Saturday, October 8, 2005

Politics: mock liberal outrage

So it's trendy right now to look at president Bush like a hallucinating schizophrenic over these comments to Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath:

"God would tell me, George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan. And I did, and then God would tell me, George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq... And I did.

"And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East. And by God I'm gonna do it."
Now I guess if you took these comments super-literally and thought that George was just walking down the street and heard voices in his head and decided to do these random invasions, then sure. But come on, kids.

Imagine that, someone who proclaims to be an evangelical Christian (no crime, no problem with that) confirms that, when faced with a big decision, he prays. Oh my gosh, he prays. Oh no. He should be impeached! He should be taught to meditate like all the secularists or he should be thrown into the Potomac.

Get real.

Maybe this is simply an issue of semantics for those who aren't used to the semantics of devoted Christians. And maybe it's just liberals who are too lazy to write about the Tom DeLay indictment, Bill Frist's MarthaStewarting, Harriet Miers cronyism, the Rove-leaking-Plame case, and the no-job-growth month we just had. And maybe some folk are just that anti-Christian that any reference to a man's personal beliefs, however superficial they might be, set off an alarm.

But come on. Bush faces big decision. Bush prays to find out what he should do. Bush comes up with decision, attributes it to his prayer (rightfully or wrongfully). Bush tells folks God told him to do something. NO BIG DEAL!

If anything, this shows us all that Bush at least THINKS about what he's doing before he does it! Prayer, if not a time to commune with God, is at least a time of meditation and contemplation that would benefit rational decision making.

And while we don't think his decisions were necessarily the most rational, we look like morons if we're so out of touch with the majority of Americans that we get upset when we find out that they prayed about a decision instead of creating some mathematical formula to tell them what to do.

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