The Billiken's Bluff

Seeing the risk of becoming an overbearing presence on the Billiken comment page (or did that happen already?), I decided to do a little copy-paste action here and turn my comments on St. Nick's post below into its own full-blown post. Damn I'm a long-winded sumbitch.

My reason for posting is that I'm quite puzzled as to why the Saint sees this BBC News Americans-are-mad-religious thing as a revelation. That Americans are more openly religous and prefer this more in their political leadership than Europeans in general is more or less a statistical point of interest which any textbook of comparative politics will bear reference to. Does the European press' interest in this foreign aspect of American politics amount to a "simplification" of the American voting populace? A blow to our "hyperpower inflated egos?" Only, perhaps, if you find it to be an insult.

St. Nick, as I understand the man, is more than a bit vexed by the deep-running religious convictions of American voters and even more so of their leaders. This baffles me. When watching the president's nomination speech and hearing a reference to God, an exasperated St. Nick declared, "You lost me!" As I pointed out then to the Saint, if he had been standing among the crowd when Abraham Lincoln implored Americans at the battleground of Gettysburg "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom," well, St. Nick would have been there with crossed arms cynically saying, "You lost me!"



God - and a great deal of Anti-Bushocrats can't stand this - has so long-standing a place in the conscience of American political leadership that they might as well have given Him a cabinet position. Many of our leaders have been religious and believe God to have carried them through what after all have often in our history been extremely trying times and difficult decisions. This is not to suggest that God is on one politician's side or another or even necessarily on "America's side" in some foreign policy action or another. But to refrain that we are a "nation under God," as Lincoln and others have done, seems hardly ridiculous. We began, after all, with the declaration that our Creator has endowed us with certain inalieable rights - and insofar and we have as a country done what we could at times to defend these rights for mankind in other parts of the world - well it all seems pretty congruous with where we've been going with this whole "America thing." This may shock our cynical modern sensibilities, but if you go back and read the private writings of men like John Adams, they were deeply religious in a way and very much believed and hoped that their American experiment would be looked on favorably by the "Creator" they invoked, and that we could be in a true sense a nation under God.

Are we simpletons to want the same thing now?

St. Nick and others may look down on religious people in believing their ideas to be "simple," but as the BBC points out, a majority of the country seems to recognize this outlandish prospect that religious convictions could add a degree of morality and strength in their leaders. To "see them through the hard times" perhaps? And every once in a while - perhaps our simple populace believes - it's nice for leaders to, you know, believe in stuff. Speaking of which, there may be a reason why John Kerry is not going to be the next President of the United States.

So anyways I didn't see anything so groundbreaking in the BBC news reporting that the Saint mentioned. Although this one paragraph represents something that always baffles me (am I too easily baffled?):

In fact, although the United States has a constitutional barrier separating church and state, the vast majority of Americans want their leaders to be religious.

I'll never, never get this. The BBC seems to present this as some sort of contradiction. It never ceases to amaze me how misunderstood the "seperation of church and state" is as a constitutional principle. No matter how many times I remind people that our constitution only stipulates that "Congress shall pass no law respecting the establishment of religion," people like St. Nick want desperately to believe that somewhere, somewhere in the Constitution (maybe in the secret parts?) or in its long history of interpretation there is grounds to ensure no one mentions God or no political leader openly has religious convictions. It just ain't true. Hell, if the "no mention of God" in government documents was unconstitutional, then techically when it says "Year of our Lord" in the Constitution, the Constitution itself is unconstitutional! Sheeeeet, we can all go back to being part of England I guess - its what the Anti-Bushocrats probably want anyway at this point. "Hmph!" they'd say, "At least they're not so religious!"

Expect people to prattle on into our history about how bad it is that our leaders have religious convictions and will speak of their faith without shame, referring to some mythicial constitutional principle that should prevent such simple talk. To them I can only quote St. Nick: "You lost me!"