Bush's Conception of the Calling

Today, in response to a reporter's query about Bush's personal feelings toward his failed imperialist venture in Iraq, the U.S. dictator replied with the phrase "our calling." When I heard him use that phrase, I started reeling in memories of Max Weber's account of "Luther's Conception of the Calling" in his famous work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The occidental notion of calling serves as an order from God that demands obedience. Access both to heaven and abundance on earth is contingent on compliance. The order of the "calling" becomes moral imperative, divine destiny. It is imposed as irreversible and closed to debate.

Though the notion of divine destiny had long been used to legitimize monarchical states, in Martin Luther's day the term "calling" came to have more to do with the christian god calling "man" to a trade, profession, or to the ministry. Over time, usage of the term "calling" faded to little more than a ghost lingering mainly in the deep south and heartland. Bush, however, seeks to revive the ghost and move society backwards by hundreds of years. Resurrecting monarchical in the form of dictatorship, he extends usage vastly beyond the relation between god and an individual man's labor. He substitutes "nation state" for the individual. The relation is then between god and the nation state.

The next substitution is more subtle. As if monarch or pope, Bush appoints himself as sole agent of god's divine will. He poses as the only one with the correct interpretation. As "Bush's orders" are substituted for "god's destiny," the source of the orders is cleverly re-attributed to the god. Nevermind that he openly states that his god talks to him. That's likely part of the packaged deceit. What anyone should plainly observe is that he veils his own orders with the cloak of god. In Bush's world, his orders are made to appear to derive from the christ god who calls a nation-state to a non-negotiable destiny of warfare to rid the world of evil--to rid the world of that perpetual shifting nuisance, the other which must be defeated, brought into submission, or eliminated.

Compelled to look into Bush's use of the phrase, I did the following google search: Bush "our calling." Not only did I discover that he uses the word generously to deploy his agenda (in the form of god's indisputable order's), but I also found that some of his followers are downright blatant about Bush's moral supremacy and access to divine destiny:

Unless our unparalleled military might is buttressed by a unified commitment to the righteousness of our calling, we will surely defeat ourselves. Terror will have won, and our children and their children will live as strangers to freedom – under the bondage of perpetual fear or the chains of tyranny

Interesting that a downgraded destiny for non-compliance to the "calling" can be inherited by progeny. Mark Twain's wonderful parody, Letters From the Earth, reveals that predestination -- whether by "callings" or otherwise -- utterly contradicts self-determination and liberty. Bush's usage of "our calling" more closely resembles exceptionalism, national supremacy, imperialism, and especially state fascism. How much more life, how much more textuality, will this usage gain?