Your Thoughts Exactly

I was watching Wash U Graduation Speaker ’03 Madeline Albright today on the Daily Show, and she mentioned how George W Bush was convinced that God wanted him to be President. This is not the first time I have heard of the President’s convictions in the Almighty’s fondness of the Bush dynasty, Texas, transforming the Middle East, or the Republican Party. God has played an important role in the rise of Mr. Bush from an alcoholic spoiled son of a Congressmen to a political figure able to do what his alternate paternal figure (his father,) could not: get elected twice, and remove Sadaam Hussein from Iraq.

But hold on a second. The entire concept of God wanting a certain individual to be President seems to me to be a return to the conception of “Divine right of Kings,” where the basis of the legitimacy for monarchical dynasties lay in the decree of the almighty. To which I say “What the Fuck?” I thought we got rid of this kind of thinking in the 18^th century. In the 21^st century, the fact that a man can think that some divine entity would foresee and enact his Presidency should, in my opinion, exclude him from the office. For it necessarily PROVES that said man (W) does not understand what the office of the Presidency means and how it is supposed to function. God doesn’t decide who is President, the People do, and that’s to whom the office and the person are supposed to be ultimately responsible. This is why it matters that Bush got crappy grades in high school: he didn’t pay enough attention in Western Civ.

Getting beyond the concept of Divine Right of Kings is a large part of what the whole Enlightenment was about, as well as the American and French Revolutions. Are we actually moving backwards in this country? And what has caused a distancing from the liberal ideals that have been responsible for the international acceptance of rights of all human beings the last 300 years, so much as to allow leaders with these conceptions back into power?

Maybe it’s because we think we’ve solved all our problems, done away with slavery, given token rights to people of different colors and genders, and ended colonialism. Maybe it’s because people can’t handle freedom in some way, or can’t handle globalization, or can’t handle the concept that there is no God out there and we are doomed to die and end in nothingness. That our actual self whom we love (and I do love my self as much as anyone,) is so meaningless in “the big picture,” of 6 billion people, and 9 (or ten) planets, and billions of stars and galaxies that it sucks any value out of life.

The revival of religion as part of governance scares the shit out of me. Divine entitlement combined with monopolization of legalized violence is the most deadly combination in human history. To look at a present day example, go to wikipedia and look up Turkmenistan, where Supreme-Dictator-For-Life Niyazov, builds statues of himself and his mother, writes the school textbooks, jails dissenters, and burns books. (He does have a lot of natural gas however, so the EU has no problem giving him payouts.) Could George W Bush do the same? Probably not, although one red flag for me is his interpretation of the Constitution: that he can ignore any law passed by Congress that he personally views as unconstitutional. Hopefully he can understand that amendment that deals with term limits, or else America is in serious trouble. What an asshole. He should be imprisoned.

And while we are on the subject of religion and politics, let’s discuss the religious views of my home state’s Governor and potential ’08 Republican candidate Mitt Romney. As you may or may not know, he is a Mormon. Now like many other Christians in the United States, Mormons believe that we are in the “end times,” of humanity, before the messiah returns to Earth. Of course according to Mormons, many other things need to happen, including Jesus returning at a yet to be built temple in Jackson County Missouri before we actually get to the end of days. What does Romney think about all of this? Or the validity of Joseph Smith? Or the “Fundamentalist Mormons,” who defend a form of polygamy that is basically a combination of underage rape and kidnapping. For that matter how does George W Bush feel about the return of the Messiah? And if they both are “believers,” how does this affect their policy with regards to Israel?

Freedom of religion allows the individual to worship without interference from the government. I fully support the right of every man, woman, child, and puppy to worship whatever deity they choose, be it Jesus, Shiva, or of course, the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But the state apparatus is invariably controlled by people, and to truly achieve the separation of Church and State, these people must separate their personal religious beliefs from making decisions about how to do their jobs, lest the decisions they make unduly burden the people they serve with their fulfillment of religious goals. Right?

Wrong. Because many people in the United States don’t want such a sharp line between religion and governance. Some share the beliefs of their leaders, or they think that using Christian principles in policy will somehow insure piety. (Yea fucking right.) Or maybe they believe in the coming of Messiah and think our tax dollars are best spend preparing for that day.

So as a citizen of this nation, I demand accountability. If we are going to accept religion influencing the leaders of our government, I want to know what they believe. It’s time for the President and future leaders to stop pussyfooting around this issue and let us know what exactly what we are up against.

# posted by Marmaniac @ 4:27 PM