George Bush uses the Christian faith and its symbols to work miracles for winning political battles. Let’s hope the American voters become savvy about these tricks.

Sometimes, when seeking inspiration, I hang out on the lower side of San Pedro, LA’s harbor area, where I talk to the homeless people and those who inhabit another dimension. Other times I just walk down the street to a Catholic Church and hang out with the parishioners. After talking with acquaintances there, I realized many people had actually voted for G.W. Bush simply because he talked about God. In this regard, Bush has mastered modern politics, so let’s give him credit for manipulation at least.

Then, alas, the questions came to me. Does the local church reflect the nation’s way of thinking? Is a man who talks of God necessarily a follower of Christ’s teachings? Does God-talk make a man more moral? Then I recalled how my good friend Machiavelli once told me how he set down one of the most explicit doctrines for modern politics while advising a sixteenth-century prince, counseling him to do whatever was practical for the sake of power, and that it was highly effective to use moral principles and especially religion to achieve success.

Today’s politician often operates on Machiavelli’s counsel by appealing to the general public’s feelings about ethics; it’s an old rhetorical trick to obtain popular support. Machiavelli also advised the use of fear as a means to establish power, believing that a man’s flexibility in morality and religion enables him to gain political success as fortune (social attitudes) changes over time. “Thus, it is not necessary for a prince to have all the above-mentioned virtues in fact, but it is indeed necessary to appear to have them,” said Machiavelli.

“The Bush Tapes” and Machiavelli

G.W. Bush seems to follow this advice carefully, although, as revealed in the “Bush Tapes,” during his personal struggle against drugs and alcohol, he may have made a conversion to religious faith. Yet, he has unintentionally also made it clear that his conversion plays an opportune role in his political rhetoric.

Probably by Rove’s advice, Bush has found that the use of popular Christian faith and symbols works miracles to gain public support for his policies. Indeed, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, in 2000, 15 million evangelical Protestants voted with 23 percent of the electorate, and 71 percent of them voted for Bush.

Though, let’s not forget that Bush lost the popular vote of 2000 and it was the extremely conservative US Supreme Court judges, appointees, who voted him into office.

In 2004, Protestants again accounted for about 23 percent of the electorate. But overall turnout was much higher, and 78 percent of the evangelicals who voted, voted for Bush. That represents roughly 3.5 million extra votes for him. Bush’s total vote rose by 9 million, so evangelical Protestants alone accounted for more than a third of his increased vote.

Though, let’s not forget that once a President enters office and wages a war, the American people have always supported the President in staying the course, even if it means jumping off a cliff.

Then the “Bush Tapes” revealed Bush as less driven by his religious beliefs than many people might have previously assumed. In the tapes, he refers to religious images as the right buttons to push when looking for public support. While preparing to meet Christian leaders in 1998, Bush said: “There are some code words. There are some proper ways to say things, and some improper ways. I am going to say that I’ve accepted Christ into my life.” (New York Times, 19 Feb. 05)

Bush and God

Bush referred to God 10 times in his first inaugural in 2000, including this claim: “I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity. I know this is in our reach because we are guided by a power larger than ourselves, who creates us equal, in His image.”

In his three State of the Union addresses since, Bush invoked God another 14 times. No other president has used God so often in his State of the Unions or inaugurations. The closest to Bush’s average of six references to God in each of his addresses is Ronald Reagan with an average 4 in his comparable speeches. Jimmy Carter, considered one of the most pious of presidents, mentioned God only twice in four addresses. Further back in history, others to talk of God were Franklin Roosevelt at 1.5 and Johnson at 1.5 per inaugurals and State of the Unions.

These former presidents spoke as humble petitioners asking for divine guidance, unlike Bush’s claim in 2003 that “Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to humanity.”

Unlike his predecessors, Bush declares some divine understanding of God’s intentions. Is this prophecy? If not prophecy, at least it can make people feel like they are closer to God because they happen to live in a particular country, chosen by God. People like to hear this. It helps them to feel good.

This change in White House rhetoric is apparent in how presidents have spoken about God and the values of freedom and liberty, two ideas central to today’s American identity that strum the emotional heartstrings of folks in the heartlands.

Now, like W, John McCain has claimed in many of his speeches and TV ads that he follows a divine purpose in life, serving God, specifically, the Judeo-Christian God. This new trend in Republican public testimonials wins votes. The Christian and Jewish versions of God have served the neoconservative movement to gain political power from its early days with Reagan to its infamy with W.

Do Bush’s Policies Reflect Christian Principles?

Bush uses Christian references as an effective means to sway the American public to his policies. All he has to do is mention “god” and voters bow down to the high priest. At a White House press conference, Bush responded to questions: “Freedom is the Almighty’s gift to every man and woman…we have been called to do…” As a demagogue, Bush uses the cultural trend of increasing religious fervor in America, perhaps a reaction to Islamic movements, as a means to garner middle class popularity for his bold policies which often do not serve middle-class interests.

Many of his policies seem to ignore the basic ethical principles Christ taught. His reduction in inheritance tax, euphemized as ‘estate tax,’ for huge fortunes only continues the trend to concentrate the distribution of wealth back to the rich. This does not spread opportunity democratically down to the middle classes. On the contrary, it intensifies the concentration of wealth among the rich. Didn’t Christ teach charity repeatedly? Let’s check our Bibles.

In the same vein, the international free-trade agreements, inspired by Milton Friedman’s pitiful theories, reduce production costs for the wealthy ownership class while they pit the working poor of tyrannically governed 3rd world countries against American middle-class workers. Do these policies reflect the ethical principles that Christ taught such as charity and justice?

Since Bush makes more references to Christian faith than any of his modern predecessors, should we expect him to apply Christian moral principles? Only conclusion we can draw here is that many Americans vote not based on political policies, but on how uplifting the candidate makes them feel. How god-like they might appear. My friend Machiavelli tells me how he delights that the neocons are using his advice after all these centuries.

Justifying the Invasion of Iraq

To his credit, Bush does occasionally use other, non-religious reasons for his policies, such as for invading Iraq. Eventually, he came to use genocide and violations of international law and of human rights as justifications. Yet, if Bush did seriously place any priority on these criteria, he would take action in countries where these problems are rampant such as in China, Sudan, or Rwanda and elsewhere. He has done nothing in any such countries.

On the contrary, so long as corporations increase profits, God bless the Chinese sweat shops and its destruction of Tibet. Despite Bush’s references to some greater prophetic Christian calling, he does focus his attention on Iraq, and not on Sudan, China, Saudi Arabia…or any other tyrannical regime, because his priority does not lie with moral principles, rather with the goal to re-establish Iraq as the U.S. client state it once was because of its rich petroleum reserves, 15 percent of the world reserve.

W’s preemptive war in Iraq aims at somehow benefiting America’s political and economic interests. Although since the botched occupation of Iraq, terrorism only increased, despite the costs. For the preemptive invasion, W has given us many justifications. He groped for the right buttons to push that would garner support among the vast religious middle class. After several discredited justifications for the invasion, Bush eventually used God and freedom.

Even though Osama bin Laden pleaded with Saudi royalty to invade Iraq in place of the U.S. military. Most Muslims did not like Saddam for his secular approach to government.

Finally, Bush told us it’s America’s calling by God to spread freedom and democracy. Guided also by the highly influential Israeli-American Jewish Lobby, Bush represents a larger neoconservative ideology that mixes its own peculiar understanding of religious ethics with capitalist goals where church, state, and commerce intermix.

Capitalist goals such as amassing wealth for the few somehow represents a Judeo-Christian ethic at least for the neocons. Many of the large corporations that benefit from invading and then occupying Iraq, the war contractors, such as Carlyle Group, Vought Aircraft, Halliburton and others, contribute to the campaign coffers that got him elected.

Likewise the families of Bush and of his cabinet members own large portions of stock in the defense contractors. To this day, Cheney still receives the dividends from Halliburton and other stock options.

Contrary to Bush’s Christian rhetoric, Christ was a pacifist. Tertuallian, Origen, and Clement of Alexandria agreed that a Christian could not be a soldier. This ethical view changed only after 312 A.D. when the Roman Emperor, Constantine, chose to become baptized, and did so partly in order to unify an otherwise crumbling empire.

At that time, Christian thinkers like Saint Augustine began to develop the notion of a ‘just war’ in the name of God. Once embraced by the Roman establishment, Christianity lost its rebellious, radical edge as a beacon for the poor and became part of the mainstream Roman culture and power structure. Christianity and political ideology were merged at this time of empire building and maintenance.

This revised version of Christian ethics made solid political sense because without allowing for war, Christianity would have taken a very different path in history. This revision of Christian ethics runs clearly against the teachings of Christ. Didn’t Christ go to the cross, along with thousands of other Jews, because the ruling Pharisees at the time were expecting a political, even militant king as opposed to the ‘Prince of Peace’ while under Roman oppression? Let’s check our Bibles.

Christianity as a Marketing Tool

Bush uses Christian talk and symbols to build support for his political position. In a word, he does what professional marketers do; he leverages the current cultural ethos to gain popular support, as Machiavelli advised centuries ago. Bush does, after all have an MBA and he probably did attend his marketing classes occasionally.

In this regard, he has become a master of modern politics at least while guided by Turd-Blossom Rove. As Bush exploits Christianity as a means to spread neoconservative corporatist interests, the resulting ideology appears as a perverse blasphemy of the original Christ teachings.

Bush works from a peculiar revision of Christian ethics to create a new form of corporatist fundamentalism not completely unlike Islamic fundamentalists, such as Wahhabists. In so doing Bush stands Christ’s ethical teachings on its head. Corporate profits, industrial petroleum requirements, and the concentration of wealth seem to be some of the values that motivate Bush in many of his policies, neither the protection of the environment, nor prevention of human rights violations, tyranny, or genocide which arise daily in the world and to which Bush’s administration remains mostly oblivious. On the contrary, Bush and his neoconservative brethren have only increased massive deaths and torture.

Bush has gone to unusual efforts to accommodate the ruling elite in the Middle East, such as the royal family of Saud, most of which are members of the Islamic fundamentalism and some of whom contribute to militant fundamentalist groups.

Peace, charity, justice, equality, generosity are all moral principles Christ taught repeatedly through sermons, parables, and plain talk. Do Bush’s policies reflect Christian ethics?

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