[Marxism] Max Hastings on Bush and Blair's religious fanaticism

["Charlie Parks" <jcparks5550@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I don't know much about Max Hastings' career as editor of the Daily
Telegraph, but judging from his Guardian columns, one wishes there were more
public figures like him on the American Right, even with our own official
cast of "mavericks".  Not that I'm too concerned with the wellbeing of the
Right here or anywhere else, but because it would probably entail a
political center of gravity decidedly to the left of what we actually have
in America. I'd take Hastings over the pseudo-maverick John McCain any day.
Could you imagine even McCain saying the following (from the column pasted
below): "There is an attractive rationalist case for insisting that
candidates for election anywhere in the world are required to sign a
declaration forswearing religious affiliation"? And if one were to say in
the US mainstream media, as Hastings does in this column, that "these
American hijackers have made the world a more dangerous place," one would be
answered with a shrill chorus condemning this "moral equivalency" and its
"anti-Americanism." It's a revealing index of how far to the right America's
political center of gravity is skewed vis-a-vis the rest of the world when a
self-described conservative takes positions that would, in the eyes of the
mainstream American media, consign him to the lunatic fringe of the
left.--CP

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Save us from the politicians who have God on their side

These American hijackers have made the world a more dangerous place

Max Hastings Monday December 6, 2004 The Guardian

A week in the United States, such as I have just spent, is enough to make
anybody feel a trifle fed up with God, or rather with the relentless
invocation of the deity by American politicians, led by their president. No
public occasion would be complete without the blessing of the Almighty being
besought for whatever endeavour tops the agenda, most prominently the war in
Iraq. The appeal to faith, seldom mere ritual, is usually founded upon
conviction. There is an attractive rationalist case for insisting that
candidates for election anywhere in the world are required to sign a
declaration forswearing religious affiliation. Had this been done in Ireland
a couple of generations ago, think what we would have been spared.

Few modern political careers are compatible with religious principle.
Government by atheists would relieve us of the irksome moral conceit that
impels George Bush and Tony Blair to do deplorable things while remaining
convinced that slots are kept open for them in heaven.

Even among the enemies of democracy, at the extreme end of the scale it is
easier to deal with the IRA, whose ambitions are political, than Osama bin
Laden, with whom there can be no negotiation, only global submission to
Islam.

I am not in the least anti-religious. If pressed I would describe myself as
a social Anglican. Yet I find myself increasingly eager to be governed by
politicians who profess no pretensions to a hot line to a higher power.

full: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1367214,00.html

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