August 14, 2006
Bush, the Religious Right and End Times
"I think that on balance the moral influence of
religion has been awful.
With or without religion, good people can behave
well and bad people can do evil;
but for good people to do evil—that takes
religion."
Steven Weinberg,
Nobel Laureate, Physics
"A tyrant must put on the appearance of
uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal
treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious."
Aristotle
(384-322 BC)
Since U.S. President George W. Bush says
that 'God' tells him what policies to pursue, maybe the religious side of the
Israel-United States Axis should be more formally investigated. The more so
since Bush has refused to answer a direct question regarding his own views
about his religious allies' theory that 'God' is assumed to have a plan to end
the world soon. He could have answered that such ideas originate from religious
zealots and should be dismissed as hallucinations. —But he did not. What
does this mean?
When religious extremists use their tax-free access to TV to
openly call for a nuclear confrontation between America and Iran, and when they
try to demonize the European Union by calling it "the Antichrist", it
is time to ask what's going on in the U.S. —Is this wind of collective
madness subsiding or getting up steam? Are the Armageddonite fanatics calling for the end of the world
and the Second Coming of Christ, in
an Armageddon war supposed to kill two billion people, turning the U. S. into a madhouse, where
the inmates seem to be in charge?
There are, indeed, as many as 30 million Armageddonite
Americans—ten percent of the population—most of them members of the
evangelical religious fundamentalist
movement, to which GWB subscribes as an evangelical born-again
Christian, and from which he borrows his religious language in defense of his
policies. (In the 2004 elections,
exit polls showed that more than three-quarters of white evangelical Christians
voted for President Bush.) Many among the evangelicals are known to nurture the
crazy idea that if their preachers' end-of-the-world scenario were to be
accomplished, they would be 'raptured' and would enter into some 'Heaven',
without going through a 'Judgment Day'. Since the leaders of this movement are
frequently invited to the White House
for off-the-record policy sessions, and since many congressmen attend their
meetings, it might not be so foolish after all to look at what these delusional
characters have in store for the world.
What is frightening is the seeming convergence of interests
between the pro-Israel and pro-war neoconservatives in the U.S., the Republican
Party and its war-related electoral fortunes, and the religious radicals who
are openly calling for a confrontation with Iran as a necessary precondition
for their Armageddon. When a religious fanatic held a large meeting in
Washington D. C., on July 18, 2006, to launch a war movement of Christian Zionists
in favor of Israel and against Iran, the "Christians United for Israel"
movement,
President George W. Bush did not denounce such mad obsession with the end of
the world, but rather sent words of support. He told them "God… bless and stand by the
people of Israel and . . . bless the United States."
Not only that, but the Chairman of the Republican National Committee,
Ken Mehlman, himself was one of the speakers
at the meeting. The leader of the group, Texan John Hagee, proposed that the
United States join Israel in a preemptive military strike against Iran to
fulfill "God's plan" for both Israel and the West. Republican politicians, such as
Sen. Sam Brownback (R- Kansas), Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania) and Rep.
Tom DeLay (R-Texas), were
attendees. Also among the guests were the Israeli Ambassador, Daniel Ayalon,
and retired Israeli defense chief Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon. —Is it not true
that reality beats fiction, when American religious radicals and foreign
generals get together to team up for a religious war?
What is so disturbing is that George W. Bush and some
leading Republicans seem to be listening to deranged religious people who, if
they had their way, could precipitate a world war and a world economic
depression, just to fulfill their religious fantasies. Considering that the
policies of the Neocon-inspired Bush-Cheney administration are seen by many to
be governed by an amalgam of "impulse and fantasy", shouldn't the world be worried?
Indeed, the magazine Newsweek
observed
recently that President George W. Bush is a man who “still trusts his
gut to tell him what's right”,
rather than relying on professional advice, logical analysis, factual evidence
and experience to arrive at conclusions. Of course, in such an environment of
constant improvisation, anything is possible.
In particular, one should not
dismiss the influence that religious thinking and the political Religious Right movement
have on Bush's decisions. Indeed, what has been the Religious Right's influence
on the Bush-Cheney administration's foreign policy, especially as it relates to
the Middle East? For example, could it be that Bush's religious beliefs were
behind his announcement on January 30, 2001, at his first National Security
Council meeting, that from then on the U.S. would tilt its policies sharply
toward Israel? Also, could it be that the reason Bush II gave the Israeli
government of Ehud Olmert such unconditional and uncritical support and a total
blank check, both to repress the Palestinians in Gaza and for attacking and
bombing Lebanon, be found in the religious Right's support for such policies?
Is George W. Bush listening to televangelist Pat Robertson, when this wild-eyed fanatic
encourages Israel to destroy Lebanon because "The Jews are God's chosen
people. Israel is a special nation that has a special place in God's heart. He
will defend this nation"?
In the past, some religious leaders, on the Far Right fringe,
also argued for mixing a dangerous cocktail of religion and politics.
A few among them did not hesitate in calling for the nuclear obliteration of
the entire Soviet Union, because it was thought to be a godless communist
empire. This demonstrates, if need be, that armaments without morality or
without law equals anarchy and disasters. —In 1948, for example, a bellicose
and delusionary evangelist preacher from New Jersey, the Rev. Carl McIntire,
became famous when he proposed in a radio broadcast that the United States
carry out a "pre-emptive" nuclear attack against the Soviet Union. A
religious fundamentalist, founder of the Bible Presbyterian Church, McIntire
was persuaded that a worldwide nuclear hecatomb was necessary to
"purify" the world of communist countries. He believed that no
country should have a system that differed from his own religious model, whatever
the cost. At the time, such delirious persons were few and isolated.
Nowadays, McIntire's successors are the Falwells,
Robertsons, Hagees, etc. of this world. They are much richer and more powerful than
in the past, thanks to their tax-free religious status and thanks to the
Reagan-era liberalization of the rules governing the use of the media as
one-track propaganda tools. Because of that, they are assiduously courted by
Far Right politicians and are welcomed to the White House, where they receive a
sympathetic hearing.
After loosing its anticommunist struggle as a fund-raising
technique, the new Christian Right seems to have found another way to raise
fear, passions and money. Its new crusade is directed against the 'wrong god'
Islamic world and is fanatically in favor of Israel, whatever it does, and
against the Palestinians and the Middle East Muslim countries, whatever their
sufferings. They talk of having a biblically prophesized "mission" to
save Israel from
the Muslims and propose a new vigorous "crusade" against them, not
hesitating for that purpose to call for the unilateral unleashing of U.S.
military power in the region. In the apocalyptic words of John Hagee, one of their more delusional leaders,
“We are racing toward the end of time,...Israel is the only nation
created by a sovereign act of God, and He has sworn by His holiness to defend
Jerusalem, His Holy City. If God created and defends Israel, those nations that
fight against it fight against God.”
There are none more ferocious than those who kill with
religious zeal.—That's where the world stands in the summer of 2006, a
summer that may or may not duplicate the summer of 1914 or the summer of 1939.
In the 1930's,
many people dismissed the German Nazis, later, to their bitter
chagrin. They thought that the Nazis were somewhat extremist, but that they
were also good Christians, good conservatives and good patriots. Just as the
supporters of the Religious Right of today, Adolph Hitler professed that he
regarded "Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and
the family as the basis of national life." In fact, the Far Right in Germany was
composed of rabid pro-war militarists, and they were dangerous from day one.
Tens of millions of people died because of them.
The amalgam of
belligerent religiosity and simplistic politics creates a threat that many have
not fully realized. Those who currently revel in
Bush's political religiosity and his flirt with those who advance
end-of-the-world scenarios should be more aware that sometimes, crazy ideas can
lead to crazy policies. —People should brace themselves. There is nothing
that says that inept, ignorant, incompetent and power-hungry politicians cannot
also turn out to be crazy politicians.
Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of
economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com
. He is the author of the book 'The New American Empire'.
Visit his blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's Website:www.thenewamericanempire.com/
_____________________________________
Posted, August 14, 2006, at 6:30
am
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