Weeds of the Field: The Choking of the Lilies.

These sites are doing the kind of work Mr. Dobson and Mr. Falwell should have been doing all along - long before Americans would be required to vote based on religious dogma and political agenda parading as moral values.

Since such a high moral action was beyond messers Dobson, Falwell, Robertson, LaHaye, Land, and the many others of the same ilk, we are left do cope with them wearing their firmest and bloodiest mantle - the same mantle as the Pharisees of old.

In a recent article, Dr. Teresa Whitehurst, founder of Jesusonthefamily.org, wrote: "My, what a brave new Christianity we have here in Bush's America!"

When the Abu Graib scandal first broke, President Bush declared forcefully that such activities do not reflect America's "core values."

Core values?

To those who insist that America is - regardless of its cultural diversity - a "Christian Nation," those core values must then logically be directly connected to Christ's teachings. In previous articles I have contrasted the fundamentals of those teachings with the sort of theological rationale we have heard from the self-appointed movers and shakers of right-wing fundamentalist Christian politics.

Jesus won't go away on this one. In the same sense that political leaders and parties do not have a monopoly on defining patriotism in this country, neither do the biggest mouths and loudest voices have a monopoly on what constitutes Christian thinking, doctrine and beliefs.

Dr. Whitehurst writes further, "You can't argue a person out of his or her identity. As most of us have learned the hard way, you should never try to convince a Republican that he's a Democrat, a pacifist that she's pro-war, or a hard worker that he's a lazy bum ... 'I can surrender my opinions if your argument is effective and I'm in a receptive mood, but I'll fight to the death for my identity.'

This is what antiwar Americans must keep in mind about Bush/war supporters - they may seem indifferent to suffering and uninterested in the facts, but what really prevents them from hearing what you say is fear, the fear of losing their manufactured identity. Everywhere they look, they sense danger - not so much of terrorism, but of straying from the herd and thereby suffering rejection, even hatred, from others."

I would also propose that this unfortunate circumstance is not primarily the fault of President Bush. No, someone else is at fault for this circumstance where the rugged idealistic American - possessor of ethical and moral goodness - "has been transformed in just three years to a fearful child who's willing to apply peer pressure to silence critics (even those in his or her own family) in order to avoid personal and collective punishment" [Whitehurst].

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