January 11, 2005
THANKS, MIKE!:
President sees new interest in religion (James G. Lakely, 1/11/05, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)
Mr. Bush told editors and reporters of The Washington Times yesterday in an interview in the Oval Office that many in the public misunderstand the role of faith in his life and his view of the proper relationship between religion and the government. [...]
"I fully understand that the job of the president is and must always be protecting the great right of people to worship or not worship as they see fit," Mr. Bush said. "That's what distinguishes us from the Taliban. The greatest freedom we have — or one of the greatest freedoms — is the right to worship the way you see fit."On the other hand, I don't see how you can be president — at least from my perspective, how you can be president, without a relationship with the Lord," he said.
Michael Newdow, the California atheist who famously failed to get the words "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance, is now attempting to get a D.C. District Court to prevent clergy from participating in Mr. Bush's inauguration.
"I will have my hand on the Bible," Mr. Bush said, expressing a tone of amusement and exasperation that one day, even the 216-year-old centerpiece of the inaugural ceremony might be challenged.
However, Mr. Bush said that unlike many Christians, he does not think that faith is under attack by the greater culture at large and points to the "backlash" against attempts to further secularize the public square as proof.
"The great thing about our country is somebody can stand up and say, 'We should try to take "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance,' " Mr. Bush said. "On the other hand, the backlash was pretty darn significant. "
As so often before, the President shows a deeper, if less articulate, understanding of the way the Constitution is supposed to work: freedom of speech means you get to say something asinine and then the rest of us get to laugh at you and use it to pummel your cause. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 11, 2005 11:49 PM
This is precisely what the 'hate speech' crowd fails to understand. It is a lot better to allow the Holocaust deniers and the Klansmen their day in the sun to spout their nonsense, and for the rest of us to be allowed to analyze and summarily reject it, than for the government to decide what can and can't be allowed. When we restrict speech, we create the illusion of it being a 'forbidden fruit' and having some value where it truly does not.
A free society understands that Al Goldstein, Larry Flynt and Hugh Hefner are merely disgusting little smut peddlers, not great thinkers. Thus, Al Goldstein is homeless and bankrupt, Larry Flynt is a poor joke reduced to peddling tabloid trash about politicians, and Playboy Enterprises is a penny-stock.
Posted by: Bart at January 12, 2005 7:09 AMAnd that if you let them speak people will shoot them for you.
Posted by: oj at January 12, 2005 8:37 AMTo object to the President swearing by his own religion seems especially ridiculous. Whatever case one might have for preventing oneself from swearing by another religion, surely if we want the President to uphold his oath of office, he should swear the oath that will be most binding to himself, which is naturally according to his own personal religion.
Posted by: John Thacker at January 12, 2005 9:37 AMMy rule on Klansmen and the like is 'You can burn a cross on your lawn, that's your business, but if you burn one on my lawn, your health insurance better be paid and you'd better be able to run like Deion Sanders, because I take my 2d and 9th Amendment rights seriously.'
Posted by: Bart at January 12, 2005 11:01 AMThe question is how many Americans take Article VI seriously?
Very few, I imagine.
On a lefty blog, I saw this reported as an attack by Bush against the idea that atheists can be patriots.
That is Orrin's position, but not, I think, Bush's.
I'm not sure he has a coherent position. If it's as fundamental as all that, you'd think he'd be able to enunciate it. It's not rocket science.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at January 13, 2005 12:15 AMI don't know if Pres. Bush has a coherent position. However, it is clear that Colonial America did not lack for what we would call state-sponsored prayer in the public square. One of the easiest ways to figure out what people meant when they wrote something, which someone somewhere might somehow construe to be ambiguous, is to observe their behavior in the immediate aftermath of when they wrote it.
Only a theocratic nitwit, completely ignorant of American history, would write atheists out of the American polis. And there is no evidence that George W Bush is a theocratic nitwit, completely ignorant of American history.
Posted by: Bart at January 13, 2005 7:36 AMHarry:
The test is of an official sectarianism--no one believes in that. A large majority believe the president needs to be a man of faith.
Posted by: oj at January 13, 2005 7:51 AM