Burning Bush brandishes Dostoevsky

Friday January 21, 2005
The Guardian

One of the models of American leadership is that of Moses, leading God's chosen people - then the Jews, now the Americans - towards a promised land, following a pillar of fire. At one point, according to the Bible, Moses was shown a sign: "Behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed."

But the key fire passage in the Burning Bush speech - "We have lit a fire as well; a fire in the minds of men" - actually has its origins in a novel by the 19th century Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Devils, about a group of terrorists' ineffectual struggle to bring down the tyrannical Tsarist regime.

One of the characters declares that it is pointless to try to put out a fire started by terrorists: "The fire is in the minds of men and not in the roofs of houses," he says.

The novel belongs to a period in Dostoevsky's life which the White House might find attractive, after he had been sent by the Tsar to a kind of Russian Guantánamo and emerged a deeply religious conservative.

Nonetheless, it is not clear whether Bush is identifying here with the terrorists - or the tyrants.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1395418,00.html



Somehow it seems appropriate that Bush would try to quote the Bible and end up quoting a book titled 'The Devils'. LOL

And Dos is not Bush's kind of "religious conservative."

has ever even picked up a book by Dostoevsky, no way he could read a book by Dostoevsky.

Or an earlier speech?

I have boycotted all news on tv today and have an allergy to bad public speakers, but I could find a link and read it, I suppose. Just clue me in as to which speech this was.

I couldn't bear to listen or watch, but I hear it was quite a dozy.

is really odd. As if he thinks he is G*d or something (the Devil).

Counterrevolutionary, he was. KPSS true believers esp. disliked Besy "Demons". Anti-anarchist, anti-socialist, and anti-atheist (check out the "great inquisitor" bit in, oh, Brat'ya Karamazovy "Karamazov Brothers").