Friday, January 21, 2005

Peggy Noonan says too much God in speech

Peggy Noonan agrees with me that there was too much God in Bush's inaugural address:

The president's speech seemed rather heavenish. It was a God-drenched speech. This president, who has been accused of giving too much attention to religious imagery and religious thought, has not let the criticism enter him. God was invoked relentlessly. "The Author of Liberty." "God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind . . . the longing of the soul."

Furthermore, to expound upon my previous post, Bush said that self-government requires character, and character requires some kind of religion, even the Islamic religion. It was not a statement about freedom of religion, it was a statement that a country will have a lousy government unless its people believe in God. Bush once again tells us that atheists aren't welcome in the United States.

It's a pretty demented statment that a country of Muslims will produce a better government than a country of atheists.

And its not a statement born out in fact. In all cases I can think of, democratic movements have been secular, not religious. Our Constitution was not written by Christian fundamentalists, it was written by secular Deists.

Links to other blog posts about Peggy Noonan's column: Professor Bainbridge, No More Mr. Nice Blog, BrothersJudd, Outside the Beltway, Pandagon, Belmont Club, PrestoPundit, Sunny Days In Heaven, PunditGuy, and Inklings. People sure have been pretty busy blogging about her column!

3 comments:

R said...

Agreed.

mikeca said...

The last paragraph of this column is:

“One wonders if they shouldn't ease up, calm down, breathe deep, get more securely grounded. The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.”

Bush has lofty, noble vision, but seems disconnected from reality. There is a fine line between optimism and naiveté. Optimism is highly prized in business, but I have worked for managers that simply refused to admit that things were not going well, and seen them lead project teams or whole companies over the cliff. I sincerely hope Bush is not leading our country over some cliff.

Old Blind Dog said...

This is interesting too:

Bush draws the battle lines even more sharply