learning from the State of the Union

Yeah, I know, it's all pomp and very little circumstance. But I couldn't help using the address as a "teachable moment" today in my classes--simply because when I mentioned it, scores of students immediately asked what the State of the Union Address is.

Consequently, we watched the last ten minutes of the speech, time enough to hear the "hopeful society" theme, a few policy proposals, and some well-crafted rhetoric. (After a brief discussion, students wrote "State of the _______" speeches and delivered them for extra credit. The "State of the iPod" and "State of the west side McDonalds" were the cleverest entries.)

As for me... reading through the bluster, and hearing it five times in the space of a day, I took away one lesson from the speech.

No matter what fears of theocracy lefties may harbor, they're misplaced when directed at Bush. Bush isn't a theocrat any more than tee-ball is baseball or Keanu Reeves is an actor. Here's why.

Yet the destination of history is determined by human action, and every great movement of history comes to a point of choosing. Lincoln could have accepted peace at the cost of disunity and continued slavery. Martin Luther King could have stopped at Birmingham or at Selma, and achieved only half a victory over segregation. The United States could have accepted the permanent division of Europe, and been complicit in the oppression of others. Today, having come far in our own historical journey, we must decide: Will we turn back, or finish well?

Before history is written down in books, it is written in courage. Like Americans before us, we will show that courage and we will finish well. We will lead freedom’s advance. We will compete and excel in the global economy. We will renew the defining moral commitments of this land. And so we move forward – optimistic about our country, faithful to its cause, and confident of victories to come.

Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless America.

Sure, God gets a shout-out--he'll bless our efforts, we pray--but the sentiment is fundamentally secular, essentially humanist. History is ours to write, ours to shape. God is the creator, the ground of human rights, but in a distant, benign, even deist sort of way. When it all comes down, it's up to our initiative, our gumption, our determination and resolve.

Since Bush brought up the comparison, line up his words with Lincoln's, from the second inaugural:

It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Bush's platitudes look rather pale next to Lincoln's bold, unabashedly Biblical theologizing. Lincoln speaks not just from another time, but from another planet, a place steeped in old-time religion. Lincoln's God isn't just a concept, but a fire-breathing person with a will in the world.

When it comes to Bush, "theocrat" is a lazy epithet, like calling Good Charlotte's music "punk rock." Sure, it sounds punk-esque, but it's soulless and watery, tailored for mass consumption, entirely too agreeable. It's what a shallow society wants--and deserves--in its pop and its politics.


Update: Welcome to readers from Ed Brayton's blog. You might also be interested in this talk by Michael Gerson, Bush's speechwriter, the man responsible for religious references in his rhetoric. A sample:

We’ve attempted to apply a set of rules that I’ve done my best to keep. We’ve tried to apply a principled pluralism; we have set out to welcome all religions, not favoring any religions in a sectarian way. I think that the president is the first president to mention mosques and Islam in his inaugural address. The president has consistently urged tolerance and respect for other faiths and traditions, and has received some criticism for it.