In Defense of Telling Other Nations To Mind Their Own Business In Regard To The American President (Even As a Christian)
I come across my evangelical colleagues starting a story with, "Having lived overseas for X years, I can tell you, we'd be shocked at how we're viewed around the world" and "Bush was an embarrassment". With all due respect, stuff it. (The nuance is following.)
We ought rightly be concerned with those moral issues, which, like it or not, may put the US in a bad light in light of the Word of God, and even the natural law. (War, the nature of capital punishment, torture, abortion, etc.) And we may well find that a particular president failed to defend especially the dignity of human beings in one or many of these areas, and we should never fail to say that. Even in the most successful of presidents (say, Reagan) major flaws remain. May I be never so nationalist to fail to notice. And of course, picking a genocidal monster as leader is never a good idea. (No, Germany, we can't let it go.) But these days, I find myself defending a man in George W. Bush that, in the end, was average at best. Why? Because most of the criticisms are simply falsehoods and exaggerations from what I might call the (leftist) chattering classes around the world which have been uncritically adopted by unthinking evangelicals, who may be dismayed by a certain provincial nationalism that is surely part of American culture. In regard to the moral issues, no other nation has its hands clean here. Even in regard to human dignity concerning torture, this is a bad joke, to be lectured by Europe or anyone else. And I say that as a man who voted for Obama because of such things. (And he's miserably failed, by the way.) Need I mention that most of the so-called "enlightened" world, while guilty of the same moral sins, is beholden to idiotic and unworkable economic policies (socialism/Keynsianism) that will starve millions, in the end? No. Should I care what the state of world opinion is when the suggested alternative, I believe, is worse? And the only reason anyone cares who the US president is, and what his ideas are, is the prominence of the US. Tell you what, world: I won't tell you who I think your leaders should be if you promise to do the same. This ain't a popularity contest. And I promise to pray for you before I vote for Sarah Palin.
I come across my evangelical colleagues starting a story with, "Having lived overseas for X years, I can tell you, we'd be shocked at how we're viewed around the world" and "Bush was an embarrassment". With all due respect, stuff it. (The nuance is following.)
We ought rightly be concerned with those moral issues, which, like it or not, may put the US in a bad light in light of the Word of God, and even the natural law. (War, the nature of capital punishment, torture, abortion, etc.) And we may well find that a particular president failed to defend especially the dignity of human beings in one or many of these areas, and we should never fail to say that. Even in the most successful of presidents (say, Reagan) major flaws remain. May I be never so nationalist to fail to notice. And of course, picking a genocidal monster as leader is never a good idea. (No, Germany, we can't let it go.) But these days, I find myself defending a man in George W. Bush that, in the end, was average at best. Why? Because most of the criticisms are simply falsehoods and exaggerations from what I might call the (leftist) chattering classes around the world which have been uncritically adopted by unthinking evangelicals, who may be dismayed by a certain provincial nationalism that is surely part of American culture. In regard to the moral issues, no other nation has its hands clean here. Even in regard to human dignity concerning torture, this is a bad joke, to be lectured by Europe or anyone else. And I say that as a man who voted for Obama because of such things. (And he's miserably failed, by the way.) Need I mention that most of the so-called "enlightened" world, while guilty of the same moral sins, is beholden to idiotic and unworkable economic policies (socialism/Keynsianism) that will starve millions, in the end? No. Should I care what the state of world opinion is when the suggested alternative, I believe, is worse? And the only reason anyone cares who the US president is, and what his ideas are, is the prominence of the US. Tell you what, world: I won't tell you who I think your leaders should be if you promise to do the same. This ain't a popularity contest. And I promise to pray for you before I vote for Sarah Palin.
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