Those were the words that first entered my head when I saw the front page of today's Times. It shows the president of the United States, his two immediate predecessors, and the Secretary of State, on their knees, genuflecting before the dead body of a religious leader and foreign king. (If corpse-worship makes you queasy, don't click here.)
If any of them were Catholic, I would not object, but not one of them is. So what were they doing in St. Peters? Representing us? Pandering for votes? Repenting for having ignored the man, and the bulk of his best teachings?
Americans are subservient to no foreign king, and to no one religion. Yet, what is kneeling at the bier but an act of self-abasement, and a confession of contrite submission?
Note:At the Olympics, the Amrican flag is never dipped while passing by foreign leaders and Olympic officials, adhering to the U.S. custom of only dipping the flag to the President of the United States and no one else. Our patriotism and self-pride prohibits the flag from being dipped for a foreign leader, but its okay when the president himself falls to his knees at a dead foriegn leaders feet?
Something in this picture is rotton-- and I don't mean the dead, decaying body in the foreground.