The American Spectator

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Loose Canons

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The Founding Fathers also conveniently share Wills's liberalism. They, too, are ACLU liberals horrified at the thought that God and government would mix. Perhaps historian Wills can one day explain why such secular-minded men permitted the state governments to have their own religions. Or does Wills not know the history of the Constitution? Perhaps he just temporarily forgot that the states only agreed to the Constitution because the framers promised not to ban their state religions. If James Madison and Thomas Jefferson -- the heroes of Wills's New York Times piece -- wanted God out of government as badly as he does, why did they write the First Amendment to protect state religions? Wills is given to narcissistic interpretation. His subject becomes a clone of his thought and will -- whether it is James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, St. Augustine or Jesus Christ. When you read Wills' account of their minds, you are just reading an account of his.

Everything Wills accuses Bush of is on display in his own writing. As a willful polemicist and dogmatic liberal, Wills's concern about polemics and religious dogma is obviously fraudulent.

Wills says Bush is making "instrumental use of religion." All that means is that Wills wants conservatives to leave that instrument alone so he can make use of it.

Wills speaks of "the religious test on which our president is grading us." Which would that be? There isn't one, but Wills has to make one up to smear Bush.

When Jimmy Carter invokes religion to justify his pacifism, does Wills spill ink on the dangers of religious revivalism? Does Wills worry about the instrumental use of religion at death penalty protests? Did he worry about the instrumental use of religion at Civil Rights marches?

Liberals can bring their religion into the public square and he won't complain. But conservatives bring it into the public square and he starts talking about Jonathan Edwards. His Americans-have-always-been-so-weird-about-religion tone, honed in the pages of the fashionably agnostic New York Review of Books, never applies to the kooks to his left.

Bush's rhetoric puts him in mind of the puritan "jeremiads" of the past. Why doesn't it also put him in mind of the Founding Fathers' condemnation of tyrants? Against a tyrant far less ferocious than Saddam Hussein -- King George III -- they placed "God on their side." Does Wills object to that?

"Religion in America is much like Nature in the famous saying of Horace: 'Nature, pitchfork it out how you may, keeps tumbling back in on you, slyly overbears your shying from it.' In the same way, no matter how much Jefferson and Madison tried to pitchfork religion out of official governmental actions, it has kept sneaking back in, beating down attempts to contain it," he says.

Oh, those peculiar Americans. They insist on consulting God before consulting Garry Wills.

topics:
Religion, Islam, Abortion, Books, Hollywood, Constitution, Law, Founding Fathers, Military, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Israel, United Nations, Nuclear Weapons