| Cathleen Falsani

Bush administration’s moral compass is lost

The morning after George W. Bush won his second term in office and many of his Republican colleagues also claimed victory last year, I received an e-mail from one of my dearest friends, Amanda.

It’s a note that has haunted me since, a niggling at the back of my mind like an overdue library book or an insult hurled in anger that can’t ever be taken back properly.

Amanda is one of the most moral, ethical, intelligent and kind people I know. She also happens to be a Jewish atheist, more or less.

We’ve known each other since we were teenagers, and the subject of faith — the peculiarity of my born-again-ness and the absence of her faith in any religious way — had been a perennial topic of discussion. I respect her deeply and care about what she thinks, particularly about spiritual matters.

“Help!” was the title of Amanda’s e-mail. “I’m sad and angry today,” she began. “Given your profession and your personal belief system, I am genuinely hoping you have something to say on this: How can people who claim to be voting on religious and moral values vote for a man who . . .”

Then she listed what she believed were President Bush’s offenses:

*He supports the death penalty. He claims to be humble and ask for God’s guidance, yet seemingly refuses to admit his fallibility or take advice from those who might have helped him avoid dragging us into an unjust war.

*He reversed the civilized world’s abhorrence of preemptive war. He sold Americans a war based on lies. He willingly started an unnecessary war that has resulted in the deaths of (now more than 2,000) American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis.

*He, at least tacitly, condones torture. (Guantanamo Bay. Abu Ghraib. And, we learned earlier this week, perhaps a number of secret CIA-run locations in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and elsewhere.) He ignores the human race’s responsibility for preserving the Earth and its creatures.

*He is against stem cell research. He accuses dissenters of degrading the U.S. troops but does not push to fully fund Veterans Administration hospitals or health insurance for veterans. And he allowed the automatic assault weapons ban to lapse.

“How are these things reflective of a man with strong ‘morals?’ ” Amanda asked. “How does ‘morals’ get to be defined as the things the right wants it to be? . . . Why isn’t being anti-death penalty a moral issue? Why isn’t being anti-war a moral issue? Why isn’t being supportive of civil unions so that gay couples can, for example, obtain health insurance for each other and their children a moral issue?

“Please help me understand!” she pleaded.

For a year, I’ve not been able to bring myself to respond in any substantive way.

I’m reluctant to appear unduly partisan, at least not in print.

I don’t want to paint one political ideology or another with a broad brush, and I am reticent always to judge the quality of anyone’s faith (or heart), that of a president or anyone else.

But there comes a time when silence is immoral. Now, I believe, is that time.

While surely it is not solely Bush’s doing, the moral morass facing (and, arguably, created by) his administration is as profound as any in our history.

Mired in political corruption of one variety or another, hamstrung (economically and spiritually) by an unjust war, and publicly shamed by the most despicable display of institutionalized racism since the slave era, as demonstrated in the unforgivably inept early response to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration has lost whatever moral voice it might have had.

And this week, as Republican leaders try to force a monstrous $50 billion budget cut designed allegedly to offset the mounting costs (currently in excess of $62 billion) of hurricane-related aid through Congress, it is clear that its moral compass also has been lost.

The proposed budget cuts, part of the so-called “budget reconciliation,” would have devastating effects on the poorest, most vulnerable Americans, while allowing tax relief for the rich.

The massive budget reductions would include billions of dollars from pension protection and student loan programs, Medicaid and child support enforcement, as well as millions from the food stamp program, Supplemental Security Income (read: senior citizens and the disabled) and foster care. Also attached to the “reconciliation” proposal is a plan that would allow oil drilling in Alaska’s pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Nice.

Maybe Republican leaders should consider proposing an open season on the homeless or the resurrection of debtors’ prisons while they’re at it?

Is this the kind of leadership the majority of voters who, according to pollsters at the time, cast their ballots in 2004 based on “moral values,” had in mind?

Is this what faith-based “compassionate conservatism” looks like? Is our nation more moral, more secure or spiritually healthier than it was a year ago?

And, to address my fellow Christian voters specifically, has the Good News been advanced in any way?

No. Absolutely not.

And it’s not just a few left-leaning, ink-stained wretches such as myself who think so.

For example, all 65 synod bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have signed a letter to members of Congress vehemently opposing the proposed budget cuts, saying in part, “The Biblical record is clear. The scriptural witness on which our faith tradition stands speaks dramatically to God’s concern for and solidarity with the poor and oppressed communities while speaking firmly in opposition to governments whose policies place narrow economic interests driven by greed above the common good.”

Evangelical Christian theologian and leader Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners, a national network of “progressive Christian” peace-and-justice activists, led an ecumenical gathering of religious leaders in a protest at the Capitol building Thursday, calling the proposed cuts “a moral travesty.”

“Instead of wearing bracelets that ask, ‘What would Jesus do?’ perhaps some Republicans should ponder, ‘What would Jesus cut?’ ” Wallis said.

The immorality (by any religious tradition’s measure) of the proposed $50 billion budget reconciliation package is brazen.

If enacted, it would prove only to increase the suffering of the already-struggling poor, including tens of thousands who lost everything along the Gulf Coast.

Maybe immoral isn’t the appropriate word.

Downright evil is a better description.