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David Horowitz - Columnist

David Horowitz is a noted author, commentator and columnist. His is the founder of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and his opinions can be found at Front Page Magazine. [go to Horowitz index]

Guided by God?
Or guided by his gonads?...
[David Horowitz] 5/14/04

The Jesus Factor, which aired last week, is an hour “documentary” on the role that religion plays in the mind of President Bush. It was produced by the leftwing series “Frontline” for PBS, which has been a subsidiary of the Democratic Party since its creation nearly forty years ago. Predictably, The Jesus Factor was a not-so-subtle election year effort to scare the PBS audience into believing that the President is a religious fanatic, hostage to faith-driven and (therefore) mindless evangelicals. The President’s thinking on the issue of war and peace, according to the producers, is guided not by his assessment of America’s enemies, but knee-jerk, delusional Christian beliefs.

In this production, the featured critic of the President’s God-talk on the war was the Reverend Jim Wallis, who explained that calling the enemy “evil” was “bad theology” and in effect un-Christian. Use of the term “evil” derived from precisely the kind of religious delusion that characterized Christian fanatics generally, becoming when it entered the vocabulary of a war President. To regard the war with Islamic jihad as a “religious war” was itself “bad theology” in Wallis’ view. The Frontline documentary failed to mention that Wallis is a liberation theologian (in other words, a Marxist) with a long history of support for Communist causes. The one good thing one could say about this documentary was that the spokesmen for the evangelicals were articulate and one of them did point out that refusing to recognize evil in this world is a hallmark of the political left. He was too gracious to add the reason for this, which is that the left has so often been (and in the war on terror so obviously is) itself in bed with evil.

Watching the program I couldn’t help thinking of Bill Clinton, a president guided not by his God, but by his gonads. I couldn’t help remembering how fiercely the same liberals who made The Jesus Factor and who are positively phobic about Bush’s Christian faith defended virtually to a man the most irresponsible human being ever to occupy the White House. While Clinton was setting his sights on confused and vulnerable female interns, Osama bin Laden and his fellow Islamic fanatics were actively carrying out their war against American citizens. In 1993, Islamic terrorists blew up the World Trade Center, an act which Clinton dismissed; in 1995 the mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing was captured in the Philippines with plans to blow up eleven airliners and fly a plane into the headquarters of the CIA, a fact which Clinton disregarded as he let Osama bin Laden slip through his hands; in 1996 an American military barracks was blown up by al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, while Clinton did nothing. Through eight years of terrorist attacks, Clinton focused on himself rather than on the nation’s security. In 1998 two American embassies were blown up in Africa, an act of war. Clinton was too preoccupied focus on the implications. He was preparing his appearance before a grand jury and designing the lies he would tell to cover up the lies he had told for the previous eight months, choosing to paralyze the office of the commander-in-chief rather than own up to what he had done and be accountable for his acts.

A man who has no moral conviction, who can’t hold himself accountable for what he has done, can hardly be expected to hold the murderers of innocents accountable for their deeds either. Yet PBS liberals everywhere have no problem with that.

Nor do they seem to have a significant problem with the actual religious fanatics who blow up innocents believing that Allah will reward them with 72 virgins when they get to heaven. To focus attention on their religion would be bigotry and racial profiling. But liberals do have a big problem with decent, law-abiding American Christians, and their problem – judging from The Jesus Factor -- is evidently their religious faith. They do have a problem with a President whose personal faith has focused him on his responsibility to protect us and who has in fact protected us from terror attacks for more than two and a half years.

Watching The Jesus Factor on PBS I could only think: God bless George Bush, a man responsible to the millions of people all over the world whose fates have been entrusted to him, and whose faith reminds him that he is accountable to them all. God help liberal bigots who have no faith but themselves and whose prejudice and hatred is reserved for those who defend them. CRO

This opinion piece first appeared at FrontPageMagazine.com by permission of David Horowitz.

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