The net that shall enmesh them all
Edited, Written, and Published by Josh Nossiter
Friday, July 21st, 2006
Paying churches to provide services like education and housing, which under our former system of government used to be supplied by Uncle Sam, has been a pillar of the Bush administration. Mr. Bush even established a White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives, whose importance can be gauged by the fact that Jack Abramoff made a point of stopping by.
The administration’s largesse to churches results from two ideas central to Mr. Bush’s philosophy: Take government out of the business of serving the governed, and improve the nation’s moral well-being by forcing religion into daily life. Government, Mr. Bush believes, is good at supporting support defense contractors, oil companies, and very rich people. Record growth in profits for the former and unprecedented real income growth for the latter has occurred on Mr. Bush’s watch, proving his point.
Government is not good at educating children or housing their families, according to Mr. Bush. And indeed during his term of office children in public schools have done progressively worse, while the nation’s stock of public housing has markedly declined. Logically if government can’t do these things, other entities should take on the job. Churches, with established educational programs and homeless shelters and the like, are the obvious choice. They have the additional advantage of leveraging their federal funds with the charitable contributions of their parishioners, producing a multiplier effect for their government dollars that appeals to Mr. Bush’s MBA mind.
Furthermore, if we let our churches handle education, children will learn that the earth was created in six days, and that God created man in his own image and woman as a rib-tickling afterthought. No more equal rights, evolution, cell biology, and plate tectonics, which are confusing to the undeveloped mind, and lead to pre-marital sex, substance abuse, and support for the Democratic Party. Families living in church supplied housing will enjoy the life-long reiteration of these lessons, immunizing them for ever from falsehood and faithlessness.
Satanists and skeptics, Mr. Bush correctly predicted, will refuse to accept services provided by churches, reasoning that they already reject church service. This is why the Bush administration actively withholds government services whenever possible, as in the wake of hurricane Katrina. When fully implemented, this policy will drive even the most satanic and skeptical into the embrace of the church, since they will have nowhere else to turn.
Mr. Bush’s entire faith-based scheme is certain to have a transformative effect on our nation. Proof of this can be seen in a country now in the news where the Bush recipe has been followed with dramatic results. This state has a central government so weak and ineffective as to be unable to provide basic services to its citizens, creating a security, health, education, and housing vacuum. The vacuum is filled by a strong, well-funded, and highly activist religious organization, which supplies armed men, schools, clinics, and housing to a grateful citizenry.
We can see very clearly what Hezbollah has done for Lebanon. Once the Bush faith-based initiative bears fruit and the Southern Baptist Convention takes over, the U.S. will be a similar paradise on earth.
©Joshua C. Nossiter, 2006
