Radical Thoughts

Editor & Publisher is apparently trying some of its own advice, attempting to gin up controversy with the headline, Bush Says He Tried to Avoid War 'To The Max,' Explains How God Shapes His Foreign Policy.

A provocative headline, but a half-truth at best, not that this apparently matters to E&P editor Greg Mitchell, who seems intent on dragging Editor & Publisher into shrieking irrelevance with an overly partisan message.

President Bush did unquestioningly use the phrase "to the max" to describe that he tried his utmost to use diplomacy to solve the crisis with Iraq instead of military means. This is true, as even up until the last minute the United States was willing to consider exile and even immunity for Saddam Hussein and his top officials, only to have just such a deal was rejected by other Arab leaders. While "too the max" is an unfortunately conversational and informal turn of phrase, it is hardly incorrect.

But that is not at the heart of E&P's editorial against the president, his professed Christian faith apparently is:

Bush also explained, in unusually stark terms, how his belief in God influences his foreign policy. "I base a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true," he said. "One, I believe there's an Almighty. And, secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free.

"I believe liberty is universal. I believe people want to be free. And I know that democracies do not war with each other."

"Unusually stark terms," you say? By who's estimation?

There is a document that Greg Mitchell could bear reading, written by another group of men who believed in God and liberty, that by E&P standards must be completely unacceptable. It uses such unforgivable language as this:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

God, the "Creator" granting an unalienable right to liberty? What an unforgivable document, this Declaration of Independence that President Bush dares to echo.

I'm certain Editor and Publisher will bravely "explore the ways to confront it," as well.

(h/t: Outside the Beltway)