Satire worthy of Colbert

This is simply one of the most well-written tongue-in-cheek works of satire I’ve found in some time… truly worthy of The Colbert Report.

[George Bush] has worked to change his strategy and listen to all voices… We should commend George Bush not only for his courageous leadership abroad, but also here at home.

Or… is it? Could an article so riddled with inaccuracies and blind faith be… serious? Perhaps I should take into account the source, the student newspaper of St. Benedict and St. John’s University. I’m worried, and deeply so, on too many levels to enumerate here. Let’s just skip over the poor grammar and near-religious-zealotry that represents this writer’s faith in Bush and get to the meat of it.

America is becoming Imperial America. We’ve carried our Jihad for corporate profits to other countries — and perhaps we’ll follow suit with our peculiar flavor of fanatic evangelicalism. That’s what the rest of the world is worried about — and rightly so, too, if our track record with Iraq and the example we set at home is any indicator.

Our founding fathers would be so dismayed. This country was founded explicitly on principles that separated religion from state and emphasized equality among our citizens. Our government was supposed to be Just, made so by checks and balances that are rapidly vanishing. The Constitution mentions religion only once — when it explicitly separates it from our government. In fact, our founding fathers were emphatic that no religious pretext creep into our government — it wasn’t until after the civil war that “In God we trust” appeared on our silver coins, and the adoption of “United under God” is a Macarthy era invention.

In fact, Jefferson was convinced that as our national level of education improved we, as a people, would turn away from organized faith-based religion toward a more rational philosophy. His work in The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth (1804), a book that presented Jesus as a philosopher but stripped away supernatural aspects such as Jesus’ divinity, explains some of this quite well.

I think if Jefferson were alive today, he’d likely find a new, New World and try again. We’ve become the parent country that our forefathers fled — Imperial England, casting its long arm around the globe and bringing our culture, our trade, our rule to foreign lands, whether the occupying people want us there or not, while we pursue greater riches for our own benefit.