IN FRATERNAM MEAM: FOR GOD'S SAKE, VOTE HIM OUT......by Fr. Andrew Greeley

IN FRATERNAM MEAM

Saturday, October 30, 2004

FOR GOD'S SAKE, VOTE HIM OUT......by Fr. Andrew Greeley

(commentary of Fr. Andrew Greeley SJ at the CHICAGO SUNTIMES 28Oct)

strong>THERE are two proportionate reasons for rejecting
Pres. George Bush's bid for re-election. Both the
United States and the world are a mess. Mr. Bush is
responsible for both messes. The first president ever
to claim de facto infallibility, Mr.Bush tells us that
he follows his instincts in decision-making after praying
over the decision and talking to God. He admits no mistakes
--- how could anyone who has a direct link to God makes
a mistake! In his next administration he will receive
more divine inspirations which will make both the country
and the world even more messy.

CONSIDERthe American economy. He has turned
the biggest budget surplus in history into the biggest deficit
because he wanted to give more money to the "haves and have mores" as he called them. He has presided over
the largest job losses since the Great Depression. He has stood
idly by while hundreds of thousands of American jobs have been
flown overseas. His reform of health care has made it more expensive
and more difficult for the elderly. He declines to rein in the
greed of the drug companies and thus drives many Americans to Canada
--- of all places --- to buy the medicines needed to stay alive.
He has cast doubt on the future of Social Security. He has been on the
bridge during the current absurd panic over flu vaccine, the deaths of those
elderly and children who are not able to obtain flu shots are on his hands.
What if one of those who die is your parent or spouse or child?
He has not lifted a finger to help the many Americans whose pensions
are being eaten up by greedy employers. Oil prices are climbing rapidly
and the stock market is tanking.

We want four more years of this stuff?

FECKLESSLY he started the ill-advised and ill-prepared war
in Iraq in which some Americans have to come close to mutiny to protect
them from orders to bring contaminated fuel in badly equipped trucks
to units that won't accept it. He misled the American people about the weapons
in Iraq and the involvement of Iraq in the World Trade Center attack.He is
disgusted, he tells us, by the kidnapping and the beheadings, the car bombs
and roadside bombs, the ambushes and murder of civilians, but the bad
decisions he and his cabinet made were mandated by God and could not
have been mistakes. Pat Robertson tells us, however, that Mr. Bush told him that
God had disclosed that the casualties in Iraq would be light. Maybe that
was God's mistake!
DO WEwant him to continue with these god-driven
policies for four more years? Eleven hundred dead Americans already.
How many more thousands will have to die before God will tell Mr. Bush
to get out of Iraq? How many tens of thousands of Iraqis will have to die?
THE WORLD is a mess because the United States is the
natural leader of the free world and the American president the natural
president of the free world. He blew the capital support and sympathy
that flowed to the United States after the World Trade Center attack
by his "Bush Doctrine"that turned him to the
bully of the free world. Next year the Poles will leave Iraq because the
Polish people dont like the war. The Poles -- our strongest allies in
Mr. Rumsfeld's "New Europe"-- are fed up with us! Four more years
of divine inspiration and what will be left of America's power and prestige?
We will still be a giant but like Gulliver a tattered giant chained
in the gound by our president's madcap inspirations.
THE POPEis infallible only in certain limited circumstances
and on specific matters. Unlike the pope, Mr. Bush apprarently sets no limits
on the policy decisions that will be made by conversations with God.
We want four more years of those desicions?
THE PRESIDENT, like every human is entitled to his own
relationship with God. He is entitled to use that relationship to make
decisions, to justify them later, and to stick to them no matter what
happens.Many Americans will accept such decisions because they believe he is
a "godly" man. Not everyone else has to tolerate four more years
of his divine right to govern.
EVEN IFthe elction is close, Mr. Bush will win it. His
lawyers are ready to go back into court and the spine Supreme Court
will give the country fore more years of divine right rule.
DO WE REALLY WANT THAT?

email:agreel@aol.com

posted by infraternam meam @ 3:35 AM

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