While George Bush’s lack of eloquence is hardly something to write about, there are so many of his beliefs that are just plain scary. One of these (which received surprisingly little news coverage at the time) was when George Bush Senior mentioned his views on atheism. The Rob Sherman Advocacy web site offers the following quote:

I asked Mr. Bush, “What are you going to do to win the votes of Americans who are atheists?” Mr. Bush replied, “I guess I’m pretty weak in the atheist community. Faith in God is important to me.” I followed up: “Do you support the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?” Mr. Bush replied, “I don’t know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic. This is one nation under God.” After other reporters asked a few questions about issues that they were concerned about, I was then able to get in one more follow-up question on my subject: “Do you support the constitutionality of state/church separation?” Vice President Bush responded, “I support separation of church and state. I’m just not very high on atheists.”

If that’s not enough to make your stomach turn, Positive Atheism offers The Big Scary List of George W. Bush Quotations.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that George isn’t “very high” on atheists (it does make me wonder, though, what he is “high” on). But people should see this is an outrage. Here, a politician of the United States is claiming that one must be religious (and probably Christian) to be protected by the Constitution of the United States of America. And, better yet, the whole “under God” phrase was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in the 1960s. For those that don’t realize it, this guy is the highest ranking public official in the United States.