THEY JUST DON'T GET IT:

The State of the Union (President George W. Bush, Jan. 28, 2003, Jewish World Review)

Our fourth goal is to apply the compassion of America to the deepest problems of America. For so many in our country--the homeless, and the fatherless, the addicted--the need is great. Yet there is power--wonder-working power--in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.

Americans are doing the work of compassion every day: visiting prisoners, providing shelter for battered women, bringing companionship to lonely seniors. These good works deserve our praise, they deserve our personal support and, when appropriate, they deserve the assistance of the federal government.

I urge you to pass both my faith-based initiative and the Citizen Service Act to encourage acts of compassion that can transform America one heart and one soul at a time.

Last year, I called on my fellow citizens to participate in the USA Freedom Corps, which is enlisting tens of thousands of new volunteers across America.

Tonight I ask Congress and the American people to focus the spirit of service and the resources of government on the needs of some of our most vulnerable citizens: boys and girls trying to grow up without guidance and attention, and children who have to go through a prison gate to be hugged by their mom or dad.

I propose a $450 million initiative to bring mentors to more than a million disadvantaged junior high students and children of prisoners.

Government will support the training and recruiting of mentors, yet it is the men and women of America who will fill the need. One mentor, one person, can change a life forever, and I urge you to be that one person.

Another cause of hopelessness is addiction to drugs. Addiction crowds out friendship, ambition, moral conviction, and reduces all the richness of life to a single destructive desire.

As a government, we are fighting illegal drugs by cutting off supplies and reducing demand through anti-drug education programs. Yet for those already addicted, the fight against drugs is a fight for their own lives.

Too many Americans in search of treatment cannot get it. So tonight I propose a new $600 million program to help an additional 300,000 Americans receive treatment over the next three years.

Our nation is blessed with recovery programs that do amazing work. One of them is found at the Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A man in the program said, ``God does miracles in people's lives, and you never think it could be you.''

Tonight, let us bring to all Americans who struggle with drug addiction this message of hope: The miracle of recovery is possible, and it could be you.

By caring for children who need mentors, and for addicted men and women who need treatment, we are building a more welcoming society, a culture that values every life.

And in this work we must not overlook the weakest among us. I ask you to protect infants at the very hour of their birth and end the practice of partial-birth abortion.

And because no human life should be started or ended as the object of an experiment, I ask you to set a high standard for humanity and pass a law against all human cloning.

Perhaps it's merely a function of the number of people in the media today, but it's really astonishing how little the commentrariat understands politics. You keep hearing them refer to how this portion of the speech could have been borrowed from a Clinton Staste of the Union. But take a look at it in isolation and you can clearly see that what the President is talking about here is bringing religious faith to bear on America's social problems. The mentoring program to some degree, and drug treatment in its entirety, represents a transfer of government funds to basically religious institutions. A few years ago a gay heroin-addicted friend with AIDs asked me to try and find him a drug treatment program where they wouldn't rely on God or a Higher Power or any other religious basis to supplant the addiction. I called every program in Central New Jersey and they laughed at me when I told them what he wanted: "There are no treatments that work that aren't based in faith of some kind."

UPDATE:
The anti-religious activists figured out the message, if not the reality of effective treatment, Religious Drug Treatment Plan Irks Some (LAURA MECKLER, Jan 29, 2003, Associated Press)

"The president wants to fund untested, unproven programs that seek to pray away addiction," said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. "People with addiction problems need medical help, not Sunday school."

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 29, 2003 10:41 AM