The ‘God Bless America’ Test
For Barack Obama, campaign 2008 has been a series of absurd but consequential tests.
First, there was the faith test: Profess publicly that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior. Each candidate faced this test, but the stakes were higher for Obama because of the whispering campaign that he was (gasp!) a Muslim. He passed this test by often beginning speeches with “Giving all praise and honor to God” and noticeably ratcheting up his Christian references in key contexts.
Then there was the patriotism test: Recite the Pledge of Allegiance and wear an American flag lapel pin. Some falsely said that Obama hasn’t always done the former, whereas it is the case that Obama has not always done the latter, and he offered this response: “I’m less concerned about what you’re wearing on your lapel than what’s in your heart.” This comment was lauded on the left and jeered on the right. Given that the left matters more for Obama in the primary season, he cleared the bar.
Having passed the God test and the country test, Obama recently has been subjected to the God and country test: Embrace the nation’s beloved slogan, “God bless America.”
When the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s remix of this political favorite began to hit the airwaves, Obama appeared on several cable-news programs to attempt damage control. In a CNN interview, Anderson Cooper put this question to Obama: “Just for the record, you have no problem singing ‘God Bless America’?” Obama laughed the question off, joking that his lack of vocal ability wouldn’t allow it.
Three days later, though, Obama concluded a speech in Pennsylvania by saying “God bless America.” The Chicago Tribune noted it was a departure from the norm, calling the closing “uncharacteristic.” For the candidate perhaps, but certainly not for U.S. politicians.
Whether Obama’s speech on March 18 and his explanations of his view on God and country (and race, it should be noted) will be sufficient to earn a passing grade on this crucial third test remains to be seen. But the fact that Obama - or any other candidate - must face such a test points to the deterioration of the American political environment.
Consider this reality: The omnipresence of “God bless America” as a political slogan is an entirely recent phenomenon. We know because we’ve run the numbers. Analysis of more than 15,000 public communications by political leaders from Franklin Roosevelt’s election in 1932 - the beginning of the modern presidency - through six years of George W. Bush’s administration revealed that prior to Ronald Reagan taking office in 1981, the phrase had passed a modern president’s lips only once in a major address: Richard Nixon used it to conclude an April 30, 1973, speech about Watergate.
But Reagan brought “God bless America” into the mainstream by regularly using it to conclude his speeches. Since then, presidents and other politicians have used it nearly to death. Like Nike’s “Just Do It” or any other ubiquitous catchphrase, the words eventually lose their meaning. “God bless America” has become the Pennsylvania Avenue equivalent to consumerized Madison Avenue staples.
That’s the problem with the “God bless America” test: Like most of the other tests that constitute modern political discourse, it doesn’t mean anything.
If a willingness to profess one’s faith and patriotism and to conclude speeches with “God bless America” were accurate indicators of presidential prowess, Bush family members would have long ago secured their places among the nation’s greatest leaders. Both George H.W. and George W. used it to conclude more than 80 percent of their major addresses, with the son often offering this important twist: “May God continue to bless America.”
Asking candidates to demonstrate their God and country bona fides by parroting a political catchphrase is insulting and unnecessary. Journalists’ and pundits’ time would be far better spent interrogating the actual beliefs of those candidates so willing to ask God to bless America. After all, had the phrase not been rendered all but meaningless through overuse, “God bless America” would have to be taken as a serious theological proposition.
Today, it’s just more of the noise that passes for serious political matters.
David Domke is professor of communication and head of journalism at the University of Washington. Kevin Coe is a doctoral candidate in speech communication at the University of Illinois. They are authors of “The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America” (Oxford, www.thegodstrategy.com).
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company
If there’s such a thing as a “banana theocracy”, that’s what we are rapidly becoming.
Has anyone here noticed yet that whenever Bush says ‘God bless America’ some disaster strikes?
“God Bless America” as we flatten another town or village somewhere in the World. During Reagan’s time it was Nicaraguan villages being wiped out by the Contras, or George H.W. Bush’s assault on Panama and the killing of thousands of civilians in the neighborhoods of Panama City. Then there was the 1991 air assault on the public infrastructure of Iraq and subsequent embargo of medicines and chlorine (under the Clinton Administration)to make water safe to drink, resulting in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and mainly children. No God (or Gods) have been in evidence (other than Mars) because religion has been used as an excuse for war and violence from beginning. Those who can make you believe absurdities, said Voltaire, can make you commit atrocities.
That a candidate’s religion, so called “patriotic” flag waving, recitation of statements such as “God Bless America”, or drinking boilermakers wearing a bluejean workshirt while talking about going hunting after singing in the choir in church are important in determining their fitness as president is a reflection of just how fricking stupid the American public is or has become. It seem that people don’t recognize all this bullshit as simple pandering, and further don’t recognize its unimportance. Whatever happened to embracing such traits as education, political background, experience in dealing with foreign governments, knowledge of economics, knowledge of science and technology, or even past work experience (oh that’s right, politicians don’t have to work)? I guess the fact that Bu$h managed to get elected in 2004 shows that if you SAY you are a good Christian, you will be perceived a great president because God is on your side. Well, time to head on down to Walmart to buy a plastic flag made in China to wave while singing God Bless Merica. God help America.
God Save America.
If there is a god he owes the world an apology.
Hoa binh
It wouldn’t be so bad if a politician ever ASKED God to please bless America and ASKED God to help guide our policies so we might become deserving of being blessed because of our good treatment of all the world’s people.
But shouting …..AND, GOD BLESS AMERICA! on the end of every speech has always been dumb and probably offensive to both God and all foreigners (even if effective with Republicans.) I’m looking forward to the day we finally elect leaders who cut it out.
In the beginning, God created the earth, and He looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.
And God said, “Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.”
And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was Man. Mud as Man alone could speak. God leaned close as Mud as Man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.
“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.
“Certainly,” said Man.
“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God. And He went away.
* * * *
If Obama had begun quoting Vonnegut to CNN, we might have been really impressed and CNN would have imploded from TMI.
Ken Nuti
Medford, MA
You Merkins really ought to take a long hard look at y’all’s selfs. Honestly - all this fakery about faith (which let’s face it is a form of mental disease - if anybody tells me that they hear the voice of God I head the other way).
All over the world - except in third-world shitholes with pig-ignorant peasant populations - religion is taken as being something that is and has alway been about POWER: about an educated elite ripping resources off of the masses who are so fucking mindless that they think that the Sky Wirzard is represented by someone as vile as Joe Ratzinger.
Whether it’s nationalism or religion, this tendency of appealing to the dullest knives in the drawer (those who are both religious ANND nationalist) has got to fucking STOP.
Nationalism is the means by which the political class encourage the dumbfuck masses to believe in a shared destiny, so that the dumbfuck masses are always misidentifying The Other as the target of the big shell game.
relgion just takes the whole thing to another level - endowing whatever inhumanity the political class perpetrates on everyone else on the planet, with a divine blessing.
After all - if the invisible man in the sky is all in favour of pubic wigs (merkins) then who are we to argue?
And we are supposed to be evolved? Fuck me drunk - the fact that the United States has media debates on how mentally deranged their political candidates will pretend to be (i.e. their level of belief in the invisible man in the sky) is PRIMA FACIE evidence tht the society of the United States is an intellectual backwater and ought seriously to be obliterated ASAP. Are there even such things as American Atheist Intellectuals? (It almost goes without saying - everywhere else in the world - that intellectual life is PER SE atheist).
I see soi-disant US “intellectuals” who argue in favour of this or that nation having a right to exist - as if nations are anything other than political constructs (seriously - to what extent is a peasant from the Ozarks even of the same SPECIES as a descendant of the polite classes of the Confederate South)?
Typical teenage country - has been around for a couple of hundred years and thinks it has all the answers. Just like my home country (note - we dont use the Hitlerian “Homeland”) Australia,
Cheerio
GT
France (for the moment - it will be called something else before I die, I bet)
“God Bless America”
Copyright Assigned to the Trustees of the God Bless America Fund.
The God Bless America Fund?
Wiki: “Woody Guthrie disliked the song, and wrote “This Land Is Your Land,” originally titled “God Blessed America For Me…”
“My” God would never bless a country that started off by mass murdering Native Americans only to evolve to mass murdering Iraqis, Afghanis and anyone else who, God forbid, wasn’t “with us.”
Ahhh — atheism is bliss!
The only conclusion we can draw from the fact that the first use of this phrase in a presidential speech for more than forty years occurred when Nixon was trying to extract himself from the Watergate scandal is that it serves as a diversion from the real agenda.
Ronny Raygun’s regular use of the phrase set the stage for ultranationalism that has become the hallmark of the Bush regime.
Geoffrey Transom,
I suspect that many who frequent CD agree mostly with your comments (I know I do, though the profanity is a bit much) and have discussed similar thoughts on occasion with others here. But there is no gain in beating it to death. Unlike most others here however, I do believe that the US has become a fatally flawed and extremely dangerous leviathon that is likely to collapse in the not-too-distant future, and that progressives should focus on doing what they can to prevent the US from taking all of humanity with it if and when that collapse does occur.
The devolution of the US political system does continue unabated, and I am beginning to wonder whether the clever comics of Monty Python’s Flying Circus could have even imagined some 35 years ago a parody more extreme than the current reality.
I have no problem with the religious patriot who prays “May God bless America.” What I object to are the criminally nationalist yahoos who, to steal from a Chris Rock movies, demand that “God bless America — and no place else.”
Daniel David, you said, “It wouldn’t be so bad if a politician ever ASKED God to please bless America and ASKED God to help guide our policies so we might become deserving of being blessed because of our good treatment of all the world’s people…”
Beautiful. Bless YOU for writing it.
Ken Nuti, you quoted Vonnegut — was that from the novel in which he invented Bokononism? It had that wonderful phrase when the “sitting-up-mud” (man) was dying: “I loved everything I saw.” Can’t remember the title; I read it so long ago.
Adele
The media morons reflect the general idiocy of the country’s elites and that is why Clinton is still in the race. She could never compete on ideas but she has great appeal to her ignorant following who see no contradiction in saying they are against the war while supporting a candidate who promises even more war.
Adele,
The Vonnegut book is ‘Cat’s Cradle’, from 1963. It introduced the concept of Ice Nine and is arguably one of the hallmark artistic achievements of humanity, along with ‘Karn Evil 9′ by Emerson Lake and Palmer, ‘Warchild’ by Jethro Tull, and the ‘Foundation’ books by Asimov.
“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before”.
The Books of Bokonon
America, be prepared to do battle for God’s blessing.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper (or as he is more frequently becoming known as G.W. Bush’s second Vice-President) has on more than one occasion uttered the inane phrase “God Bless Canada”.
As of yet it is unclear to me if this is a request or a commandment.
However, recognizing the all–knowing, all-powerful natures of both George and Stephen, I strongly suspect it is the latter.
The question is not “Do you believe in God?”
The question is “Does God believe in you?”
God Bless Amerika = Heil Hitler
What did “Heil Hitler” mean? It meant that one was a part of the group, the clan, the IN crowd. Altho’… consider myself more IN than a minority group of 25% of 25% of repugs. the one who believes that God, in whatever form one wants to experience that name, doesn’t particularly participate in the machinations of the human ego, which include slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the Middle East and sending our poor “Christian Soldiers” to their deaths in the process of the slaughter. Geez.
I cringe when I hear people say that, or leave messages on their voicemail, “…and God bless you.” Yuck.
So let’s talk about the “flag pin” kerfluffel. If Barack Obama was smart he would wear the thing upside down (signifying extreme distress). It could start a trend and might just stop that silliness.
To pick up on VDB’s comment above, the best way to handle the “God Bless America” mantra is to say instead: “May God bless everyone”.
Isn’t there supposed to be something about the separation of church and state somewhere in that “scrap of paper”?
It is all just so much garbage. That’s why I liked DK so much, and still do. I seldom heard him speaking of anything but issues … and I am sure he would have turned all of these inane interrogations into rip-roaring discussions covering as many issues as possible.
Jesus Christ tells his followers who is blessed, in the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are the peacemakers, the poor, the meek, the merciful, the pure of heart, etc.
It seems to me that this list is in opposition the attributes of the United States over the past 100+ years, making a mockery of the invocation of God’s blessing upon America. Perhaps “God bless America” is rather a suggestion that America make itself worthy of such blessing.
Another very usefull concept introduced in Cat’s Cradle was “granfalloon”: i.e. a group of people who outwardly choose or claim to have a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is actually meaningless. (That’s Wikipedia’s definition.)
Accordingly, the phrase should read: God Bless our granfalloon.
God Bless America? On the contrary, America deserves God’s wrath.
What exactly is a blessing? What does the word mean?
Hey, hey, did you hear Cat Stevens sing the national anthem? I saw him singing it before a football game on television about six or eight months ago somewhere, a remarkable thing for me because my television has been in storage for 4 years and I have never watched a football game, ever.
But Cat sang that song like no one else I ever heard.
I’m an atheist, by the way, and God is not going to help.
God Bless America AGAIN the opening song
Great movie, “Canadian Bacon” with John Candy
Appears that one God has indeed blessed America ········· > NEMESIS
“God Bless America”!!!
Is this statement made when checking-out the Katrina disaster? When over 4000 soldiers are killed and thousands mentally and physically ruined for life? When hurricanes,etc,devastate various areas of the U.S.?
Or the sports people who cross themselves on the starting blocks and thank God for their victory,but not much is heard about God in any defeats?
Or the 45 million Americans living in poverty? Is this all part of Gods’grand plan?
Add your own dante-esque list to these few,but God Bless America!Time to grow-up and throw off the Disneyworld shackles.
Grow-up people.
To you folks that hate our country so much and don’t appreciate what it has given you and allows you to do I wish each of you could be somewhere that was like your complaints.
Only small tepid people would disgrace themselves by this kind of shallow, self indulgent garbage.
I’ve seen you before, it was always far out of danger. As far as you could get so you could safely complain.
I try to be courteous and civil, but I’ve had it with this trash and this will be my response from now on to anybody that cares to spit on our country.
Better people than you never came home. I wish you could change places with them.
God Bliss America. Ignorance is Bliss.
If there is a god he owes the world an apology.
Hoa binh
I LOVE your posts!
Kent Shaw
To Adele,
Thanks for kind words. God bless you too.
If there really were a God (notice the cap), my guess is that He (cap again) would send a rather large asteroid into the heartland of America. This would remove any doubt that “With God, all things are possible.”
“The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.”
–H.L. Mencken
I was waiting for it and didn’t have to wait long..
out came the “m’erika love it or die ” people..
No one put down your ” better people than us, who didn’t come back friends”
no one said anything at all about the armed forces.. they do what they are told, and do it better than anyone else.
but when the wagon is off the rails , the ride gets a little shaky and so a person such as yourself who obviously loves his/her country , isn’t gonna help fix that broken wheel by shooting the guys trying to find out why THE WHEEL BROKE IN THE FIRST PLACE…it may just turn out the whole wagon was a bad design from the get go..so you want someone else to die just to make you feel better about your broken wheeled wagon?
Good for you Justin. Thomas Moore, I’m sorry for what happened to you and am grateful for your sacrifice.
I don’t know you Thomas, but I know dozens of vets who fly the flag from their front porches every morning. They are good friends of mine.
If there is a god he owes the world an apology.
Hoa binh
Sorry, I think you have it backwards…
If there is a god the world own him an apology.
If political contenders and presidents were judged on the standards of “The Ten Commandments” very few qualify to hold this office. God Bless America!
From Vonnegut’s own definition of granfalloon: any nation, any where, any time.
Suggested reading: The Man Without a Country
should read “May The Imaginary Supreme Whoo-Doo Recite A Magical Spell of Protection for This Imperial Fascist State”
Even if you don’t believe in god or some other energy/spirit by a different name….. I will state categorically from all my earthly knowledge of 65 years, of searching, studying, tripping, traveling and being silent, that there is one law that governs the universe (of course there are other laws) and that is the law of KARMA: as you sow you reap, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and eye for and eye a tooth for a tooth, what goes around come around, the law of just compensation or recompense, the scales of justice, …. etc.
Certain actions bring certain results, period. They are nether sinful or virtuous. Is a hot stove sinful if it burns you? No, it is just the law that you will be burned by touching a hot stove. It is simply a practical thing.
The priestcraft and similar types have made a living for thousands of years by saying that they can forgive negative karma and create positive karma by some ritual, saying or ceremony. They cannot. They take your money and give you happy thoughts. If they could would the world be in the negative state we are in today? They cannot. We all are deep in the cosmic chess match and our moves become more and more restricted (by our past actions) yet we are convinced we have absolute free will (an illusion). I must say here that there maybe a way to mitigate karma but it is totally unavailable to 99.9 % of the people so it is really irrelevant. Some day I hope to find it.
People do not know the law of karma because they only understand instant karma, i.e. the touching of the hot stove. If all karma was instant karma the world (an universe) would be a virtuous place. It isn’t and the law is hidden from all but the truly discerning eyes. If we could just step back a bit and refocus we would see the law acting everywhere through the veil of mist.
Only individuals sow karma but nations are made up of individuals so seemingly and for all practical purposes nations do sow karma. In this respect the good old U.S.A. is sowing/has been sowing, some serious sour karma. This is what reverend Wright was referring to when he said god damn america. He wasn’t calling on god to damn america. He wouldn’t have the power. He was just stating that we were (as a nation) damning ourselves. To look in the mirror once in awhile and see what we look like. If one never looks in the mirror we might be shocked about people’s reaction to our appearance. Note how so many americans can’t understand how anyone, group or nation could dislike us? How is it possible, we are the good guys, the blessed one’s, the chosen …. why, oh why, should we ever think about looking in the mirror?
On a lighter note every since the invasion of Iraq I have had a bumper sticker on my car that said: ” What’s our oil doing under their soil?” This sums up the whole Iraq war in that if god does truly bless america then he must have made a slight logistical error and mistakenly placed all that oil in the mid-east (SD, Iraq, Iran, etc.) instead of Texas and Wyoming were it blessedly belongs and so it’s just as natural as shooting a man in the face while hunting tiny helpless birds that we are god almightily obliged to correct this error. Oh, P.S. Venezuela, your next!
justin:
Shouldn’t 60,000,000 illiterate US Americans also be included?
Thomas More:
Et tu Sir!
Shaming Speeches like yours have been uttered most loudly by the most obscene, deluded, debased segment of our pseudosociety, i.e., Madison Ave., Wall St., Bank of America, GM, CIA, Sporting venues, VFW, American Legion, the Rubber Chicken Circuit, et al. What a farce!
Open your eyes and ears! You should reserve your vituperation for those who most deserve it, such as the Neocons, The Religious Right/Dominionists, the Bohemian Club of San Francisco (the Bohemian Grove) and its membership, all Conservative commentators like Limpbaugh, O’Reilly, et al. Billionaire ballclub owners, Private Security Gouging Firms, DoD, Tobacco Corporations, the Big Three (coughhackcoughhack) Auto makers., MSM, Alcohol makers, NRA and GOA, and on…..
I think perhaps when someone in this country…especially politicians….they might get down on their knees and beg…Please God…Bless America…and forgive my lying, corruption, greed, immorality….and for voting for the war…funding the war…stealing from the people…refusing to provide medical care…destroying the economy…
and so on, and so on….
I’d suggest that the next President adopt Tiny Tim’s Christmas blessing from Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”:
“May God bless us all, every one.”
Yes put your faith in the candidate who takes a “disability pension”. Only the GOP could be that crass.
Memo to God:
1 Bless Amerika continuously.
2 Smite anti Americans
3 Ignore Darfur and rest of 3rd world
4 Consult with US president regularly
Yours Truly,
Amerrika
America is looking for the wrong blessing. We want riches and power with ouT responsibility or consequences. In the beatitudes, Jesus blesses the people who mourn, are poor in spirit, the ones who seek righteousness (justice), the peacemakers, and those who suffer for what is right. I Maybe God would bless us if we were the peacemakers.
canuckchuck says: should read “May The Imaginary Supreme Whoo-Doo Recite A Magical Spell of Protection for This Imperial Fascist State”
************
I just LOVE your postings. they not only hit home, but are always humourous. Thanks Canuckchuck!
peace,
CS
WmC and vdb, good catch - I forgot about the Granfalloon. That’s more relevant to this thread than Ice Nine.
Mr. More brings up a good point about posters being out of danger. I only post here once in awhile; sometimes moderate stuff and sometimes more pointed, but I always state my real name and location for that very reason. If we feel as strongly as we seemingly do, we shouldn’t be concerned with being tracked by those with any claim of authority, yes?
At the same time, I’m not aware of any technical pitfalls of stating one’s actual name and address on a posting list like this, but I do believe the entities we impart so much wrath unto are actually too inept anyway.
So, if an average person, who lives right up the street from Ed Markey’s Congressional District Office, states in a forum like this that the State Department is inept and the Justice Department is still infested with evangelicals, should he/she have anything to fear?
Ken Nuti
Medford, MA
If God is in fact Blessing America, we’re fucked.
At least in Vonnegut’s story, the character Bokonon makes a disclaimer that his book and religion are nothing but “foma” (ie: lies and fabrications). If only actual religions were that wise and self-aware. All this “God Bless America” and “In God We Trust” nonsense needs to be REMOVED from public discourse. Contrary to what many believe, it degrades us as a people.
I’m not holding my breath, though. Just try stating openly that you’re an atheist or agnostic, and watch how quickly the scorn gets heaped upon you. There have been civil rights movements for minorities, gays, women, etc. Maybe the next one should be for non-believers.
How about:God bless the world.
Pols evidently think that God thinks in the following way: “So many countries, so little time. Who should I bless? Lots of turkeys from the USA are asking, so I think that will sway me to bless America.”
To: Thomas More
Stop watching FAUX News and believing that everything AmeriKKKa does is the cat’s pajamas. Smarter people than you (and by smarter people I do mean those in a vegetative state and many who are already 6 feet under) have figured out that as far as humanity goes WE are the ultimate enemy. Yes, please God, bless America so maybe the warmongering, fear inducing, self-important, war profiteering, hypocritical flag-waving republiscum will somehow all end up at the bottom of the ocean and people who actually give a shit about concepts like equality, peace and understanding can finally start ruling this ass-backward fake democracy.
Thank you
‘but the stakes were higher for Obama because of the whispering campaign that he was (gasp!) a Muslim’
That matches my own experience with a very close (and older) family member, who said basically that. Because he’s Muslim, no way. Because that’s what everyone thinks in the group of friends, at breakfast every morning. You know, people with the spare time and money to go out to breakfast every morning. I was floored. And sad. If McCain wins, I’ll be surprised, but not very surprised, just more sad.
BJude,
Some folks I know cross out the “In God We Trust” on the back of currency with a black marker. That may also get scorn heaped upon you, but this is among the many costs atheists must pay if our view is of any value at all to others.
Doug Lago and others,
Consider less confrontational language when addressing such postings as that of Thomas More. As I mentioned earlier, at least he signs his name to his stuff - and perhaps he’s a veteran with some legitimate anger. If we all signed names and locations to our rantings, then there might be less intra-list anger and more working together. For example, I would love to meet some of you who are from the Boston area but I have no idea who’s from where unless I make an effort to track someone.
No Fear,
Ken Nuti
Medford, MA
GOTT MIT UNS!
(slogan on Waffen SS belt buckles)
… was there a lot of snow, or did they have bad circulation ?
why didn’t they want gloves, like the rest of the fascists, oh
NEVER_MIND ( not even close to: Got mittens ? )
By the way, if someone says “God Bless America” in my presence, I say “He already has - look at this beautiful country - now we have to take care of it.” If the person has a sense of humor I say “She already has.”
“Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people.”
- [Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933]
“This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief.”
- [Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.152]
“We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.”
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933
It seems that the religious right and the Bush fascists have adopted the above.