Can John Kerry Be Better Than Bush?
By Alexander Marriott June 11, 2004


Can John Kerry be better than our current president, George W. Bush? This question begs another, better at what? The principle issue of importance in the 2004 election is the War on (Islamic) Terrorism. George Bush’s negatives on this topic are many. Principally, he has failed to properly identify the enemy, referring to the terrorists as guided by a totalitarian political ideology instead of being guided by uncorrupted (by reason) Islamic philosophy. Some have speculated that it is this failure, possibly caused by his own religious faith (though this creates problems discussed below), which prevents him from attacking Iran, attacking “secular” Iraq instead. Tactically he has blundered in an immoral regard for civilian lives to the detriment of American soldiers, also presumably caused by his religious beliefs, rooted in altruism. I readily admit these are grievous mistakes and that they are all hurting the war effort, but in the context of the upcoming election what will be the alternative offered by Massachusetts Senator John Kerry?

It has been suggested that Bush is essentially a religious zealot and hence his running of the war is compromised by that zealotry. However, does this square with historical and current example? Do religious zealots typically care about the lives of people of different religions? Certainly no crusader ever gave any thought to the women and children that were slaughtered to reclaim the holy lands from Muslim caliphs. But in more modern times we are fighting religious zealots. Osama bin Laden subscribes to a religion than literally means “surrender,” specifically of oneself to God. Does he sacrifice himself or his followers to save Americans and infidels? No, obviously not. The point here is not to say Bush isn’t religious or that his religious faith is inconsequential to his outlook. But if he were a complete zealot he would be nuking the Middle East and extolling God’s name to justify the slaughter as would Osama if he had nukes and used them against the United States.

There is another ideology at work on Bush, and it is the same ideology that has softened up Europe and the rest of the industrialized “free” world. Namely it is the secular morality of socialism, which is also altruism, but it has different justifications in this form and makes different demands upon those following it. Remember that the zealot considers nothing save his own holy texts and anyone who disagrees is automatically condemned. Twelve hundred years of Christian slaughter certainly prove that Christianity is no more immune than Islam to wholesale killing of ones opponents. In the context of our current war against fanatical Islam, a zealot, as Bush is purported to be, might actually be preferable to at least get some dangerous countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia eliminated. Of course the downside to a zealot is that he would then proceed to convert, or at least try to convert, everyone to the same irrational zealotry he believes in. We would replace fanatical Muslim terrorists with fanatical Methodist (insert whatever sect) terrorists.

John Kerry represents that ideology which has feminized (for lack of a better word) the world. Whereas most countries used to impose the death penalty without guilt, most of them now prohibit it and prevent extradition to countries where fleeing criminals might get the death penalty. Whereas most countries used to have armies to defend themselves, most of them now have puny defense forces and rely more on other countries or organizations (principally the United States, NATO, the UN) to defend their sovereignty for them. These changes in other countries accompanied a marked decline in religious activity and loyalty, except in the United State where, from 1916 to the 1990’s, church membership increased from 53 to 63 percent. To give some idea of how much the country changed from the founding in this statistic to 1916, church membership in the United States at the founding was 17 percent. Bush’s religion on his sleeve approach is nothing tremendously new of politicians. Woodrow Wilson, a college professor who was also a practicing Presbyterian, vigorously pushed self sacrifice upon Americans and declared he would fight World War I for no benefit to America. (Bush doing some of this, though not rhetorically to the same extent has gotten nearly 800 men killed in a year in Iraq. Wilson got over 120,000 men killed in an almost identical amount of time on the Western Front.) The difference from 1916 to now, aside from the modest increase in church going, is that the power of government has been greatly expanded by irrational jurists, nearly all of whom were appointed by Democrats, to allow for expansion programs that were also pushed by Democratic congresses and presidents.

Bush has certainly failed to identify the enemy, but has John Kerry achieved this goal? No, in fact Kerry’s big critique of the Bush foreign policy is that it is unilateral and too ideological! It was Bush, for all his faults (which are many), who identified Iran as part of the Axis of Evil with Iraq and North Korea. North Korea is probably the least significant of the Axis, since the North Koreans are just trying to get Bush to capitulate like the Kerry prototype Clinton did for food and oil to keep their system running. Iraq, it has been theorized, was invaded over Iran because Iraq is a “secular” country as opposed to Iran which is a theocracy. This is so because of Bush’s commitment to religion. But, again, there is a logical problem. Assuming Bush is a Christian zealot, an Islamic theocracy is more of a threat to his belief system than a “secular” Arab state. Contrary to John Kerry’s attempts to make Bush look better, Bush is not a unilateralist, nor is his foreign policy very ideological. His foreign policy is run by Colin Powell, far from the standard bearer of the religious right, and as such Bush picked the country which already had a “clear” international reasoning in place to go to war. Were he a unilateralist, as John Kerry derides him as, he would have gone to war when the Iraqis fired a missile at one of our planes as they used to do on a nearly daily basis. A zealot would not have cared about international law or formalities; he would have gone to war immediately without thought for any opinion other than God’s. Bush is not a zealot; he is, unfortunately, much more like John Kerry, an internationalist who must beg permission from the international community before he can defend his own country. The zealot that Bush supposedly is is looking a lot better.

On the minor point of the supposed secular nature of Iraq under Saddam Hussein which is a point of some Bush critics, that he attacked secular Iraq as opposed to theocratic Iran because of his supposed zealotry and therefore paradoxical avoidance of confronting his hated religious foes. No Arab country that I know of can be characterized as secular by the understanding of any Westerner. Saddam ran, initially, an Arab Nationalist (fascist) regime in the model of Nasser’s Egypt, which is what the Baath Party is based on. Just because he ran a socialist economy, doesn’t mean he then accepted Marx’s condemnation of religion. No Arab leader could do that and expect to still be alive for very long, especially after the example of Anwar Sadat who was assassinated by Islamic fanatics simply for recognizing Israel as a country. After the first Gulf War Saddam threw his lot in with Islamic fundamentalists, putting a religious invocation on the Iraqi flag after his defeat and becoming friendly with terrorist groups since they represented his only means of attacking the United States. Iraqi intelligence was tasked to engage in terrorism, notably the first World Trade Center attack and the foiled plot to assassinate former President Bush. Saddam’s other terror activities included housing Abu Nidal, raising money for suicide bomber’s families in Palestine, and helping Abu Al-Zarqawi after he was wounded in Afghanistan. Note that Zarqawi is credited with beheading Nick Berg, and that it was not theocratic Iran that he went to for care, an oddity considering Iran is far closer to Afghanistan than Iraq. Iraq, while it may have been slightly “secular” at one point in its recent past, has not been for quite some time simply because a true secular state would not have an official religion and Iraq has always declared Islam as its official faith, as all Arab states do.

Bush has engaged in a morally bankrupt policy of sacrificing American troops in restrictive rules of engagement in order to prevent civilian casualties. This is morally evil, but is it true that this is entirely attributable to religious self-sacrifice? Again, it is not the move of a religious zealot who would never sacrifice his own forces to save his (and his God’s) enemies. It is reminiscent of how American policy makers fought the war in Vietnam. Dean Rusk, a man who admired socialism and former Secretary of State under Kennedy and Johnson, admitted in his book As I Saw It that when planning bombing raids against North Vietnam the Johnson administration purposely picked bombing routes that would take the planes nearer to SAM sites than necessary to avoid the potential of civilian casualties. I see this as more grotesque than even Bush’s policy. While Bush is ostensibly fighting a war of occupation in Iraq, and thus putting policeman rules of engagement on our armed forces (wrongly), those in the Johnson administration did the same for an enemy population. Granted some may argue that the Iraqis are an enemy population, but Bush does not see them as such while Johnson did see the North Vietnamese as enemies. While both are awful, Johnson was not a religious zealot, and either is Bush, at least in this particular case. They both subscribe to the egalitarian morality of socialists who claim that all lives are equally important (including murderers, enemy combatants, etc.) and that sacrifice for others is noble in all activities. Religious zealots don’t believe this, those who don’t accept their fanatical beliefs are an affront to God who don’t deserve to live. Bush is wrong on this front, but has Kerry critiqued this practice? No, he has uttered no word of criticism on this. Why would he alter it?

So could Kerry be better than Bush? Would he feel compelled, in the effort to be all things to all people (which also drives Bush, which is not the feature of a zealot who is uncompromising), to be tough on Islamic terrorists and states? Going by his own statements the answer is no. He has stated that, due to Bush’s “unilateralism” and “ideological” foreign policy, he will not do anything without our allies, which should be taken to mean France and Germany given that Bush already wasted months to get nearly every other major ally on board. Also, Democrats have a bad track record with being proactive in “looking tough” which John Kerry is all too familiar with. The Vietnam War was created by Democrats who were afraid of looking weak and loosing another country to communism like Harry Truman in 1949. John Kerry experienced first hand the effects of looking tough. He also has the example of Bill Clinton, who essentially did nothing to any of America’s enemies and was able to have a successful and fairly popular presidency (save for the disgrace of impeachment and his attempt to undermine the rule of law). There is no reason for John Kerry to look tough if he is elected. Bush has been timid in his dealing with the problem, but he has certainly been far more proactive than Bill Clinton who fought from afar with missiles. If he is rejected for John Kerry it will be interpreted, as the only way it can be, that Americans don’t approve of Bush’s timid actions and have chosen to go with the no response candidate. I don’t approve of Bush’s timid actions, but in the context of an election it is either some response or no response at all.

As for the hyperbolic talk of religious dictatorship being thrown about by some (which is sometimes unfortunately marked by ad hominem reasoning and irrational outbursts) as the logical consequence of Bush’s presidency, it is absurdist in the sense that it ignores that the other party is just as likely to start a dictatorship. Dictatorship, religious or otherwise, cannot take hold without the rule of law being done away with along with the remaining attachment to the constitution. Both parties are culpable with hastening the latter, but the most recent assault on the rule of law was made by Democrat Bill Clinton who broke several laws and conspired to obstruct justice by having his administration officers lie in his stead. This development was more fundamentally serious in the long run than anything George W. Bush has been able to do yet.

In closing, George W. Bush is not the ideal president by any stretch of the imagination. He leaves numerous things to be desired in every realm of policy, including that which is most important to this election, the War against Islamic Terrorism. He doesn’t identify the enemy properly, he has not been proactive enough in eliminating his own stated enemies of which Iran and North Korea remain intact, he has jeopardized American lives with foolish rules of engagement that give terrorists on the ground more of chance than they should have, and contrary to Kerry’s criticisms he has not been unilateral or ideological in his foreign policy as he ought to be. But to be so desperate as to think John Kerry would somehow be tougher on terrorism is ridiculous. He has shown no proclivity to do so and his party abandoned that impetus in 1968. Bush is not a Torquemada or Bin Laden, and to insinuate that he is somehow like them is foolish and ill-informed. Far from being a consistent religious disciple or zealot, Bush is a nuanced politician not unlike John Kerry. He flip flops on issues (steel tariffs, 9/11 commission) and is not at all a break from recent historical traditions in American politics, which of course are almost entirely all bad. But if George W. Bush looses it will be seen as an incredible mandate for John Kerry’s policies. This is so because it will mean that in the middle of a war, three years after an attack, after two separate campaigns that in the annals of military history (and even with the dumb policies in fighting) are nothing but phenomenal successes, after tax cuts, after the identification of Iran as an enemy, and after the proof shown to the terrorists that the United States is willing to invade countries to undo governments and kill tens of thousands of terrorists, we are willing to give it all up, all our gains, modest though they are for some fear of the future that is entirely unrealistic and unfounded.

Who do the terrorists want to win in this election? Can anyone seriously think they are more afraid of John Kerry than they are of George W. Bush? Though he is not doing all he can or should he is doing more than his predecessor and more than John Kerry thinks he ought to have done and more than John Kerry proposes to do if elected. As to the tactical fighting of the battles, this is a moot point when you have a Clinton/Carter Democrat in office who won’t even fight the battles to begin with and even if he were President right now, John Kerry would not alter the rules of engagement in any rational way. If anything they could become more restrictive and more closely resemble United Nations rules of engagement. No, if we’re ever to have any chance at all in winning this war we cannot take four year breathers in the hope that someone better will be nominated by one of the parties or that more people in this country will ever wise up in time to save it during these hiatuses. It is going to be either Bush or Kerry and, unfortunately, Bush is the best we’ve got.

The Mixed Legacies of Ronald Reagan
By Alexander Marriott June 7, 2004


The hyperbole of remembrance that follows the death of any President, as has certainly followed the death of Mr. Reagan, will subside eventually and it will be left to historians to analyze what it was he did as President and whether or not that had any value. The Reagan presidency, which was marked by many crucially important events like the continuing salvos of Islamist war against the United States by Libya, Iran, and Syria and the deterioration of Soviet power in the Eastern bloc and within mother Russia, is as partisanly remembered today as it was when it was happening. Republicans claim Mr. Reagan was the greatest President of the latter half of the twentieth century, if not the entire century (often deferring greatest status to FDR), while Democrats claim that while he was a nice guy, his policies were all wrong, which they are sometimes correct about but almost always for illegitimate reasons.

Ronald Reagan entered office with a substantial mandate for undoing the harm of his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, who was entirely unable to deal with the problems that confronted him, be it Iranian revolution and American soil being violated in Tehran or stagflation at home caused by governmental interventionism in the economy. On January 20, 1981, the first inauguration of President Reagan, the hostages in Iran were released and sent back to the United States. Presumably this occurred because Reagan was an unknown entity to the Iranians who didn’t want to risk having their infant state squashed. Whether this is so is entirely ahistorical, except by looking to the other terrorist acts committed against Americans under the Reagan presidency and then guessing what Reagan might have done. One thing is clear, conditions for war existed whether the hostages were released or not, and we did not go to war with Iran during the Reagan presidency.

The insertion of American troops into Lebanon to “mediate” the civil war going on there between native Christian Lebanese and Syrian/Iranian inspired Muslims resulted in the latter blowing up a Marine barracks in Beirut, killing nearly 250 American soldiers. It was clear then and now that Syria was directly responsible for this attack as it was the prime arsenal of the Islamic terrorists who were fighting the Lebanese government and later became Hezbollah and the puppet government that currently runs Lebanon. Reagan’s response was to withdraw troops. Certainly all military actions during the Reagan presidency were complicated by the Cold War, having to deal with Soviet protestations and threats with nearly all actions must have weighed greatly on all Cold War era presidents. War with Syria in 1983 would have been a tremendous international story because Syria, like Iraq, were armed almost exclusively by the Soviet Union (as opposed to the liberal myth that the United States was giving the Iraqis all their weapons), and who thus had a serious economic interest in Syria remaining a terrorist and totalitarian state. Regardless, any military action would have been preferable to running away.

By April of 1986 running away had been abandoned in favor of air strikes. Libya was bombed in retaliation for targeted attacks against Americans in Germany and the Pam Am 103 flight over Scotland. This response seemingly put an end to Libyan terror activities, but not to the source of the terror activities, Muammar al-Qaddafi’s government. That dictator was only redirected into weapons of mass destruction which he only recently gave up because another state similar to his was ended on that pretext, among others.

In the domestic sphere the American president is far more limited in what he can and cannot do, but he does have the ability to set the legislative agenda and propose a budget which the congress can debate on or entirely reject if it wants. President Reagan professed distaste for government programs, but in reality had very little ability to force the House of Representatives, which was run by Democrats through his entire presidency, to in any way endorse his wishes were he to push for them. Tax cuts were achieved after his election but Reagan assented to raising some of those taxes again during the middle of his first term as the economy struggled to correct itself from a decade of blundering policies by Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter.

During his tenure in office many religious groups attached themselves, unopposed, to his name, image, and agenda. This included “Moral Majority” and the first groups formed by reverends Pat Robertson and Jerry Faldwell. All of these groups were born in opposition to a perceived assault on “tradition” represented in cases like Griswold v. Connecticut (striking down laws preventing the use of contraception between married persons) and Roe v. Wade. These decisions declared that there was a right to privacy protected by the constitution that prevented states from outlawing consensual sexual activity among adults. Religious groups saw the Reagan presidency as a clarion to reverse this trend and seemingly succeeded in the Bowers v. Hardwick case that upheld the right of a state to outlaw sodomy. This seeming contradiction was recently ironed out with the Bowers case being overturned in the Lawrence v. Texas case. The catapulting of obscure and, quite frankly, fanatical (and were they to insert Zeus for Jesus Christ they would be called insane) preachers to positions of prominence and power is a legacy the country could do without and with have to be exorcised over a long period of time and intellectual debate.

Ultimately, Mr. Reagan never attempted to get congress to dismantle the Great Society programs, let alone the New Deal. He would most likely have failed in this task, but even the attempt would have shown his firm commitment to freedom and individual rights in the United States and the rest of the world. His defense policies were ineffectual against the threat of Islamic fundamentalists. His build up of the military had positive results because it rebuilt morale, gave the United States a large force to deal with future threats and caused a slow down in domestic spending due to the large deficits created by the defense spending. The Grenada operation allowed the military to experiment with its equipment and pointed to serious problems in communications that were able to be repaired so that they would not cause mass American deaths when we fought a more capable foe.

Mr. Reagan’s place in the history of American presidents depends on how one breaks it up. Should one look at all presidents then he looks very poor, as most presidents do when they have to be compared to Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson. If one compares him to his colleagues in the 20th century then he looks a bit better considering his competition consists of crooks like Warren Harding and Bill Clinton, and some of the greatest villains in American political history, men like Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. There are also a whole host of ineffectual blowhards and compromising fools like TR, Taft, Hoover, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter and George H. W. Bush. McKinley, Coolidge, and Ford had redeeming qualities, much like Ronald Reagan, and when compared against the other presidents of the 20th century they seem preferable.

But the world didn’t begin in 1901. This country once elected better men to office and getting back to those types of people should be what we hope for. Saluting the great men who led the country in its formative years should be given days of media laudations, not the persons who presided over the decline of this great country.

Old World Love of Status Lives Strong
By Alexander Marriott 23 May 2004


Spain’s Crown Prince Felipe has married former TV anchorwoman Letizia Ortiz, in the country’s first royal wedding in nearly a century. This occurred to the delight of thousands of onlookers who braved heavy rains, as well as representatives of the Royal Families of the world, including the Prince of Wales. Also in attendance were such international luminaries as former South African President Nelson Mandela. What does this all mean this sobbing and celebrating at the marriage of a cute couple, who will one day be the King and Queen of Spain? It means that the Old World, as Defense Secretary Rumsfeld called it “Old Europe,” is still fascinated by the non-producing and non-meritorious thing the historian Isabel Paterson called the “society of status.”

It is somewhat humorous that anti-American aficionados like Mandela and Prince Charles are awestruck by wealth and status held by non-producers like monarchs and bureaucrats and yet they condemn the businessman who produces a value and then trades it for another value, i.e. money. The monarch is given wealth by another monarch who was given it by another and so on, but the origin of this wealth was and is inevitably tied to a time when the King or Queen collected the wealth of their subjects by force because, in the words of the infamous autocrat Louis XIV, they were the state. This is what Mandela looks up to, not to those who produce things and allow poor countries and people, of which Africa abounds, to have a chance to improve their lot. Instead the ideal is a person who lives rich and luxuriously because they are fortunate enough to be related to some long dead series of despots.

But it is America, a country that embraces (or is perceived to embrace) the businessman and the idea of the businessman, that is the problem in the world today. The rejection of the status society, for one of contract and individual rights, was embodied in the American Revolution and the founding documents of the United States. Americans didn’t substitute one aristocracy for another as was done in France, or one apartheid for another as was done in South Africa, they instead threw off the old world ideal of status and replaced it with contract, which laid the groundwork to getting rid of another vestige of the old world status society, slavery.

We don’t have social betters in American because people happened to be born into particular castes, though some people have tried to create such a system around certain entities like the Kennedy family. Anyone can become wealthy if they are willing to work hard for it in a society of contracts. In a status society people work merely to be the favor granters or favor receivers. The favors used to be granted by monarchs who were the state, but into the modern world the favors are granted by the state, which people are told is themselves. Instead of creating a value and then trading it for other values as in a society of contract, the purveyors of status grant titles and posts by which they can dispense money which has been taken from the lowly scum who bother to engage in that unmitigated evil known as trade.

It is a sad testament to the state of the world when, at the height of human achievement, people come to celebrate a marriage, not of a friend or someone they know, but a Prince just because he is a Prince. It is a sign of the decline that has taken hold of the world when, instead of relishing the fall of societies of status, we lament it and look fondly upon the vestiges that remain and wish that we too can be Kings.

Going to War in Iraq
By Alexander Marriott 17 May 2004

Chemical weapons are now being used in rigged explosives in Iraq, and oddly, people are now jumping for joy that the weapons of mass destruction existed. Somehow, this justifies the war’s occurrence. Why are people still looking for justification?

The fact that Saddam Hussein helped Abu Al-Zarqawi after his leg was blown off in Afghanistan doesn’t constitute cause for war? Does it matter that he is now rising through the ranks of Al Qaeda through his “insurgency” in Iraq and through personally committing barbaric acts like the beheading of American civilian Nick Berg?

The fact that Saddam had Chinese engineers and technicians running all over the country to network his air defenses so that one day his missile firings at U.S. and British jets would score a hit didn’t constitute a legitimate reason to use force?

Because of the Bush administration’s irrational desire to get the United Nations to approve our actions we appealed to the only concern the United Nations had in Iraq, weapons of mass destruction. All the intelligence agencies of the western world agreed that Saddam had WMDs, but they western countries didn’t agree on the appropriate action to take given that fact (even though such a state of affairs represented a clear violation of the Gulf War ceasefire agreement, as did the missile firings at our jets).

Our position was that we had to invade to prevent terrorists from using chemical weapons against us, not unlike they are trying to do in Iraq right now. Our “allies” like France and Germany, who had been bribed into submission preferred to continue the graft of United Nations inspections, which led to such great achievements like the prevention of nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula and the quashing of Iranian nuclear ambitions. The fact is, the only successful nuclear disarmament occurred because the country disarming (South Africa) sincerely and wholeheartedly wanted to get rid of its nuclear weapons. Unless we put the IAEA in charge of North Korea and Iran we can have nothing approaching certainty about what the hell is happening without spies. Of course that would mean going to war and then the IAEA would be entirely redundant.

Instead of being glad that weapons were found we should be apprehensive that we weren’t the ones to find them. We should be apprehensive that the terrorists have been able to murder the president of the Iraqi Governing Council without getting caught. We should be apprehensive that Iran is clearly attempting to ruin American efforts and is, in all likelihood, helping Osama bin Laden elude capture. And even if they are not, Iran is, and has been, the foremost sponsor of terrorism since the Islamic revolution there in 1979. Our days of delay in dealing with these problems are not buying us any security.

Philosophy Doesn’t Matter
Alexander Marriott 6 May 2004


From President Bush to Ted Kennedy we hear the same refrain about Islamic terrorists; “These people have hijacked a peaceful religion. Islamic militants are a few radicals who do not represent Islam.” We are expected to believe that it is not the philosophy, the fundamental ideas and beliefs these people hold, that matters; it is merely a few misguided radicals. If we were not talking about religions, which the vast majority of people subscribe to, would this line of reasoning be valid or acceptable?

During the Cold War, could people have accepted the proposition that those in charge of the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, et al, were just a few misguided radicals who had hijacked a great belief system? Certainly those sympathetic to Communism would have bought this up immediately, and those people are still around. Whenever you hear, “Communism is good in theory, but doesn’t work in reality,” you are in the presence of such a person.

Another example would be to say that Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were radicals who did not represent Fascism. Or that Torquemada was a radical who did not represent Catholicism. The general idea is obvious with all of these examples. Those who claim that these people are “radicals distorting the true meaning of philosophy X,” are apologists for murderers, thugs, thieves, and butchers.

Of course, “Philosophy X” is religion in general, Islam in particular. To condemn Islam outright would be, not to contradict Christianity, but to contradict cultural relativism and religious “sensitivity.” The whole idea of other religions like Judaism and Christianity is contrary to Islam and were all of the adherents of the two former religions operating purely from their avowed beliefs, they would not hesitate to condemn all Muslims, as well as all Christians or all Jews. They cannot all be chosen or saved or enlightened people.

But the reason we do not see the launch of a new crusade is the same reason the West is not stuck in the pathetic level of development that plagues the Middle East. The West underwent a transformation that resulted in the rejection, mostly implicit, of the core ethics of religion, at least temporarily. The Renaissance, when the classical works of Greece and Rome reinvigorated Europe and the Enlightenment, when the philosophers of Europe built upon and improved the political philosophy of the Greco-Roman tradition and invented science as a disciplined body of knowledge. It was the rejection of Judeo-Christian ethics, of altruism, that propelled the West forward. Of course, explicitly many still proclaimed the superiority of altruism, but, beneath the lip service, the barriers to rational self-interest were dismantled and concern for secular affairs predominated. This never occurred in the Middle East. The closest that region came was at the turn of the last millennium.

But altruism in the West struck back under thinkers like Immanuel Kant and Jean Jacques Rousseau and political philosophies like Communism, socialism, and environmentalism. More obviously it came back in religious revivalism and the Great Awakenings during the nineteenth century. Both the religious and secular altruism have converged in modern politics, particularly over this issue of claiming that Islamic terrorists are distorting a “peaceful” religion. Bush is religious, but does not condemn Islam because of secular notions of relativity and multiculturalism. His religion, by itself, would cause Bush to condemn Muslims as their clerics condemn Jews and the West. But the secular incarnation of altruism, born of the language of the enlightenment to combat it, directs Bush to respect all altruism and altruistic belief systems and to discard the warlike implications of religions.

Operating under these two influences Bush cannot rationally condemn an opposing philosophy, mainly because, if he sat down to consciously compare his own beliefs and theirs, he would discover many similarities. But Bush cannot escape the fact that he’s in a country that represents the greatest achievement of political thought in human history, and when it is attacked he responds because he is at least certain that his country is good, even though his definition of good is equal to altruism.

However, the inability of all politicians to properly identify the philosophy of America’s enemies, for whatever reason, is highly dangerous. It is what was directly responsible for the nonchalant attitudes of American leaders towards terrorists for fifty years. Given that Bush is considered to be the arch-hawk on the political scene, it does not bode well should he lose the upcoming election to a man who is not even certain we are at war.