MR. BFRY BREAKS DOWN YOUR WORLD

OK kiddies, here's a little lesson for you all, so pay attention; when it comes to politics and world events, I generally know what the hell I am talking about.

Waaay back in the 17th Century, in his Treatises on Civil Government, John Locke postulated that ideas came from experience, from what we perceived with our senses. Our country was very much Lockean in its development under the founding fathers, and yet, in 2005, the oldest surviving republic in the world has a leader, elected twice now, that does not believe so much in ideas coming from experience, but operates on ideas that stem from what many would call a blind faith. Many of his supporters, fellow evangelical Christians, share this mode of thinking. Faith in a Divine Plan, or Predestination, or in Jesus and/or God the Heavenly father, will take care of problems, much moreso than planning or research.

Perhaps you say, I'm making quite a leap here. A leap of faith? No. I'll go back to Locke, and will use evidence to substantiate my claims, not just emotional bombast.

Presidents are always confronted by experts- people who have spent their entire lives studying a particular issue, covering all the angles and history and ANYTHING relevant to their issue. We find that in many of these fields, while there may be some dissension, there is a lot more consensus on many of the broad strokes. Global warming is occurring, stem cell research is highly beneficial, tax cuts targeted to the richest 1% of the population cannot be cited as the main reason for any kind of economic recovery, many people in Iraq and foreign terrorists will attack us there so we will need hundreds of thousands of troops to build the peace... Saddam wasn't trying to get uranium from Niger...

The list goes on an on. In ANY of these situations, a study of the empirical evidence available would have reached the respective aforementioned conclusions.

Yet, our fearless leader, George Dubya Bush, drew the opposite conclusion EVERY TIME.

Sure, politics can explain a lot of it. But a big part of that is what is Mr. Bush's core philosophy. In any situation, where experts have reached a consensus view, on any issue that does not agree with Bush and/or Cheney's and/or Rumsfeld's preexisting ideas or worldviews, they are simply ignored.

Early in 2002, a State Department report predicted most of the problems we are now having in Iraq, and said that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to secure Iraq after the fall of Saddam's regime. The report was delivered to Rumsfeld.

He didn't even open it. In fact, Gen. Erik. Shinseki, then the head of the Army, told Rumsfeld that we needed 400,000 troops or so to secure Iraq. Rumsfeld first publicly humiliated Shinseki in shouting matches and then forced him into early retirement.

Before Bush was elected, he presented global warming as an untested, unproved idea. He said we would need to "do more research." He recently said the same thing in 2005. More than 5 years later. Yeah... This is despite that fact that for over a decade there has been a large consensus among the scientific community that our fossil fuel emissions and other chemicals are having a substantially negative effect on global climate change, and that urgent action is needed.

Evolution is another of those liberal "unproven" theories.

With Iraq, postwar planning didn't matter. This was God's will. Get rid of Saddam, and the Iraqis will love us! Everything will just magically fall in place. Postwar planning? Reconstruction? Silly Liberals want to plan and plan and plan. But Bush, he's too good for that. The State Dept.? A left leaning think tank. The CIA and CIA officials questioning selective use and presentation of intelligent? They just didn't understand Saddam.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, and Mr. Rumsfeld relative to his Big Brass advisors like Shinseki, had little experience to make them understand the specifics of what they were talking about. Dick Cheney had never seriously studied Iraqi history or culture, yet he was completely confident in going on TV and saying he thought we would be greeted--and continually supported--as liberators.

Now I really can't stand Dick Cheney. But I believe he really believed that when he said it. Experience with Iraq's history? Not important. Just faith in the master plan.

The real science behind evolution or global warming? Not important. Cabinet members like Paul O'Neil talking about the fact that the nature of these top-heavy tax cuts specifically destroyed any real economic reason behind them? Not important.

Forget the experts. We've got true believers. They get their ideas from their faith in God or their own ability to achieve or in their political philosophy. They don't actually need to know about the specifics, or ask anyone who specializes in these areas, just stay the course. THIER course.

The evangelicals who don't want their kids to learn evolution and who make up about 1/3 of the country, they feel right at home with this guy. I guess that's why they voted for him. As Gary Wills posed the question in his day-after-the-election-lament of where our country was headed- "Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?"

John Kerry was Mr. Expert, Mr. I've studied this and been here and I'VE ACTUALLY FOUGHT A WAR, but nah. Don't need him. John Kerry may have been a cooler "smartest-kid-in-the-class" than Gore, but he was sill the "smartest-kid-in-the-class."

And boy, if there's one thing ANYBODY knows about Bush, is that he will go with his gut and let no qualified expert dissuade him from his foolishness; THAT'S what he got reelected with, to a degree at least. He will go with his Faith. His Faith in himself, his Faith in Dick Cheney, his Faith in God.

Like Bill Maher said, who clearly has a higher understanding of American tradition than Bush, "These are troubled times. We have to think our way out, we can't faith our way out. It's not a coincidence that so much of Bush's base are faith people, because Bush works in mysterious ways. It helps to have faith, it really does."

Well, Bush is probably the least Lockean President in modern times, espousing a leadership style that would have confounded the rational Deist founding fathers. He takes us away from reason toward a world of faith.

What's scarier, that, or the people that elect him?? (go nutz in the comment section here people, WORK WITH ME!)

I have full faith that Bush sucks (really, REALLY sucks) and God wants us to approach our problems with the brains HE gave us, not use an idea of faith to avoid taking a hard look at hard solutions to hard problems. As the president likes to say of Iraq, that would be "hard work." Too hard to think about, so just have faith in me. Sounds like MOSH; Slim Shady, would you agree?