“I don’t know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”
–George HW Bush
Did he actually say that? Any substantiated cite for it? As a start, supposedly he said it to Robert I Sherman on 8/27/87.
The veracity of it is debatable.
Discussed at length here.
There are a zillion cites all claiming then-Vice President George HW Bush said the quote to Robert Sherman, an “accredited reporter” for American Atheists “news journal,” during his campaign for the Presidency.
That publication appears to have an on-line presence here: http://www.americanatheist.org/
Searching for “Robert Sherman” brings up no hits. There is a mention of a “Rob Sherman” twice. Once “Rob Sherman” is thanked by the organization’s president, Ellen Johnson, in a speech she gave Friday, June 12, 1998. Mr. Sherman is thanked for his help in arranging a meeting at the White House.
In a December 1999 article, a Rob Sherman who is identified as a “First Amendment civil rights activist” is reported to have spoken to an Idaho group about a local religious display.
However, that article provided a link to Rob Sherman’s home page, at http://www.robsherman.com/
And one of the first bullets therein says:
That PDF link is to a 40-page document purportedly from the George HW Bush library, and appears to have a number of letters written to the President in support of atheism, atheist citizens, and varying degrees of outrage over the President’s lack of support for atheists, along with the President’s and his staff’s replies to those letters.
Nowhere in that 40 page morass do I find any particular evidence that Bush made the specific comment attributed to him. Nor does Mr. Sherman, the activist, have identifty any “proof” there, which makes his hyperlink text rather disingenuous.
Ah, I should have known. Thanks.
Also of interest is this thread at the Secular Web, wherein a respected poster and mod says it is not reliable. He says he has spoken to people who have asked to remain anonymous, and for a while there’s a lot of suspicion in the thread due to that, but after several pages of hashing it out, it resulted in SecWeb removing the quote from their file of quotations.
I guess it’s all grouped together because the original correspondence was with Jon Murray, then President of American Atheists, and he obviously kicked off a letter writing campaign, particularly from veteran atheists. You can find on page 29 a letter from Murray that references an earlier letter from White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, claiming it was an admission the exchange happened.
http://www.robsherman.com/advocacy/bush/thirdfax.pdf
Now I don’t quite buy it but if Sherman believes it, it’s not necessarily disingenuous.
The very bottom of that pdf is an amusing memo from whoever actually wrote the letter for Boyden to sign. “I had to strain to achieve a polite tone but I think I succeeded without giving the correspondent unnecessary comfort.” heh.
To characterize that response as a “clear admission” is itself disingenuous. The response lays out Mr. Bush’s true position: he is not a fan of atheism, but stops short of any declaration that atheists should be considered non-citizens. To the contrary, it explicitly says that he supports the Constitution, the laws of the United States, and specifically the legal rights of atheists, which certainly forbids any inference that atheists should not be considered citizens. There is nothing in that response from which an unbiased reader could fairly draw the conclusion that the President was affirming a statement that atheists should not be considered citizens.
In fact, I’d ask the atheists in this thread the following question:
Do you believe Mr. Sherman’s characterization of the correspondence in this thread is an example of the type of honest conduct that does credit to atheists?
One of the oft-heard complaints from atheists is that religious people seem to assume that an atheist is automatically without a moral compass, and thus presumably has no compunctions about acting immorally when it would benefit them. That’s obviously nonsense; there are ethical atheists and unethical atheists, and I think we can all agree that merely professing to be a Christian is no shield against immoral or unethical behavior.
But I find it funny that in a thread dedicated to discussing the image problem, if you will, suffered by atheists, the centerpiece of the evidentiary table is what I believe to be a disingenuous claim by an atheist.
No.
… and son of the infamous Madalyn Murray O’Hair. Those two, along with Jon’s daughter Robin, were kidnapped, then chopped up and buried in a field in rural Texas. The solving of that case is a great story, starting with a headless, handless corpse that turned up outside of Dallas, which was only associated with the O’Hair case years later, and eventually led to finding the corpses of the victims.
Anyway, just wanted to point out that this person you referred to is known to many.
Well, no. I was merely postulating zealotry rather than ingenuity, though I guess it could be both. It’s possible Murray was expecting either an apology or a denial and when he got neither he took it as guilty evasion. He probably didn’t think/realize that the President probably never even heard about his letter and the underlings answering had no ability to issue either of those things and no wish to suggest the President do so*.
His letters sure seem kooky confrontational when writing to the President of the United States, for pete’s sake. If I was a member of American Atheists I sure wouldn’t want a guy like that in charge.
It does neither credit nor discredit to atheists. It reflects only on the character of Mr. Sherman.
Of course, you knew that, because you then wrote:
But you still apparently felt the need to make the connection between Sherman’s disingenuousness and atheists in general.
The thread is about no such thing. It was a simple question about whether G.H.W. Bush said a particular thing. It seems that there is no evidence that he did so. The “image problem” of atheists is irrelevant to the answer.
Correcting goofy error from my last post:“I was merely postulating zealotry rather than [del]ingenuity[/del] disingenuousness, though I guess it could be both.”
And mhendo, Bricker is probably conflating this thread with the one that spawned it in the Pit:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=8234228&postcount=20
Atheists are not a single unified group. Mr. Sherman’s characterization of the correspondence is an example of something that goes to discredit Mr. Sherman. I am not a member of his organization, and his actions reflect upon me to the exact same degree as equally public actions of mine would reflect upon him. My moral compass is not compatible with Christian morals and my ethical guidelines are often at odds with those of others, but I find that Mr. Sherman’s judgement is not fair and shows, if proven not to be an honest mistake, a weakness of character.
Fair enough.
If you’ve read over that other linked thread you’ll see I’ve commented on this at greater length before. There certainly is evidence that he said this particular thing. There is first hand uncontradicted testimony. Good enough to convict in a court of law. Whether you choose to accept that testimony is up to you, but saying “there is no evidence” is quite simply false.