Bush vs. Nietzsche: The politics of evil.

The Weekly Standard ^ | 04/01/2002 | James W. Ceaser

[america-rules]

Why do these people want to make things more then they are.

They want to kill us -- Period !

We're gonna kill them back -- Period !

That's it. No thinking is needed to figure this out?

[JZoback]

Bump for later read

[StacyMac]

An excellent article. Being in the ministry for the last eighteen years, and ministering here and overseas, I have seen evil first-hand. There is a "mind" behind evil and his name is satan. I have personally cast his demons out of people. I remember one time a lady who came to us for help, began to shake and dropped to the floor. The temperature in the room immediately dropped and she began to speak and three maybe four different voices were coming out of her at the same time. They were speaking all kinds of foul things and saying they were going to kill us etc. My wife and another couple from our ministry, dropped to the floor to hold her down so she would' nt hurt herself thrashing about. She was laying prone, I was on one arm , my wife sitting on her ankles, and one holding her other arm. She was exhibiting super human strength and it was almost impossible to hold her down. My wife, who at the time weighed about 140lbs, was thrown over the lady's head into a cabinet. Well, as we began to command these demons to leave in Jesus' Name, they began to leave one by one until 13 separate demons left in all. When they were all gone the lady got up and said "they are gone, I''m free!"

Yes, I believe that Islamic militants have opened the door to demonic possession, and willfully given themselves over to real evil. The Bible says that we are not at war with flesh and blood but with principalities, evil powers and wicked spirits that are waging war against humanity in their vain attempt to overthrow the Kingdom of God. I believe that GW has an understanding of this to a certain degree and it is indeed influencing him.

[justshutupandtakeit]

So you would say from personal experience that The Exorcist is not fiction.

It is hard in reading the later works of Nietzsche not to believe one is hearing the voice of the Anti-Christ. Nietzsche was the descendent of generations of protestant ministers and came to believe that God had deserted the world " God is Dead" and that this coming age was the Age of Nihilism. We beat back Nihilism's greatest products and powers, Nazism and communism, now we face a far more subtle form. Can we beat that back? Can we exorcise this malignent demon at the very heart of our culture?

[LarryLied]

(Bush)stunned his audience with the terse reply: "Christ, because he changed my heart." This statement was deeply worrisome to many, not so much because they thought it was calculated as because they believed it was sincere.

No, they were stunned because it reflected a Christian belief. Lieberman was praised and no one found it "deeply worrisome" during the campaign when he injected his faith into politics.

[Kerberos]

They want to kill us -- Period !

We're gonna kill them back -- Period !

That's it. No thinking is needed to figure this out?

My thoughts exactly. You can call this whatever you want but the bottom line is these people want to do us in so, we need to do them in first.

[Fzob]

For conventional thinkers, who pride themselves on displaying subtlety and avoiding judgmentalism, evil presents a huge problem.

What an amazing assertion. I guess academia really believes relativism has actually has become conventional thinking. So it must be true? 

Still, one of the most astonishing developments of the past six months has been not the resistance to the concept--though there has been much of that--but the widespread acceptance.

Perhaps relativism really isn't all that conventional after all. 

In fact, it is hard to imagine any other leader in the West, or for that matter any other individual with a plausible shot at becoming president in 2000, who would have framed the issue in this way. The fact is that a large part of George Bush's intellectual framework rests on a Biblical foundation.

Interesting that much of "conventional" Western thought has the same foundation. 

while Bill Clinton, supremely versed in Scripture, managed to instruct the nation on redemption.

The reporter shows that he really is a clueless liberal butt boy. 

To attribute explanatory power to a moral or spiritual substance (or, as some might prefer to put it, to a lack thereof) is today an unusual way of thinking, and it leads to the still more unusual conclusion that for certain ills there is no remedy to be found in ordinary social policy or therapy.

It is only unusual in the halls of academia. This has been understood by regular people for perhaps a few thousand years.

The Progressives saw evil as incompatible with their notion of the infinite perfectibility of man. If, however, the term evil had to be kept, these Progressives sought to empty it of its old content and redefine it (Rorty again) "as the failure of the imagination to reach beyond itself." In this use--or abuse--of evil, the term would become little more than a synonym for "unenlightened." An evil policy would be one that was unprogressive.

Well said.

He has cast aside any residue of the Progressive idea of evil as a temporary phase to be overcome, and reverted to the older understanding of evil as an omnipresent part of reality. His reintroduction of this concept serves not only as an aid in the war against foreign terrorism, but also as a corrective to the dominant materialist tendencies in our own civilization that deny substance to the soul or a moral nature to man. This correction is the cultural linchpin of George Bush's new homeland security policy and promises to be one of his most enduring contributions

How could he get the first part right and then screw up the last sentence?

 

[dennisw]

Yes, I believe that Islamic militants have opened the door to demonic possession, and willfully given themselves over to real evil.

__________________________

They bath in evil. They revel in blood.

[concerned about politics]

He has cast aside any residue of the Progressive idea of evil as a temporary phase to be overcome, and reverted to the older understanding of evil as an omnipresent part of reality. His reintroduction of this concept serves not only as an aid in the war against foreign terrorism, but also as a corrective to the dominant materialist tendencies in our own civilization that deny substance to the soul or a moral nature to man.

Absolutely. Thank God we now have a rightous man in Washington. If only the lost would listen.

[concerned about politics]

BUMP

[ppaul]

BOOKMARKED

BUMP

[JZoback]

Bush's use of the concept of evil fits into an important debate in American thought that has been going on now for well over a hundred years. Led by John Dewey, a concerted effort was undertaken early in the twentieth century by many Progressive thinkers to throw out the concept of evil. The reason, as explained by the contemporary philosopher Richard Rorty, was that it "thwarted their notion of confidence in education and social reform." The Progressives saw evil as incompatible with their notion of the infinite perfectibility of man. If, however, the term evil had to be kept, these Progressives sought to empty it of its old content and redefine it (Rorty again) "as the failure of the imagination to reach beyond itself." In this use--or abuse--of evil, the term would become little more than a synonym for "unenlightened." An evil policy would be one that was unprogressive.

An excellent layman explanation of liberal thought process.

No wonder conservatives are thought as "evil", "mean spirited", "unenlightened" Neanderthals of this "progressive" world.

And I thought they welcomed different points of views, I guess not everything is "equal"

[Fzob]

We here at the Weekly Standard don't really understand what Bush is talking about, as a matter of fact we spend our weekends re-reading our old college books on philosophy trying to make sense of it all. But we know he wants to expand police powers through the Homeland Security Act and supports a 'war on terrorism against Arabs which will benefit Israel. And we think theses are good ideas, and even though we really don't understand his reasoning behind these policies we're for him because he's for them. Hey, give us a break, most of us here the Weekly Standard are Jewish, and all this Christian stuff Bush talks about all seems pretty weird to us.

Is it safe to say you have an issue about the US support of Israel?

[Fzob]

Israeli Civil War.

Perhaps I am negligent in keeping up with foreign affairs, but when did that war start?

[Seydlitz]

Actually, Nietzsche was a bitter opponent of nihilism. His statement "God is dead" referred to the demise of true faith in Europe (if you've ever read Nietzsche, you will recall that the phrase is told as part of a stury in which a man is searching for manifestations of true religious faith among contemporary Europeans). Given the Europeans' record over the last 100 years, it was a very prescient observation.