is a broad range of America voted for Bush and there is a lesson for you Tories. More Blacks, Hispanics and women than ever voted for Dubya.

Get the facts before you start reciting Mike Moore and Molly Ivins, two of the most lost leftys known to America. Oh yes I forgot they are best sellers in the UK.

After all your just jealous, when was the last time anyone ruled the UK with over 50% of the vote?

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