Many are talking about the following phrase from Bush's
Inaugural Address:
By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well - a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.
This apocalyptic language is echoed by other biblical language throughout the address. William Safire said in his New York Times column today that this language was the result of poor editing and should have been deleted because it sounded dangerous. But it was no mistake. And Bush and Cheney intend to go to war again.
That the "fire of freedom" is just a metaphor for the light of Reason or love of our fellow man--without any correspoding destructive heat--is belied by Bush's earlier reference to fire in his call to arms:
At this second gathering, our duties are defined not by the words I use, but by the history we have seen together. For a half century, America defended our own freedom by standing watch on distant borders. After the shipwreck of communism came years of relative quiet, years of repose, years of sabbatical - and then there came a day of fire.
September 11th was the day of "fire." And in a line of rhetoric right out of the Old Testament, Bush will unleash an "untamed fire" on the world. Just coincidence that the term "fire" is used in both places? Absolutley not. When will our fellow Americans realize that Bush is a dangerous fanatic?
Bush has again sounded his clarion call to arms. This is his messianic message to the whole world: we're gonna kick yur ass.
Bush's zealotry is apparently based on his view of what the Bible says--although he probably has not read it very much. The Bible talks about a Prince of Peace who specifically refused to lead a military revolt against Rome--to the great disappointment of many of his followers.
Cheney is now adding more fuel to the rhetorical fire, calling for action against Iran.
And even Peggy Noonan wrote today that the inaugural address was "Way too Much God":
The inaugural address itself was startling. It left me with a bad feeling, and reluctant dislike. Rhetorically, it veered from high-class boilerplate to strong and simple sentences, but it was not pedestrian. George W. Bush's second inaugural will no doubt prove historic because it carried a punch, asserting an agenda so sweeping that an observer quipped that by the end he would not have been surprised if the president had announced we were going to colonize Mars.
A short and self-conscious preamble led quickly to the meat of the speech: the president's evolving thoughts on freedom in the world. Those thoughts seemed marked by deep moral seriousness and no moral modesty.
President Bush sided strongly with the moralists, which was not a surprise. But he did it in a way that left this Bush supporter yearning for something she does not normally yearn for, and that is: nuance.
It was a God-drenched speech. This president, who has been accused of giving too much attention to religious imagery and religious thought, has not let the criticism enter him. God was invoked relentlessly. "The Author of Liberty." "God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind . . . the longing of the soul."
It seemed a document produced by a White House on a mission. The United States, the speech said, has put the world on notice: Good governments that are just to their people are our friends, and those that are not are, essentially, not. We know the way: democracy. The president told every nondemocratic government in the world to shape up. "Success in our relations [with other governments] will require the decent treatment of their own people."
How did Bush come to see himself as the divinely appointed Avenger, and more importantly, why do so many conservatives gladly bestow this "mandate" on him? One has to look into the conservative mindset for answers.
Conservatives love a villain. They are never so happy as when they can oppose a concrete, indentifiable "evildoer." It simplfies the world, avoids nuance. This is why they seemed so adrift at the end of the Cold War and why they seem so happy in the aftermath of 9/11. And they do seem glad that 9/11 occurred, rejoicing at the political power that it gave them domestically, and loving the chance to honor the troops and weep for the fallen in Iraq. This is part of the great objectification of evil. Indeed, conservatives love to state that liberals fail to recognize true evil when it is right under their nose, the evil external to the conservatives themselves that is. You see, as long as the evil in our world has been projected onto an identified tyrant, conservatives can ignore the evil in their own hearts. Hence the never-ending quest for the the next villain, the next Saddam Hussein, the next Dan Rather.
Of course, all this obsession over external evil is contrary to what Jesus taught. But no matter; conservatives are all about bringing down the fires of heaven and triggering the great End of Days, not listening to the admonitions of Jesus. And they are not being consistent with the introspection demanded by Jesus when he asked his followers to have those who were without sin cast the first stone, and cast the beam out of their own eyes before looking to the mote in their brothers' and sisters' eyes. In perhaps the strongest New Testament commentary on evil, after Jesus said at the Last Supper that one of the Disciples would betrary him, they asked: "Is it I?" They looked to the evil in their own hearts, and did not ask is it he? Is it the other guy?
Conservatives fear true introspection, often denigrating it as a form of New-age psycobable. Instead, conservatives wish to emulate and worship Imperial Rome. These psuedo-Christians should start reading their Bible more closely and try to take the words of the Prince of Peace more to heart.