{"id":4101,"date":"2010-05-18T11:55:01","date_gmt":"2010-05-18T15:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=4101"},"modified":"2010-05-18T14:59:31","modified_gmt":"2010-05-18T18:59:31","slug":"a-truthsayer-named-bush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/05\/18\/a-truthsayer-named-bush\/","title":{"rendered":"a truthsayer named Bush…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
It’s disappointing to hear Laura Bush<\/span>, who is a well respected and admired former first lady, espouse positions on marriage and the value of human life that are contrary not only to her husband’s but arguably, according to polls, in conflict with the majority of Americans.<\/em><\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n
Carrie Gordon Earll, spokeswoman for Focus on the Family<\/em><\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n

It’s unlikely that either George Bush or Dick Cheney ever gave much thought to either Gay Marriage or Abortion. They were political positions that put votes in the Republican column – little more. I’m not slightly surprised to hear Laura Bush saying these things. She seems a sensible person and these are sensible things to say. Frankly, I would doubt that there’s any conflict in the Bush home about such things. The Religious Agenda was an expedient to riding the Religious Right’s vote gathering machine. And during the Bush years, the Religious Right was no better off at the end than the beginning – except for some gratuitous ‘faith based initiative’ money and the absurdity of the ‘abstinence only’ approach to sexuality.<\/p>\n

It is delusional, in retrospect, for a spokesperson for Focus on the Family to speak as if any of the Religious Mumbo Jumbo of the Bush years was anything other than just that – Mumbo Jumbo. Bush, Cheney, Rove – I doubt that any of them cared much about it except as fodder for their Talking Points. Remember David Kuo? Kuo wrote a book about the Bush Administration’s attitude towards the Religious Right after leaving the office in charge of the largely symbolic Faith Based Initiatives: <\/div>\n
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Tempting Faith, by David Kuo<\/a>
Everyday Citizen<\/strong>
Book Review
June 1, 2007<\/div>\n

David Kuo went to Washington wanting to use his Christian faith to end abortion, strengthen marriage, and help the poor. He reached the heights of political power, ultimately serving in the White House under George W. Bush, after being policy adviser to John Ashcroft and speechwriter for Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson, and Bob Dole. It was a dream come true: the chance to fuse his politics and his faith, and an opportunity for Christians not just to gain a seat at the proverbial table but to plan the entire meal.<\/sup><\/p>\n

Instead of following the teachings of Jesus to serve the needy, Kuo explains that he found himself helping to manipulate religious faith for political gain. Kuo spent nearly three years as second in command at the president’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.<\/font><\/strong> Yet his experience was deeply troubling. It took both the Bush White House and a severe health crisis to show him how his own Christian values, and those of millions of Americans, were being corrupted by politics.<\/sup><\/p>\n

Instead of following the teachings of Jesus to serve the needy, Kuo found himself helping to manipulate religious faith for political gain. Public funds were used in battleground states, for Republican campaign events. The legislative process was used as a football, not to pass laws but to deepen purely symbolic fault lines. Grants were incestuously recycled to political cronies. Both before and after 9\/11, despite lofty rhetoric from the president claiming that his faith-based program was one of his most important initiatives, there was no serious attempt to fund valuable charities.<\/sup><\/p>\n

Worst of all was the prevailing attitude in the White House and throughout Washington toward Christian leaders. Key Bush aides and Republican operatives spoke of them with contempt and treated them as useful idiots. It became clear, during regular conference calls arranged from the White House with a key group of Christian leaders, that many of these religious leaders had themselves been utterly seduced by politics. It is time, Kuo argues, for Christians to take a temporary step back from politics, to turn away from its seductions.<\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The amalgam of Church and State during the Bush years was mostly illusion. Christianity was represented by evangelists from the mega-churches rather than the more traditional denominations. The religious issues were idiosyncratic [abortion, stem cell research, homosexuality], things to oppose, in the behavior of others or society rather than standards for personal conduct. While the Religious Right had come into itself during the Reagan\/Bush era of the 1980’s, it was going to explode with George W. Bush in 2000. Patrick Buchanan set the stage<\/a><\/strong> in 1992:<\/div>\n
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In 1990 paleoconservative commentator Pat Buchanan mounted a campaign for the Republican nomination for President of the United States against incumbent George H. W. Bush in 1992. He received a prime time speech slot at the 1992 Republican National Convention, which is sometimes dubbed the "’culture war’ speech". During his speech, he said: "There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself." In addition to criticizing "environmental extremists" and "radical feminism," he said public morality was a defining issue:<\/sup><\/div>\n