Here's the second of those two essays.

"…may that Infinite Power which rules the destinies of the universe lead our councils to what is best, and give them a favorable issue for your peace and prosperity."

George Bush takes a beating from the Left for his use of religious language, but he's a piker when compared to Presidents past, even next to an apotheosis of the "wall of separation" crowd like Jefferson. After all, the current President simply ends his speeches with a "May God continue to bless America" - Jefferson actually assembled his own version of the Gospels for use in proselytizing the Native Americans. Imagine the fun the pundits would have with an edition of the Bible containing a George Bush by-line!

The fact is that the Left simply doesn't "get" religious Christians. In fact, they fear them. A recent Reuters report entitled "Bush's faith worries Albright," released on the occasion of the publication of Madeleine Albright's new book, "The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs" presents a perfect case-in-point.

Reuters, of course, is a Britain-based wire-service, and any opportunity to cast our president as a narrow-minded religious fanatic is ideal grist for their mill - portraying George Bush as an ayatollah in red, white, and blue being a virtual European pass-time, after all. Albright provides the ideal chance and quotes they could have written themselves.

Albright is quoted as saying, "President Bush's certitude about what he believes in, and the division between good and evil, is, I think, different [than Carter's or Clinton's]…" Well good on him for it. Such certitude is always frightening to moral relativists, State Department jet-setters, and those who put a tad too much weight on what European elites say about us. The fact is that a solid grounding in a personal morality provides a president with a solid keel - an important foundation for the ship of state he captains, individual policy decisions aside. It comes as no surprise that a former Clinton Secretary of State and a news organization known for an editorial tendency to entomb the word "evil" in scare-quotes would have trouble with the concept.

Reuters now: "Bush, a Republican, has openly acknowledged his Christian faith informs his decisions as president. He says, for example, that he prayed to God for guidance before invading Iraq." Now help me out here, I thought George Bush invaded Iraq because the "neo-cons" told him to. I know Paul Wolfowitz is good, but he's surely not God. Or was it for oil? Or to avenge daddy? I have even heard it was because Iraq was starting to accept euros instead of dollars for oil. The fact is that there are many, many reasons for every governmental decision. The fact that a man should pray to God and consider his Christian faith for a moment (hopefully more than one) of personal reflection and introspection before making the monumental decision to go to war should disturb no one. On the contrary, it should comfort.

This President's faith is not absolutist. On the contrary, he understands that he leads a multi-cultural, and multi-faith, nation. At a White House event in 2004, Bush responded to a questioner thus, "I want you all to hear me on religion right quick. It is very important for this country to honor religion this way: You can be religious, or you can choose not to be religious, and you're equally American. You have a right in this country to worship freely. It is a fundamental right that must never change. And if you choose to worship the Almighty, you are equally American if you're a Christian, Jew, Muslim or Hindu."

Unlike Yasser Arafat, infamous for saying one thing in English for public consumption and another later, in Arabic, for the home team, Bush says the same to his base. In a 2004 interview with a number of Christian editors and writers and published in Christianity Today magazine, Bush said, "My job is to make sure that, as President, people understand that in this country you can worship any way you choose. And I'll take that a step further. You can be a patriot if you don't believe in the Almighty. You can honor your country and be as patriotic as your neighbor."

Hardly the caricature of the absolutist Christian some like to paint, is it?

Albright has, by her own account, "a very confused religious background." According Reuters she was "[b]orn and raised a Roman Catholic in Czechoslovakia, Britain and then the United States … converted to Anglicanism when she married and only later in life discovered she had Jewish roots." To Albright, "doubt is part of faith," and Reuters holds this in contrast to Bush who, it insists "has alienated Muslims around the world by using absolutist Christian rhetoric to discuss foreign policy issues."

The fact is, it's not people of self-assured faith that endanger us with our enemies abroad - our enemies have strong beliefs and respect others, even Christians and Jews, who also possess strong beliefs and self-assurance. It is, instead, the wishy-washy relativists, filled with self-doubt and even a little bit of self-loathing - weaknesses they can smell like carrion birds sense wounded beasts -- that fill our foes with contempt and endanger us all.