A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion

[papau]

"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side." -- Aristotle

Amazing how smart those Greeks are!

:-)

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. Didn't Machiavelli say much the same thing? nt

[LiberalFighter]

6. Part of Rove's reading material

[applegrove]

2. Yes I believe it is called "forced teaming". Your anxiety level goes

down when the predator puts you and he in the same boat. Exactly what it is meant to do.

I don't know about Machiavelli. Never read that book.

Though in George Bush Jr. the alcoholic's case, I have no doubt that he needed the crutch and easy parameters of fundamentalism the week he got sober. I don't think he had been sober since teenagehood. So he was a lost adolescent and religion will give you a quick belief system that replaces your old one: addiction.

I do believe that the people who use Bush were happy to steer him in that direction and use it as a "forced teaming" type tool. Look at that dam speech he gave at the most recent inauguration. I mean it was filled with code words from the bible - on one hand informing Christian fundamentalists he was one of them, while trying to trick secularists he was one of them.

All about putting people's guard down. But as I said before he may be acting instinctively, but others are the ones that use it in the sense that the Greeks were talking about. IMHO.

[papau]

3. I agree - but I think Bush knows the political value and uses it - I doubt

his Christain values are as strong as he pretends.

Just my opinion of course!

:-)

[applegrove]

5. Oh Bush uses the right to get votes - but I doubt Bush knows he is

very dangerous. So he doesn't know the 'value' of his repeated claims to christianity have in stopping people from thinking the worst about him. So he gives a speech like that one and it is meant to make everyone in the country feel save for 10 different reasons. It is just about calming people down so they do not fight for their country. As long as he can get people focussed on his "goodness" and belief in life (as long as it is not over 18) - they do not see the darkness within.

[BrklynLiberal]

4. Isn't that exactly what Hitler did?

My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited.

-Adolf Hitler, in his speech on 12 April 1922