There is not, as both writers in Monday's Post (Point/Counterpoint: President Bush and religion) claimed, anything wrong with proclaiming one's faith publicly. Indeed, many of the European pilgrims came to America primarily to have religious freedom, and that freedom was an important factor in the minds of our country's framers.
The freedom the framers were most concerned about, however, was freedom from tyranny -especially tyranny fueled by a ruler's belief in his religious righteousness. And George W. Bush is a tyrant, using the name of God, Jesus and Americans to trick conservative America into supporting his war for oil.
Matt LaWell said, Bush might be shunned for his faith. Rather, I believe LaWell is referring to those who shun a president for encouraging the mix of church and state by calling his war a crusade and by urging Congress to pass oppressive legislation based on sketchy biblical instructions.
And leadership? I feel ill when I read Republicans' letters in newspapers trying to justify Bush's countless bad decisions by calling him a good leader. America is more polarized now than it has been in decades, and this means half the people in our country think that our government is doing a very bad job, meaning they don't follow Bush's leadership.
Furthermore -and this is the kicker -LaWell, speaking about the Iraqi people, claims that Bush has
indeed united them -not divided them -in a previously unknown freedom.
And tell me, Mr. LaWell, is it freedom that more than 10,000 of their countrymen, whom they haven't known before, are dead? Or were you more sure about the unison of a population that experts fear could find itself in a civil war within the next two weeks?
Failures ... make Bush's faith so legitimate -and so believable LaWell said. I don't have a problem believing that Bush is a man of misguided faith. I have a problem with the idea that he is Christ-like, that we should savor his mistakes, that his faith excuses him from being held accountable by the people of America and that his tyranny should be admired as a passionate follower of God.
I'm voting for John Kerry and John Edwards. And I'm praying that Republican Christians like LaWell start thinking for themselves before it is too late, again.
-Mark C. Gaffney, the vice president of the Ohio University College Democrats, is a creative writing major. Send him an e-mail at mark.gaffney@ohiou.edu.
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