Anti-Climacus

LINK: ScrappleFace gets it, and David Brooks puts some flesh on the bones:

"THE AMERICAN COMMENTARIAT is gravely concerned. Over the past week, George W. Bush has shown a disturbing tendency not to waffle when it comes to Iraq. There has been an appalling clarity and coherence to his position. There has been a reckless tendency not to be murky, hesitant, or evasive. Naturally, questions are being raised about President Bush's leadership skills.

The United States is in the midst of the certainty crisis. Time magazine is disturbed by "The blinding glare of his certainty," as one headline referred to Bush's unwillingness to go wobbly on Iraq. "A questionable certainty" was the headline in the Los Angeles Times. "This kind of certainty worries Bush's critics," noted U.S. News & World Report. "Moral certainty, for the most part, is a luxury of a closed mind," observed William Lesher, a Lutheran school of theology professor, who presumably preserves a subtle open-mindedness about the Holocaust and other such matters. "