John,

With unerring accuracy, you again steer the discussion in the direction of core issues. Although I disingenuously claimed to introduce the personification of evil, Satan, into my argument as a literary device, as a Christian I take my own argument literally.

But that poses yet another problem to be addressed. Every four years we view the ritual of the presidential candidates affirming their Christian faith. It is hard to image that a Christian president, or his advisers, would be unaware of the Christian doctrine on warfare as laid out first in the Gospels and then as refined by Saint Augustine.

And yet here is America, after an uninterrupted succession of 43 Christian presidents, hopelessly addicted to militarism. [I can just imagine Christopher Hitchens with a smug grin on his face. Annoying bastard.] A simple answer would invoke the concept of separation of church and state. But no, that's not simple. It's simplistic.

Believers don't ask presidential candidates to affirm their Christian faith and then expect them to park their Christian principles at the door of the White House. That makes no sense. And that's not what separation of church and state means. The Establishment Clause is unambiguously specific and limited in scope. But before I continue in this vein, allow me to make a wide digression.

It is said that military men abhor war the most. Perhaps that why it was ex-General Dwight Eisenhower who sounded the alarm about creeping militarism. Here is the full text of his farewell address: <link> Almost every paragraph in the speech is worthy of note, but two jump off the page:

"Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

During the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield."

Eisenhower plays futurologist in only these two paragraphs. In 1961, long before the Club of Rome warned of the "Limits to Growth", he warned of global resource depletion. He then continues with an admonishment for America not to become pretty much what America has become a half century later. So why was Eisenhower ignored? Was is that the height of the Cold War was just the wrong time to get people's attention?

The term "Cold War" had been coined in 1947 during that fateful period when America lost its moral bearings. The term "Cold War" was the "War on Terror" of its day. It was a term of propaganda. Words are powerful things as George Orwell, a journalist by profession, knew. Words can shape people's perception. Words can warp people's perception. People who use words for a living ought to be mindful of the danger that the words they use can warp their own perception.

Politicians fall into that category. Eisenhower is unique among presidents since the Second World War in that the first political office he held was President of the United States. In that sense Eisenhower wasn't a politician. His successful leadership of Allied forces in Western Europe shows that Eisenhower was a clear-eyed realist. His farewell address showed him to be a remarkably prescient idealist. Eisenhower was no propagandist. More to the point, he was no self-propagandist.

Eisenhower took his Christian beliefs seriously. He converted to Presbyterianism while in office. He put "under God" in the pledge and "In God We Trust" on the currency. So of all of the presidents who have presided over America's catastrophic moral decline since the Second World War, Eisenhower sticks out as the anomaly, the outlier. He didn't let a politician's propensity for self-propagandisation compromise his moral ideals. Seeing clearly, he was able to sound the alarm about America's self-destructive slide towards militarism and he had the moral courage to do so.

And Eisenhower was ignored. Why? It didn't help that his farewell address was followed three days later by Kennedy's inaugural address, but that's too facile an explanation. More important than that is that actions speak louder than words and Eisenhower conspicuously failed to act during his presidency. This wasn't the only occasion when Eisenhower failed to act when it might have made a difference.

Joseph McCarthy rose to national attention during the Truman administration. Eisenhower largely sat on the sidelines while others brought McCarthy down during Eisenhower's administration. Many years before, another Joseph, surnamed Stalin, had been infuriated by Eisenhower's reticence to open a Western front in Europe while Germany's Wehrmacht was reducing the Soviet Union to rubble. So Eisenhower was a cautious man and his caution, in retrospect, wasn't always wise.

But the most important reason why Eisenhower's warning about militarism was ignored was that warnings need audiences willing to hear and heed them. Eisenhower's warning was made on 1961 January 17. That was thirteen years after the catastrophe of 1947 September 18. Those intervening thirteen years saw the rise of a propaganda machine within the United States that would drown out not only Eisenhower's warning but all voices of reason up to and including those in the current presidential campaign.

Most of us might ask "What propaganda machine?" That's a bit like a fish asking "What water?" To describe the history and the nature of the Great American Propaganda Machine (GAPM) is a task that could occupy a lifetime. For the purpose of this discussion, and to return to my original theme, I'll just ask how the GAPM interacts with basic principles of Christian morality. Let's see. How about, "The GAPM chews up basic principles of Christian morality and spits them out."?

Yes, that sounds about right. Set the GAPM loose in the nation and watch what it does to basic principles of Christian morality over a sixty year period. The Vietnam War. "We had to destroy the village to save it." Mutual Assured Destruction. "I will never apologize for the United States. I don't care what the facts are." The Iraq War. The Bush administration. Abu Ghraib. "...we would be able to totally obliterate [Iran]"

When the GAPM chews up basic principles of Christian morality and spits them out that creates a moral vacuum. When the GAPM extols American exceptionalism and American power then militarism will fill the moral vacuum. And that's how the succession of twelve Christian presidents since the Second World War have presided over America's catastrophic moral decline and hellish descent into militarism.