Greg Sargent<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00abPresident Bush’s speech yesterday got tons of attention for its attack on Dems, but there was another key moment that’s passed unnoticed. Bush again used the phrase just a comma to describe the Iraq war. From the speech:<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbWe’re going to help the Iraqi people. Remember, 12 million of them voted in elections last December. That probably seems like a decade ago to you, but when the history is finally written, it will be just a comma. Twelve million people stood up in the face of assassins and car bombers and said, we want to be free.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbBush’s repetition of the phrase suggests that it is a calculated one, and we may be hearing it again and again between now and November. But what does it mean? As this blog noted the other day, Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher did some digging and found that Bush was likely alluding to comedienne Gracie Allen’s famous quip, never place a period where God has placed a comma. Why would Bush quote this line from a comedienne? Because the phrase has become a widely quoted part of current Christian teaching.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbAs best as I can determine from reading a bunch of religious web sites, the phrase never place a period where God has placed a comma appears to mean that God is in control, that even if humans want to control events, or say something conclusive about them, or have the last word about them, it won’t matter, because God is still speaking. The phrase God is still speaking turns up again and again next to the comma line on religious web sites. In essence, then, the remark appears to mean that God will have the last word. Here’s how Rev. Allen Heckman of St. John’s United Church of Christ describes the meaning of the phrase:<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbProblem with our periods, though, is they don’t stop God. Those periods only stop the ones who put the period where God has a comma. You see, God is not ready to stop moving. He won’t use a period until the end of time. He is still moving.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tI’m the first to admit that I’m woefully out of my depth on this stuff. So I’d love to hear from any readers who have a better idea of what this means. But it seems clear that Bush is using coded language to reassure his evangelical base. Or if not, he at least seems to be saying that we shouldn’t put a period on our Iraq adventure because God has put a comma on it God is still speaking about it. We shouldn’t worry about the catastrophe in Iraq because God hasn’t yet told us what’s going to happen. God will sort it out.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\t(Suivent d’autres notes et commentaires, sur le m\u00eame blog<\/em>, qui nous montrent la passion que suscite cette question.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tAdmettons. Puisqu’il semble, selon cette version, que l’Irak n’est m\u00eame pas un point (period<\/em>) mais tout juste une virgule (comma<\/em>) de l’Histoire, on comprend la s\u00e9r\u00e9nit\u00e9 de GW. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tAu-del\u00e0 de la m\u00e9taphore et de la symbolique, et de la chronique des fr\u00e9quentations du Pr\u00e9sident, ce d\u00e9bat n’est d’ailleurs pas indiff\u00e9rent ni sans int\u00e9r\u00eat. Nous devrions assez vite mesurer la r\u00e9elle importance historique de l’Irak et, effectivement, la ponctuation qu’il importe de lui appliquer. Ce conflit pr\u00e9sente la particularit\u00e9 d’une importance assez minime au regard des forces engag\u00e9es, des pertes caus\u00e9es, de l’espace impliqu\u00e9, par rapport \u00e0 bien d’autres cas de conflits. Mais quant \u00e0 l’importance du cas au niveau des consciences et des psychologies, le champ de la sp\u00e9culation est largement ouvert, avec ou sans l’aide de Dieu. Au-del\u00e0 du d\u00e9bat entre le point et la virgule, il existe m\u00eame la possibilit\u00e9 fameuse du point final.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\tMis en ligne le 1er octobre 2006 \u00e0 10H34<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Quelques blogers-commentateurs se sont attach\u00e9s au dernier discours de GW pour y d\u00e9couvrir ce qui serait une allusion \u00e0 peine d\u00e9guis\u00e9e mais limpide pour ses \u00e9lecteurs chr\u00e9tiens fondamentalistes \u00e0 l’appr\u00e9ciation divine actuelle de la catastrophe irakienne. Le conseil implicite du Seigneur \u00e0 GW serait, dans ce cas, de ne pas trop pr\u00eater attention \u00e0 la… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5957,3466,3198,857,5956],"class_list":["post-68053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-comma","tag-dieu","tag-gw","tag-irak","tag-virgule"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}