A very happy New Year to all readers of this website and even to those countless web searchers who accidentally run into it and run screaming away.

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’Tis the season to publish e-mails that compliment RWB, I guess, so thanks to Kurt for this recent one:

I don’t remember how I became hip to your site, but I’ve been reading your postings for the last 3 months or so. You’ve put into words what I’ve been trying to say for many years. I’ve been telling my lefty friends, “heh, why don’t you listen to his lyrics, or better yet listen to what Bob has been saying, consistently over the years.” But they just can’t take their liberal veil or transmogrifier away from him, so the result is always the same. Their interpretation, instead of Bob directly.

One issue that has always bothered me about the lib/lefty/hippy interpretation of Bob. Where is the humor?

That is why I love Bob’s radio show. We’ve always known how funny he is, now we get some really good standup every week. And if there is one thing that the hippies ain’t it’s funny (except for some really cool exceptions like Abbie H, kesey and a few others, and in reality those guys had a lot of the beat generation in them.)

He also refers to the post about Gerald Ford and all the times Ford mentioned prayer or God (apparently without being accused of working to establish a theocracy) and he forwards a transcript of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s D-Day prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest — until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men’s souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and goodwill among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home — fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them — help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

Give us strength, too — strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keeness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment — let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace — a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

Amen.

Franklin D. Roosevelt - June 6, 1944

Can anyone imagine the reaction were George W. Bush to write a prayer like that and publicize it to the nation? Maybe he could slip a little bit of it into the next State of the Union, just for laughs. “In the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, let us have ‘faith in our united crusade’ against the ‘unholy forces of our enemy.’”

Well, I guess not.

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