Ubi Sunt Qui ante Nos Fuerunt?

There are few more odious concepts to me than religious strife. Forget for a moment that otherwise rational human beings kill one another because one's interpretation of another man's hallucination 1100 years ago is unpalatable. Now we're losing impressive buildings left and right. First, the World Trade Towers, now a Shia mosque. Thanks to some of our radical friends in Iraq, every major newspaper carries the story of the Al-Askari Mosque bombing and subsequent reprisals. Courtesy of Bloomberg news, President Bush declared that this attack was "an affront to people of faith throughout the world."
What do you know - Bush is right! Before anyone who reads this gets his knickers in a twist, I offer a caveat: Bush is correct by accident. His implication is that the bombing is in some way equally repugnant to Shiites, Sunnis, Mennonites, Huguenots, Cathars, Coptics and Ludavitch Jews. If Bush were a little more, I don't know, human, he might have suggested the bombing offends a greater faith community: those who believe man's salvation lies in man's hands alone. The United States, like it or not, is in the thrall of a theocracy. On numerous occasions, Bush has intimated he has a divine mandate to lead the country. Mr. President, on behalf of those of us who require no supernatural explanation for our otherwise piddling lives, I say to you l'etat n'est pas toi. Chinese dynasties relied on Heavenly Mandate, and the great Chinese philosopher Mencius fiddled with the idea until he decided man quested to return to a purer morality. Heaven, to him, was abstracted to the realm of perfect morality; no divinities were harmed in the drawing of his conclusions.
Our president, I'm afraid, hews closer to the European tradition of divine right. Little wonder that Bush remains petulant; such is the rhetoric of a Richard II (who ascended the throne of England at roughly the same stage of maturity and mental faculty as our president, it seems), not the leader of a huge, purportedly democratic nation. Anyway, back to Bush's comment on affrontery, by way of anecdotes: My mother, a Catholic with zeal and tears to match any martyr, was not seriously offended by the bombing. Two other members of my immediate family, de facto Methodists, were saddened by the loss of a fabulous piece of architecture. A friend of mine who is best described as a pick-and-choose Jew (it's not his fault bacon is safe to eat nowadays!) actually felt relief that this had happened. Why? Because any Muslim-on-Muslim violence takes Anti-Semitism off the back burner for at least a few days. I would never suggest these few examples repudiate Bush's contention entirely, but I do think they speak to Bush's most troublesome articulation of his belief: his insistence that he speaks for anyone with that nebulous quality called "faith."
Certainly Bush is a faithful guy. He's faithful (to a fault) to his staff, he's probably faithful to his wife, and he's definitely faithful to his workout regimen. Honest religious faith, though, requires submission to divine mystery. Whether you want to talk about government graft, wiretapping, women's rights, environmental rights or our global friendships, Bush has brandished his faith-based flamberge in grand arcs. His faith is not one of mystery, but of carefully delineated firewalls to reason. God created the earth? Then any crazy human invention contradicting that view (say, evolution) needs more of his special brand of dialogue.
Americans haven't always been this easily duped, have we? Thomas Jefferson famously excised portions of the bible he believed superfluous (basically, the miracles and anything involving direct divine intervention) and Lincoln, equally famously, believed only in a far-removed cosmic arbiter. (Plus he was shot on Good Friday; maybe it's time we renamed that day) Our president is so absolutely right he sickens me: the bombing of the mosque was an affront to my faith, the faith that man can and will rise beyond the need for postmortem paradise; that we will recognize every minaret, architrave, one-act play, symphony, judicial review, economic theory and governmental system as an expression of our expanding minds. Want to believe the bible? Fine. Then acknowledge we've bitten from the apple. "Faith" is no longer an acceptable response to questions of poverty, disease or warfare. (In fact, thanks in part to our administration, faith and warfare now walk in lockstep)
My faith is biologically predicated: if you and I can produce viable offspring, then nothing separates your inherent humanity from mine; we must cohere as equals else every smooth area of our social fabric suddenly rumple. Bush's faith and its reliance on supernatural guidance makes him dangerous and makes his policies dangerous to America. Though he may believe he is guided by right, when his implementation turns out so wrong the public must blame the man, faith and all.

And while we're at it, can we get rid of that pesky "under god" clause in the pledge of allegiance? I no more like the idea of being born into a national fealty than I do of being born into vassalage. Oh, wait, it's the same thing.