MikeB
05-24-2004, 10:26 AM
EMPEROR GEORGE I?
by Danilo Q. Lawhorn
On September 14, 2001, three days after 9-11, President George W. Bush addressed the nation from the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. His address included this extraordinary statement:
Just three days removed from these events, Americans do not yet have the distance of history. But our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil. War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder. This nation is peaceful but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour, of our choosing.
America a peaceful nation? In the preceding century, America had waged war against, among others, Spain, the Philippines, Germany, Japan, Germany again, North Korea and China, North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, Libya, Grenada, Panama and Iraq. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of these conflicts--and many of them were most certainly right-- war is war and not peace. America was born in war and has always reveled in its military prowess.
But the claim of pacifist America is not what is extraordinary about the president's address. This is what's extraordinary: his announced aim of ridding the world of evil and his confidence said ridding will be accomplished at an hour of his choosing.
"Man proposes, God disposes," as Saint Thomas à Kempis reminds us, but Mr. Bush begs to differ. Now it would be unreasonable to expect America's First Christian to be familiar with a 15th-century German monk, but surely he is familiar with Romans, Chapter 12: "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." Or Matthew, Chapter 24: "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." Or Deuteronomy, Chapter 4: "For the LORD thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God."
Mr. Bush is known to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and the National Cathedral address was not the first time the curious nature of this relationship was revealed.
Asked during a 2000 debate the political philosopher he was most influenced by, Mr. Bush replied, "Jesus Christ, because he changed my heart." Perhaps he was ducking the question, or perhaps he couldn't think of any political philosophers. Or maybe he was calculatedly pandering to evangelical voters, because if we take him at his word, his answer is inexplicable. Jesus Christ made only one reported comment on politics: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's."
In his book, The West and the Rest, the Christian philosopher Roger Scruton identifies Jesus' separation of Church and State, of the "distinction between regnum and sacerdotium," as the root of the success of Western polities and contrasts this with the unity of Church and State in the Muslim world, which he identifies as the root of the failure of Muslim polities.
But George W. Bush does not believe in the separation of Church and State. How else to explain his presumption at the National Cathedral, his "faith-based initiatives," his repeated equation God's will = democracy = America's mission, his bizarre judgment of Vladimir Putin: "I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul."
Who does George W. Bush think he is, anyway? A demigod, like the Roman emperors? He has already landed a fighter on an aircraft carrier while wearing a flight suit, a stunt that would have scandalized Dwight Eisenhower. How long before he goes beyond merely visiting his soldiers in Iraq and decides to strike camp there? Why does he insist on wearing cowboy boots emblazoned with the Presidential seal and his monogram? Surely not because he doesn't want his boots mixed up with some other president's. Why does he always sport a flag insignia on his lapel? Surely not because he needs to remind himself which country he is president of.
George W. Bush is not the first president to invoke God regularly, and he won't be the last. Even Bill Clinton did so. Ronald Reagan used to speak of a "shining city on a hill," but he never believed it his mission to impose American light on all the benighted peoples of the earth. Bush does, and he combines this with a personal custody of the symbols of American power in a manner that more than smacks of Caesarism.
And how do the president's neoconservative acolytes see America's destiny? They once hid behind the Latin word imperium, but now they come out and say it in English: empire. George W. is the grandson of a Senator and the son of a president. Some tip his brother Jeb Bush to succeed him in office; others think we must wait for his nephew, George P. Bush. What is this but the re-emergence of the Roman gens?
Rome was overrun by barbarians 1,500 years ago. But the identification of the state with God's will as expressed through its ruler did not die with the Empire. Shortly after Constantinople fell to Islam, another 15th-century monk, this one a Russian called Filofei, wrote a letter to a Caesar called Ivan III: "Take note, O religious and gracious tsar, that all Christian kingdoms are merged into thine alone, that two Romes have fallen, but the third stands, and there will be no fourth."
The first two Romes, in this reckoning, were the Rome of the Roman Empire, which fell in 476 CE, and then Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, which fell in 1453 CE, The Third Rome was Moscow, capital of the Soviet empire, which, of course, fell in 1989.
But if the 43rd president is the first American emperor, is Washington the Fourth Rome? Such a destiny might be great for America's international glory, but it bodes poorly for ordinary Americans, who merely want their lives, their liberties, and their private pursuits of happiness.
###
Contact: DQL@ivote2004.com
by Danilo Q. Lawhorn
On September 14, 2001, three days after 9-11, President George W. Bush addressed the nation from the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. His address included this extraordinary statement:
Just three days removed from these events, Americans do not yet have the distance of history. But our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil. War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder. This nation is peaceful but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour, of our choosing.
America a peaceful nation? In the preceding century, America had waged war against, among others, Spain, the Philippines, Germany, Japan, Germany again, North Korea and China, North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, Libya, Grenada, Panama and Iraq. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of these conflicts--and many of them were most certainly right-- war is war and not peace. America was born in war and has always reveled in its military prowess.
But the claim of pacifist America is not what is extraordinary about the president's address. This is what's extraordinary: his announced aim of ridding the world of evil and his confidence said ridding will be accomplished at an hour of his choosing.
"Man proposes, God disposes," as Saint Thomas à Kempis reminds us, but Mr. Bush begs to differ. Now it would be unreasonable to expect America's First Christian to be familiar with a 15th-century German monk, but surely he is familiar with Romans, Chapter 12: "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." Or Matthew, Chapter 24: "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." Or Deuteronomy, Chapter 4: "For the LORD thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God."
Mr. Bush is known to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and the National Cathedral address was not the first time the curious nature of this relationship was revealed.
Asked during a 2000 debate the political philosopher he was most influenced by, Mr. Bush replied, "Jesus Christ, because he changed my heart." Perhaps he was ducking the question, or perhaps he couldn't think of any political philosophers. Or maybe he was calculatedly pandering to evangelical voters, because if we take him at his word, his answer is inexplicable. Jesus Christ made only one reported comment on politics: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's."
In his book, The West and the Rest, the Christian philosopher Roger Scruton identifies Jesus' separation of Church and State, of the "distinction between regnum and sacerdotium," as the root of the success of Western polities and contrasts this with the unity of Church and State in the Muslim world, which he identifies as the root of the failure of Muslim polities.
But George W. Bush does not believe in the separation of Church and State. How else to explain his presumption at the National Cathedral, his "faith-based initiatives," his repeated equation God's will = democracy = America's mission, his bizarre judgment of Vladimir Putin: "I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul."
Who does George W. Bush think he is, anyway? A demigod, like the Roman emperors? He has already landed a fighter on an aircraft carrier while wearing a flight suit, a stunt that would have scandalized Dwight Eisenhower. How long before he goes beyond merely visiting his soldiers in Iraq and decides to strike camp there? Why does he insist on wearing cowboy boots emblazoned with the Presidential seal and his monogram? Surely not because he doesn't want his boots mixed up with some other president's. Why does he always sport a flag insignia on his lapel? Surely not because he needs to remind himself which country he is president of.
George W. Bush is not the first president to invoke God regularly, and he won't be the last. Even Bill Clinton did so. Ronald Reagan used to speak of a "shining city on a hill," but he never believed it his mission to impose American light on all the benighted peoples of the earth. Bush does, and he combines this with a personal custody of the symbols of American power in a manner that more than smacks of Caesarism.
And how do the president's neoconservative acolytes see America's destiny? They once hid behind the Latin word imperium, but now they come out and say it in English: empire. George W. is the grandson of a Senator and the son of a president. Some tip his brother Jeb Bush to succeed him in office; others think we must wait for his nephew, George P. Bush. What is this but the re-emergence of the Roman gens?
Rome was overrun by barbarians 1,500 years ago. But the identification of the state with God's will as expressed through its ruler did not die with the Empire. Shortly after Constantinople fell to Islam, another 15th-century monk, this one a Russian called Filofei, wrote a letter to a Caesar called Ivan III: "Take note, O religious and gracious tsar, that all Christian kingdoms are merged into thine alone, that two Romes have fallen, but the third stands, and there will be no fourth."
The first two Romes, in this reckoning, were the Rome of the Roman Empire, which fell in 476 CE, and then Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, which fell in 1453 CE, The Third Rome was Moscow, capital of the Soviet empire, which, of course, fell in 1989.
But if the 43rd president is the first American emperor, is Washington the Fourth Rome? Such a destiny might be great for America's international glory, but it bodes poorly for ordinary Americans, who merely want their lives, their liberties, and their private pursuits of happiness.
###
Contact: DQL@ivote2004.com