I’m borrowing the title of a fine poem by one of my favorite poets, Robert Bly, because it’s the first thing that came to mind.

I downloaded the complete text of President Bush’s second inaugural speech to my

computer. As a writer, I thought it might be interesting to look at its construction.

Unfortunately, I think there are holes in it. The first thing I did was to seach it for the

words Iraq and War, to see how this most delicate and vital subject was handled. Those

words do not appear in the text. How can this be? Befuddled but undeterred, I searched on for Empire. It’s also missing, but I did find this, which seems to be the same

thing:

America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of

our founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has

rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the

maker of heaven and earth. Across the generations, we have proclaimed the

imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one

deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our

nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent

requirement of our nation’s security, and the calling of our time.

Oh, no. Absolute doublespeak. Our deepest beliefs are supposed to be personal, not national. Hence “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion…” I thought that our deepest national beliefs were supposed to include tolerance for the various beliefs of others. Last time I checked, America’s vital interests were killing extremists before they can attack us again, keeping up our supply of fossil fuels, and protecting traditional marriage.

This president needs a history lesson. From the day of our founding, we proclaimed that every white man with land could vote. Women didn’t vote until the 1920s. And we slogged along a hundred years before a civil war — and the price of roughly two thirds of a million lives — ended the offices of master and slave. The mission that created our nation was the exploitation of North America’s natural resources. Sure a few folks came for religious freedom, but mostly we came to find work.

What the hell is this Bush Doctrine? We’ve got it perfect, and we’re going to ram it down the throats of the planet? Merd. We’re still way down the road from getting a handle on freedom. We are, at best, in the process of becoming free. Two steps forward, one step back. But if we truly believed in the imperative of self-government, we would never tolerate imposing our beliefs on others. That is the great madness of Caesar’s ambition.