...for Jesus on the rocks. Just another crutch for an addictive personality. Now he's traded Jesus for power (also highly addictive). The Christian drag just plays well with his freaky right wing base, but he's moved on.

"that requires a strength of character which many people, certainly those offended by the notion that Bush's religious beliefs are authentic, would be loathe to attribute to him"

This goes a long way toward explaining the group dynamics of the 29% who still feel this president is doing a good job.

He traded a scotch on the rocks....

...for Jesus on the rocks. Just another crutch for an addictive personality. Now he's traded Jesus for power (also highly addictive).

I agree, and one of the arguments I make is that replacing alcohol addiction and a hedonistic life of entitlment for an evangelical conversion that betows moralistic certainty is really a lateral rather than a vertical move.

It's interesting that those who want to insist that Bush's religious beliefs are fake seem to be operating on the false assumption -- without necessarily having thought it through -- that to attribute religious fervor to someone is to compliment them, to make an argument in favor of their Goodness. Hence, those who want to argue that Bush is Evil have assumed the need to insist that his religious fervor is fake.

wow.

The book. I will get around to ordering the book off line at Borders. If not, but I don't recommend my idea, there is always the local Used Book Store.

Is it classified in the dirty fingerprinted, Dewey Decimal, 3X5 file-13 Category...Harlequin (wow) love novels section? I go now.

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

-- Blaise Pascal

There are examples and proofs by the million, so I'll just refer you to two indispensable books illuminating the connection between the RWA brand of Xian fundamentalism and brutal, vicious, inhuman totalitariansim.

American Fascists, by Chris Hedges

The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins

I sense a kind of weird ninny nanner moralizing that the problem with Bush is da Demon Rum. Which is a little weird coming from the free pot left. I'm not convinced it matters in the least that any President must be drug and addiction free. Lots of our leaders some of them pretty damn good were drunks or ex drunks or worse. Anyway compulsive is as compulsive does. It shouldn't be a moral judgment on its own. As my Baptist friends tell me, don't hate the man hate the behavior. At least that's what you're supposed to take away from substance abuse.

Maybe Bush did quit drinking due to a religious experience. But the man seems so incoherent now I wonder if he's back on the bottle or has simply switched from alcohol to prescription drugs.

I haven't reviewed your entire comments section on the topic, so my suggestion is very much from the hip, but mightn't it be that those of your readers who question the "authenticity" of Bush's faith are themselves Christian believers -- that is, people who believe in Christ and who believe that the authenticity of one's faith CONSISTS IN the fruits of that worship. In other words, if the tree bears rotten fruit -- such as a misbegotten war -- then ipso facto the faith that engendered the policy cannot be authentic. An authentic faith in Christ could never bear such rotten, horrid fruit.

I grant this is a bit of a tautology, but no more than the argument you implicitly invoke. You seem to be assuming that the authenticity of Bush's faith is best measured by his (either conscious or unconscious) cynicism in adopting it. That is, if you believe he believes, then you countenance his faith as authentic -- a position no less silly, in the final analysis, than the tautology of the faithful; a position, moreover, that could only be taken by an agnostic or an atheist. "Given that we can never know the truth, or even whether the truth exists, the only means I have to judge the authenticity of a man's faith is whether he himself believes it to be authentic."

I submit that if one believes there IS a Truth, and that his or her faith provides, shall we say, reflected glimpses of it, then that person would have no problem whatsoever judging the authenticity of another's faith a) on the basis of whether it accords with his or her own ("mine, being true, is the only authentic faith"); and b) on the basis, as I say, of the fruits. Indeed, from that perspective -- or by that tasty "metric", to use the now popular phrase -- to suggest that Bush's faith is even remotely authentic does insult to all faith everywhere. It is to deny the existence of True Faith.

A tenable position perhaps. But telling.

I am sure George Bush believes his faith in God and all that goes along with that faith is sincere. But that doesn't necessarily make his faith genuine. What we've seen from fundamentalists of all stripes is the willingness to pick and choose those pieces of belief that support their world view and their ambitions. In vetoing the stem cell research bill the other day, Bush had this to say as he was wagging his pen:

"Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical -- and it is not the only option before us."

Yet this is the same man who can feel quite comfortable with his decision to invade Iraq, killing thousands of civilians in the process. This blindness to his own hypocrisy certainly supports your contention about a "Good vs. Evil" mentality. But it also demonstrates Bush's inconsistency in applying his beliefs, and makes it easy to assert that his faith is a sham. How can it be genuine when he so easily puts aside faith-based ethics when it suits his purpose? In fact, it is the "Good vs. Evil" mentality that best supports this kind of illogical, inconsistent reasoning.