God Bless the U.S.A.!

Last Monday in Virginia, Governor Sarah Palin spoke to a crowd of supporters at the Richmond International Raceway. The New York Times reported that she inspired passion in those who came to hear her and led chants of “U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.!!”

One besotted voter gushed about the choice Palin made to give birth to Trig, the baby who is often seen in his mother’s arms as she campaigns. This is what Palin said about the decision she and husband Todd prayed and reflected on when they decided to continue her pregnancy after they learned the baby had Down Syndrome:

There are the world’s standards of perfection, and that’s what you see in
some magazines, and then there are God’s standards. God’s standards
are the final measure. Every child is beautiful before God and dear to
them for their own sake.

Then, Palin spoke of the different position Obama has on abortion, telling her audience, “I’ll let you judge for yourself.”

Let’s suppose there is a God whose standards are the final measure, a God who sees the beauty in every child, a God who would pronounce each and every child perfect, a God who guides Sarah Palin in all her decisions.

What would this God say about the children in the wombs of women in countries we invade and occupy, countries where our smart bombs don’t discern man from woman or child from an adult, countries whose diminishing populations will live with and die from the effects of depleted uranium? Remember that Palin referred to Iraq as “a task that is from God.” Does this mean Palin’s God has different standards for the children of Iraq and Afghanistan? Or that children in countries we attack are imperfect and deserve the horrors we exact? Are these children little abstractions, tiny blips on her screen, so insignificant that they are unworthy of consideration?

As Sarah Palin moves from one battleground state to another, she tells her adorers how much she loves America. I wish someone would ask her if this God to whom she prays, and whose standards are the final measure, only loves Americans and sanctions American foreign policy. I guess it’s never occurred to Palin that her God could possibly love all the children of the world, not just those whose parents shout, “U.S.A, U.S.A., U.S.A.!”

I’ll let you judge for youself.

But in the world according to Sarah, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” must really mean that God created the heavens and the United States of America.

Missy Beattie lives in New York City. She’s written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. An outspoken critic of the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, she’s a member of Gold Star Families for Peace. She completed a novel last year, but since the death of her nephew, Marine Lance Cpl. Chase J. Comley, in Iraq on August 6,’05, she has been writing political articles. She can be reached at: Missybeat@aol.com

 

 

 

 

 

Missy Beattie has written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. She was an instructor of memoirs writing at Johns Hopkins’ Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in BaltimoreEmail: missybeat@gmail.com