{"id":1111,"date":"2008-12-29T14:55:10","date_gmt":"2008-12-29T22:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=1111"},"modified":"2008-12-29T18:56:34","modified_gmt":"2008-12-30T02:56:34","slug":"faith-george-w-bush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/faith-george-w-bush\/","title":{"rendered":"Faith & George W. Bush"},"content":{"rendered":"

Austin Bramwell, He Still Believes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Bush\u2019s admirers credit him with political courage on par with Lincoln\u2019s. Lincoln, of course, hated the \u201cterrible war\u201d that he felt his duty to wage. \u201cFondly do we hope,\u201d Lincoln intoned, \u201cfervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.\u201d Does Bush similarly hate the evils that his policies have caused? It may seem strange that any man should dare to ask the question. Yet according to Bush, the purest test of a leader is the ability to remain an idealist in the face of every calamity. Without the evils that his policies have caused, therefore, Bush could never have made the principled stands that he himself regards as the \u201cbig moments\u201d of his presidency. Bush\u2019s idealism, in short, means that he\u2019s not just indifferent to the evil consequences of his actions but positively welcomes them as proofs of his commitment to idealism. In Bush\u2019s mind, the our very failures in Iraq have shown how he has gloriously withstood the test of leadership. For all that other presidents have also claimed the mantle of righteousness, an idealism as fanatical as Bush\u2019s has never been seen before.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the main points which my liberal friends have a hard time grasping is the conservative anger at George W. Bush for not<\/i> being a conservative. Faith and hope are important human traits, and pure rationality leads to a sterile and indecisive existence (as evidenced in Ant\u00f3nio Dam\u00e1sio<\/a>‘s work). But all things in modest measures. One can not know the mind of a man, but on many an occasion I have wondered as to the similarity between the cosmic visions of liberal audacity and George W. Bush’s belief that if he believes it is so, it is so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Austin Bramwell, He Still Believes: Bush\u2019s admirers credit him with political courage on par with Lincoln\u2019s. Lincoln, of course, hated the \u201cterrible war\u201d that he felt his duty to wage. \u201cFondly do we hope,\u201d Lincoln intoned, \u201cfervently do we pray, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[136,1131],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1111"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1117,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111\/revisions\/1117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}