Good Faith
The influence of America's faith extends to government—which is quite unfortunate
 

March 21 2005
Counterbias.com
by Brian Adler
 

Who doesn’t know the meaning of faith? Good faith.  Bad faith.  Religious faith.  The three are interrelated.

For many in this great country of ours, it is an “article of faith” that organized religion is the source of all that is good, noble, and desirable. The beneficent influence of this religious faith extends even to government.  A religious official is a moral official. A devout senator is a dutiful senator. A Christian congressman is a caring congressman. And a pious president is a….

Jimmy Carter? Teddy Roosevelt? Abe Lincoln? Each of these men expressed his religious devotion – his faith – in different ways. President Carter was always active in his church – a traditional sign of the truly religious. He has set a fine example of how an individual’s religious beliefs can serve as sources of charity and humanity. 

On the other hand, Theodore Roosevelt was not so associated with formal religion, nor was Abraham Lincoln. Yet each, in his way, undertook policies that could be seen as expressions of genuine religiosity. As the founder of America’s system of national parks, Roosevelt evinced a concern for the well-being of those other species with which we, as human beings, share this planet. Whether Mr. Roosevelt was a fervent devotee of Jesus Christ is not readily apparent, but that he worshipped Mother Earth – that is clear. President Lincoln, too, was not known for holding prayer meetings, or inviting Born-Again firebrands to the White House. Yet he did work toward the elimination of an institution that he and many others saw as a moral evil; a dark smear on the American soul. Mr. Lincoln was not continually on his knees before Jesus, but he did venerate Freedom. 

And let us not forget our very first president. George Washington could not tell a lie. Fortunately, lying comes a lot easier in the current new era. President Bush is constantly enlarging upon the truth – stretching it a bit here, adding to it there, and mixing it up with lots of fictitious facts until the real story gets so big and complicated that no one knows what is actually going on. Take this little nugget of prevarication that appeared in The Washington Post: another story about those dastardly weapons of mass destruction that keep cropping up in every country the Bushies don’t like. No, it is nothing to do with Iraq. No, not Iran, but you are getting warmer – only one member of the Axis of Evil left… aha… yep… that’s right! North Korea! Bush, Inc. tells us that evil-doer extraordinaire, Kim Jong-Il, has again been playing the role of weapons pusher to the stars of Rogue Nation Theater. This time, his fellow actor was notorious bad guy, Libyan “Strongman” Muammar Qaddafi.  According to White House critics, Muammar has been buying illicit “WMD-related materials” at a North Korean convenience store. Good thing those security cameras were rolling. Good thing for… Kim!

Why? Well as it turns out, the Dear Leader didn’t have anything to do with this particular caper, at least directly. Kim Jong-Il did sell some weapons materials, but not to Libya. This time the punk was Pakistan. Roll the videotape! Kim Jong-Il’s North Korea was not even in the neighborhood at the time this particular “crime” was committed. All Mr. Kim actually did was unload a few extras, in a perfectly legal deal, with a fellow sovereign state; a state just happens to belong to America’s “Terror Ally” Pervez Musharraf.  So what gives? Why the frame up? Simple. If you are going to start saber-rattling on the Korean Peninsula, you had better have a good reason.  The charges need to stick with the American People.  Stick… like white on Rice! 

Thank goodness for those video cameras, or for whatever or whoever it was that revealed the truth. Who’d have believed it? Who would have thought that religion and lying go together? It would have been like saying, “Trickery and Tyranny is… the American Way!” 

Then again, we all must remember that George W. Bush has a hotline to God. Who knows what George Bush’s god has been saying to him in those secret, late night calls? The Lord works in mysterious ways. Up could be down. Right – wrong. Peace – war. The ends justify the means, and in this Administration they certainly always have.

 Appoint a hard line warmonger to the World Bank if you want to help yourself to… excuse me… I mean… help Third World countries. Appoint as United States Ambassador to the United Nations a man who publicly stated that he wouldn’t mind if the UN Building lost ten stories – this shows a willingness to work against… excuse me again… I mean… with others.  (John Bolton will work with his international counterparts to develop a way to shorten skyscrapers.) Convince your own people that taking money out of Social Security will help keep your Wall Street buddies… I really have to watch that… I mean… keep Social Security solvent.   

In short, there are so many ways in which we can express faith. Now you know one of them – what happens when a nation expresses faith in George Bush.

Brian Adler is a freelance writer and an avid history buff. He writes/researches for a company that produces factual essays and reports on a wide range of subjects.  He also writes screenplays and short stories.
 

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