Why Bush Won!

In his first term, George W Bush had signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Bill which put an end to the ghastly dismembering (no other word is adequate) of babies at or during the birth process. Such appalling late-term abortions are rarely if ever conducted for medical reasons. President Clinton, though ‘personally against’ partial-birth abortion, had refused to sign a previous incarnation of the Bill on the same pragmatic grounds that would later mark Kerry’s moral observances. He would not force his personal beliefs on the American public – even if it meant allowing the killing of perfectly healthy babies.

By this single action, George W. Bush (and I have not heard him gain any credit for this in the UK) literally saved the lives of thousands of future unborn children. Bush himself makes no secret of the fact of his belief that he is an ‘anti-abortionist’ (though I am aware his views do not go far enough for many anti-abortionists). John Kerry too claims he believes ‘life begins at conception’. But he goes on to assert that he has no wish to impose ‘my personal views on the American public’. Of course, by asserting this, he undermines any view he might possibly have ceding the floor by default to those who are fully able to make their personal beliefs onto the public platform. This is a sign of how religion has become privatised in our age. The Christian faith is not however (and never has been) a matter of private faith at all, but of very public faith which has been given because it serves the best interests of the whole community (Christian or not). The pro-abortionists have no compunction whatsoever in foisting their beliefs ‘as law’ on the whole community. The issue is not whether we force our beliefs on the community, but whether have a better, more reasoned argument against abortion – faith-driven or not – than the pro-abortionists.

George Bush has also made it clear that he believes marriage was created by God as an institution and union between a man and a woman, ‘the two flesh who become, in marriage, one’. Once again, however, the pragmatist Kerry attempts to dodge controversy by drawing the spurious distinction between private belief and public action.

In short, Kerry’s nuanced logic not only makes little sense in practice, in itself it becomes an impediment to both forming and pursuing right moral action for the common good. By severing the link between personal belief and public strategy, Kerry reveals himself to be unprincipled and a man without conviction – something that could not even be said of Osama Bin Laden. Bush, on the other hand, is what computer buffs call: wysiwyg. Like him or not, what you see is what you get. He has no compunction at all in making the link between private belief and acting accordingly for the sake of the public good.

All this is grist to the mill of why secular pragmatists like Kerry, Chirac and Schroeder and proto-Communist Guardian readers with their threadbare and elastic moral systems, so misunderstand Bush. If there is one thing a liberal secularist cannot stand, it is a man with convictions. Unlike anti-Christian Europe and post-Christian Britain, the American nation still possesses a national vestige of Christian faith or, at the very least, a more powerful ‘memory’ of it. This still often drives the American character to do ‘the right thing’ when others are reluctant to do so.

It was Americans who shed their blood with us in two world wars and in other global conflicts last century. It was America which left its troops thousands of miles from home in Eastern Europe to ensure Europe’s protection against potential Soviet aggression. It was Americans who shed their blood on behalf of the world community by coming to the aid of Muslim Bosnians, and again in Kosovo and Kuwait. And it was Americans who were prepared to shed their blood in Afghanistan and Iraq. All this to do a job the enfeebled UN (at the mercy of its self-serving European leaders) ought to have done long before instead of passing 16 useless further resolutions to add to the one which alone should have been sufficient.

Saddam Hussein found out to his cost that the American character often has a nasty habit of biting back when it must. The destruction of two-thirds of the al Quaeda leadership since 9/11 reveals that it can do so effectively, too. It would be my guess that Osama Bin Laden is today sitting in his latest cave apartment upset by Kerry’s defeat. For he knows well enough that in Bush he has an implacable enemy who will pursue him and his kind relentlessly. He would much prefer to deal with the paralysing and toothless diplomacy that Kerry, the UN and French leaders represent.

Conclusion

Although secular liberal ideology is steadily debilitating American society and morality, it is clear that the USA still has a way to travel to reach the cynical, amoral decline being experienced in many major European nations. Britain itself is not far behind Europe in this decline. First comes the loss of spiritual ideology. Next comes the loss of conviction. Put another way, though much American Christianity often has a superficial and pragmatic quality (as it does with Kerry) or lacks a carefully articulated coherence (as it often does with Bush) America is truly the last bastion of Western Christendom that which once stood as the ideological powerhouse and genius of Western civilisation. This is why non-Christian Europe despises it; why post-Christian Britain is increasingly uncomfortable with it – and why Islamic militancy sees the need to destroy it at any cost.

In the past year we have seen a Spanish nation cowed into submission by a single series of bombings. We have seen the Government of the Philippines submit to terrorist demands and withdraw from Iraq. When the mass murderer Osama Bin Laden, European leaders and anti-American Guardian readers all attempted to affect the outcome of the American election in their own way, however, we have now seen Americans respond. By putting George Bush back in the Oval Office, with a vastly increased popular vote and primarily, so it seems, for moral reasons. Good for them – and, I believe, good for us all.

Peter Glover is the author of The Politics of Faith see his website at www.word21.com