Jim Anderson has a slightly different take on the State of the Union address than I did. He actually liked some of the rhetoric (since I didn't bother to listen to it, I didn't much care about what a speechwriter wrote for him to say). Along the way, he makes a point that I do agree with:
No matter what fears of theocracy lefties may harbor, they're misplaced when directed at Bush. Bush isn't a theocrat any more than tee-ball is baseball or Keanu Reeves is an actor.
I think this is correct and I think some of the rhetoric on the left in this regard gets a little hysterical. I certainly fear theocracy and I write about it fairly regularly, but I don't think Bush is a theocrat. I do think that there are elements of his dominant constituency that are theocrats, and he is thus forced to throw them a few bones now and then at least rhetorically, but that doesn't make Bush himself a theocrat. All political constituencies are a melting pot of differing and often conflicting views, not necessarily representative of the person on the ticket.
There's more detail in Jim's post where he quotes some of the language from the address and notes that it is essentially humanist in nature. I don't necessarily think that language expresses Bush's actual views any more than I think the theocrats in his constituency reflect his actual views (I suspect the man typically just reads what his handlers tell him to read), but Jim's analysis of the text is accurate I think.
Well I think a lot of it has to do with him wanting to protect his legacy. I've thought of him as much less of theocrat this term. Nevertheless he was never close to comparable to true theocrats in the first place. True theocrats want more than just for law to coincide with their religious beliefs, they want them to be based on their reilgious beliefs.
One need not be a theocrat to chisel away at separation of church and state, though, which creates precedents for others. A good example of this is a quarter of aids funding going to 'faith-based' organizations. It isn't Bush that worries me so much as Nehemiah Scudder coming after him.
Thanks for the link, Ed. Obviously, Bush doesn't write his own speeches, but he he approves the final copy, and as far as I know those sentiments are right in line with what he's expressed publicly in his own words.
This talk by Bush's speechwriter, Michael Gerson, goes into more depth on specific choices of religious language. A telling quote:
A speechwriter spinning his own speech, i am shocked, shocked i say. And the "we" that Gerson includes himself within?? Rove, Cheney, Rice, Hughes?? I doubt any of these are serious theocrats, but they do seem to be increasingly interested in hiding their agendas from public scrutiny, lying in any public address, and working to undermine the Constitution. Why?
I do think that they (those mentioned above) concur that among the potential choices for powerful controlling large populations, a theocracy is not easily dismissable. The turn over of Iraq to Shia forces led by the Imans and Mullahs represents this acknowledgement. A theocracy that was subservient and dependent upon the power and prestige of great wealth and corporate largesse would require less overt military/security apparatus, would it not/? Course i am just ruminating.
As a helpful gauge of Bush's belief in his own words, allow me to point out that the very next day after his State of the Union address, his spokesman announced that he didn't really mean it when he said he'd reduce America's dependence on Mideast oil 75% by 2025.
Administration backs off Bush's vow to reduce Mideast oil imports (Knight-Ridder)
While it can be reasonably argued that Bush and most of his crowd are not theocrats does it matter when they are willing to "bribe" theocrats by granting them parts of their agenda to the detriment of our country? I personally interpreted Bush's call for a ban on all forms of human cloning as conceding to the call for a ban on embryonic stem cell research while not calling it that since he knows what kind of outcry it would cause.
The problem is you can't judge anything about Bush on what he says - because he'll say anything whether he believes it or not. It took less than 12 hours for his administration to back off the "reduce mid-east oil" pledge of the SOTU: apparently he "didn't mean it literally." So, what, he meant it as a big, fat lie?
No, you have to judge Bush on what he DOES, not what he says. And if he is throwing bones to theocrats then he's being a theocrat.
thekeez wrote:
Except that those same bones also are being thrown to mainstream religious right groups and individuals who are not theocrats. Theocrats are not a majority even among the religious right. Just because a policy may be pleasing to a theocrat doesn't mean the law itself is theocratic in nature or that the person advocating it is a theocrat.