| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Jez" |
| Date: |
14 Aug 2004 04:46:46 AM |
| Object: |
OT: Bush's Born Again Drug War |
Bloody madness !!!
Bush's Born Again Drug War
http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/19547/
Listen to George Walker Bush speak about substance abuse and it's
apparent that one is listening to a preacher, not a president. "There
are faith-based organizations in drug treatment that work so well
because they convince a person to turn their life over to Christ," Bush
divulged to the religious journal Christianity Today. "By doing so, they
change a person's heart [and] a person with a changed heart is less
likely to be addicted to drugs and alcohol."
Despite US Constitutional restrictions requiring a separation of church
and state, Bush's ardent Judeo-Christian faith – the President is a
practicing Methodist who "accepted Jesus Christ into [his] life" in 1986
– remains the staple of his administration's anti-drug platform. Whereas
previous administrations commonly framed their anti-drug arguments in
secular terms (i.e., former President Richard Nixon's "War on Drugs" or
the Reagan administration's "Just Say No" campaign), Bush's drug war, at
least rhetorically, resembles that of a religious crusade. GW's bottom
line: Only through "God's will" may one be "saved" from the temptations
of illegal drugs. It's a stance that many drug law reformers view as not
only ineffective, but possibly illegal.
President Or Proselytizer?
"You know, I had a drinking problem. Right now I should be in a bar in
Texas, not the Oval Office," Bush told author David Frum in his 2003
biography The Right Man. "There is only one reason that I am in the Oval
Office and not in a bar. I found faith. I found God. I am here because
of the powers of prayer."
While stories recounting the President's prior alcohol and drug use –
so-called "youthful indiscretions" – are well publicized, not as well
known is his 1986 spiritual awakening that led him to quit his use of
intoxicants cold turkey. It's this personal journey that led Bush to
reach his conclusion that other drug users – recreational pot smokers in
particular – must also undergo their own, albeit coerced, religious
conversion to achieve drug abstinence. After four years in office, it's
clear that Bush is willing to use the bully pulpit and Congress' deep
pockets to accomplish his goal: a drug-free, religiously indoctrinated
America.
As President, one of Bush's first actions was to sign an executive order
establishing a White House Office of Faith-Based and Community
Initiatives, presently headed by "Faith Czar" Jim Towey. In 2002, the
Bush administration awarded nearly 500 faith-based programs – including
several drug "education" and treatment programs – $477 million in
taxpayers' funding. In 2002, Bush doled out an additional $568 million
in federal funds to 680 self-identified faith-based groups – programs
like the fundamentalist Christian drug-treatment project "Set Free
Indeed," which states: "We rely solely on the foundation of the Word of
God to break the bands of addiction. Once a person ... recognizes that
only God can set them free, the rebuilding process can begin." To date,
the Bush administration has funneled several million dollars to "Set
Free Indeed," and the President singled out its founder by name during
his 2003 State of the Union address, lauding it as a shining example of
federally-backed faith-based drug treatment.
Religion has also been the theme of several new, high profile anti-drug
campaigns launched by the administration. In 2003, just months after
being tapped by Bush to head the US Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA), Karen Tandy threw her weight behind a grassroots anti-drug
campaign called "Pray for the Children," which according to the group's
website, maintains, "The power of prayer is unequaled" in influencing
adolescents from refraining from drug use. Regarding her endorsement of
the program, Tandy explained, "Drug abuse is a scourge that attacks a
person's soul as well as body, so it's fitting that the solution should
engage the soul as well."
Also last year, Bush launched "Faith. The Anti-Drug," a multi-million
dollar campaign to encourage the religious community to incorporate pot
abstinence into their spiritual teachings. "Faith plays a powerful role
in preventing youth marijuana use," announced Drug Czar John Walters –
himself a disciple of notorious "virtuecrat" and former drug czar
William Bennett – at the campaign's kickoff party. He added, "We are
urging youth ministers, volunteers and faith leaders to integrate drug
prevention messages and activities into their sermons and youth
programming, and are providing them with key tools and resources to make
a difference."
Faith. The Anti-drug?
But are such campaigns "making a difference?" And are they even
appropriate? Critics resoundingly say "no" on both counts.
"Religious drug treatment programs [like those favored by Bush] turn
back the medical clock to the 19th Century," says Samantha Smoot of the
Texas Freedom Network, a faith-based initiative watchdog group whose
membership includes over 7,500 religious and community leaders. "The
President values programs that say: 'We can pray you out of your
addiction' more than programs that say: 'We will treat your addiction
with counseling, medical treatment and spirituality.' Even more
outrageous is his insistence that taxpayers foot the bill for his
dangerous approach."
It's also potentially unconstitutional, according to Rev. Barry W. Lynn,
Executive Director of Americans United, a religious liberty watchdog
group based in Washington, D.C. that argues for the importance of
church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom. "This is a
massive shell game," he says. "The administration insists no public
funds will be spent on religion, then turns those funds over to groups
that openly brag about how much religion they have in their programs.
The level of duplicity is staggering."
However, according to drug law reformer Charles Thomas, founder of the
Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative, religious faith can play a pivotal
role in drug policy – though not in the way Bush decrees.
Faith teaches that it's essential that America's drug laws be just and
compassionate, Thomas wrote in the May/June issue of the interfaith
journal, Fellowship. "People of faith may play an essential role in
building public support for treating drugs as a health issue instead of
a crime," he explained. "Regardless of whether or not it's immoral to
use drugs, it certainly is wrong to punish people solely for using
drugs. Personal morality issues should be addressed by the faith
community and family, not by cops, courts and prisons."
Don't tell that to GW, however, who has escalated criminal drug law
enforcement during his Presidency and overseen the arrests of nearly 5
million Americans for drug crimes – most for no more than minor drug
possession. Regrettably, like the Crusades of old where religious
transformation typically occurred "by fire and sword," the Bush
administration ultimately believes that today's drug users federally
ordained path to redemption is best achieved by way of a jail house
conversion.
This article originally appeared in Heads Magazine in Canada.
--
Jez
"The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious,
of being out of one's mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society
highly values its normal man.It educates children to lose themselves
and to become absurd,and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed
perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years."
R.D. Laing
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| User: "Mikhail" |
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| Title: Re: OT: Bush's Born Again Drug War |
14 Aug 2004 12:18:58 PM |
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Jez wrote:
Bloody madness !!!
Bush's Born Again Drug War
Of course its bloody madness.
[]
--
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never
stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and
neither do we.
-George Bush 2004/08/20040805
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| User: "Mark K. Bilbo" |
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| Title: Re: OT: Bush's Born Again Drug War |
14 Aug 2004 08:56:30 AM |
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On Sat, 14 Aug 2004 10:46:46 +0100 in episode
<411ddf95$0$20254$cc9e4d1f@news-text.dial.pipex.com> we saw our hero Jez
<iced_spear@NOSPAMdsl.pipex.com>:
"You know, I had a drinking problem. Right now I should be in a bar in
Texas, not the Oval Office,"
If only.
Bush told author David Frum in his 2003
biography The Right Man. "There is only one reason that I am in the Oval
Office and not in a bar. I found faith. I found God. I am here because of
the powers of prayer."
Or he's a "white knuckle" alcoholic whose underlying problems have never
been dealt with, only had a band-aid called "religion" slapped on...
--
Mark K. Bilbo - a.a. #1423
EAC Department of Linguistic Subversion
Alt-atheism website at: http://www.alt-atheism.org
--------------------------------------------------
"Come to think of it, there are already a million
monkeys on a million typewriters, and the Usenet
is NOTHING like Shakespeare!" -- Blair Houghton
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