Right here: This was found I think at the Washington Post. I'll paste it here:
An Open Letter to the President of the United States of America, George W. Bush On May 21, 2005, you will give the commencement address at Calvin College. We, the undersigned, respect your office, and we join the college in welcoming you to our campus. Like you, we recognize the importance of religious commitment in American political life. We seek open and honest dialogue about the Christian faith and how it is best expressed in the political sphere. While recognizing God as sovereign over individuals and institutions alike, we understand that no single political position should be identified with God's will, and we are conscious that this applies to our own views as well as those of others. At the same time we see conflicts between our understanding of what Christians are called to do and many of the policies of your administration. As Christians we are called to be peacemakers and to initiate war only as a last resort. We believe your administration has launched an unjust and unjustified war in Iraq. As Christians we are called to lift up the hungry and impoverished. We believe your administration has taken actions that favor the wealthy of our society and burden the poor. As Christians we are called to actions characterized by love, gentleness, and concern for the most vulnerable among us. We believe your administration has fostered intolerance and divisiveness and has often failed to listen to those with whom it disagrees. As Christians we are called to be caretakers of God's good creation. We believe your environmental policies have harmed creation and have not promoted long-term stewardship of our natural environment. Our passion for these matters arises out of the Christian faith that we share with you. We ask you, Mr. President, to re-examine your policies in light of our God-given duty to pursue justice with mercy, and we pray for wisdom for you and all world leaders. Concerned faculty, staff, and emeriti of Calvin College
Thanks to your generosity and hard work, the open letter to President Bush that appears in today's Grand Rapids Press has been signed by 823 alumni, students, faculty and friends of Calvin College. Graduates from the '30s signed the letter--as did current students and hundreds of people in between. A PDF copy of the ad is attached to this note. You can scroll up and down and see the amazing, impressive assembly of names.
This was truly a global effort, with people responding from as far away as Uganda, South Korea, and Costa Rica. So many of you passed the letter to family and friends and sent in contributions to help pay for the ad. Many of you sent wonderful notes along with your signatures and money.
As we were working late into the night, tallying names and reading your emails, we felt part of a community, all coming together because we care deeply about Calvin.
Though we had to stop collecting names on Tuesday, we're still collecting money to pay for the ad. So far we've raised $6605, which means we still have about $3,000 to go. Thanks to the magic of VISA cards, we have a bit more time to collect the remainder. If you'd like to help, please make a check out to Sally Steenland and send it to: Sally Steenland, PO Box 53096, Washington, DC 20009.
Thank you again. We know that for many of you, signing the letter was a brave act--and we are grateful. And for those who will be peacefully protesting in Grand Rapids on Saturday, we wish you strong arms to hold your signs, clear weather and loving hearts.
Last, we want to share a few sentences from a letter that was sent to President Byker, protesting the President's coming to Calvin. It expresses what so many of us feel.
Each generation has the responsibility to safeguard Calvin's reputation and her traditions, as they were carefully handed down to us by our parents' generation, and reaching farther back to those who started Calvin with a vision---a vision that valued faith and learning over wealth and power. This is our tradition, no one else's. It is our history.
Blessings and peace, Your alumni volunteers
AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH FROM ALUMNI, STUDENTS, FACULTY AND FRIENDS OF CALVIN COLLEGE
Dear President Bush:
We are alumni, students, faculty and friends of Calvin College who are deeply troubled that you will be the commencement speaker at Calvin on May 21st. In our view, the policies and actions of your administration, both domestically and internationally over the past four years, violate many deeply held principles of Calvin College.
Calvin is a rigorous intellectual institution, and a truly Christian one. Since its inception in 1876, Calvin has educated its students to use their minds and hearts to transform the world into a "beloved community" where no one is an outcast and all of God's children are cared for. Calvin teaches its students to work for peace and justice, and to be good stewards of God's creation.
By their deeds ye shall know them, says the Bible. Your deeds, Mr. President--neglecting the needy to coddle the rich, desecrating the environment, and misleading the country into war--do not exemplify the faith we live by.
Moreover, many of your supporters are using religion as a weapon to divide our nation and advance a narrow partisan agenda. We are deeply disappointed in your failure to renounce their inflammatory rhetoric.
We urge you not to use Calvin College as a platform to advance policies that violate the school's religious principles. Furthermore, we urge you to repudiate the false claims of supporters who say that those who oppose your policies are the enemies of religion.
Calvin College may be predominantly Republican, but a visit from President George W. Bush on Saturday is stirring up some discontent among [liberal and leftist] students, faculty and alumni. [see http://www.discoverthenetwork.org for linkages]
One-third of the faculty members have signed a letter of protest that will appear in a half-page ad in the Grand Rapids Press on Saturday, the day Bush is to deliver the commencement address to 900 graduating seniors at Calvin. The ad cost $2,600.
[I did not know there were that many liberals and leftist professors at Calvin but it is good to know. I am glad this event flushed them out. Now we can address them directly and defeat their failed liberal ideas in the arena of ideas. We can also keep a close eye on them to make sure they do not inject their wrong-headed politics into the classroom.]
"As Christians, we are called to be peacemakers and to initiate war only as a last resort," the letter says. "We believe your administration has launched an unjust and unjustified war in Iraq."
[The liberal and leftist faculty members are wrong in their beliefs. Let's take them one at a time:]
"As Christians, we are called to be peacemakers and to initiate war only as a last resort"
[I'm sorry to say it, but to me that is nothing but sheer cowardice and refined selfishness.
Don't you get it? We fight wars not to have peace, but to have a peace worth having.
As a strong Christian, President Bush is a peacemaker and he does initiate war only as a last resort. For Calvin professors to present the leftist canards of Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Teddy Kennedy and Michael Moore as "Christian" beliefs is arrogant and wrong. What gives you the right to say that Christ did not want us to protect the safety and freedom of all Americans, while liberating 50 million innocent people in two countries? And if you think the Iraqi people are not happy we liberated them, I think you need a hug. See: http://www.cnn.com/interactive/allpolitics/0502/gallery.sotu.big/cont...
It's interesting to see how are the current leftist Democrats are linked to other extremist groups, George Soros, radical environmentalists, pro-abortion extremists, and so on. See http://www.discoverthenetwork.org
Leftists at Calvin, I ask you to think about this serious question: do you think Bush and Americans love war, or do they love peace?
Think about it seriously, Leftists at Calvin: I am not asking you to regurgitate the same old liberal mantras...I am asking you to really think...
Leftists at Calvin: I, and Bush, do not feel America is right to attempt to help spread democracy in the world because it is our way and therefore the right way.
Nor do I think America should attempt to encourage Democracy because we are Western and feel everyone should be Western. Not everyone should be Western, and not everything we do as a culture, a people or an international force is right.
Rather, we have a national-security obligation to foster democracy in the world because democracy tends to be the most peaceful form of government.
Democracies tend to be slower than dictatorships to take up arms, to cross borders and attempt to subdue neighbors, to fight wars.
Democracies are on balance less likely to wreak violence upon the world because democracies are composed of voters many of whom are parents, especially mothers, who do not wish to see their sons go to war. Democracy is not only idealistic, it is practical.
Leftists at Calvin, Americans and Bush are by nature peaceful. Americans don't want to send their sons, or daughters, off to war. They don't like that kind of excitement, or they don't like it for long. This is part of why we used to be called Isolationists.
We weren't and aren't isolationists--we just have a bias for peace. Can that bias be overcome? Of course. Pearl Harbor overcame it. The Soviet desire to expand and impose communism overcame it. Sept. 11 did too.
Leftists at Calvin, on Iraq: I think that there's no way 'round it but through it. We have to stay, and we have to win.
I define winning in Iraq as the yielding up of, at the least, a relatively stable society unafflicted by governmental sadism and dictatorship, and, at the most, a stable society in a fledgling democracy that demonstrates, with time, that the forces of Arab moderation, tolerance and peacefulness can triumph.
Such an outcome would give so much good to the world. What a brilliant beacon this Iraq could be, and what a setback to terrorists, who thrive in darkness.
Here is one thing I like about President Bush. He has the moral clarity to make it clear that he hates war, really hates it, and loves peace.
Bush always made it clear he thought the impending and then ongoing war a painful tragedy. Mr. Bush has made it clear, repeatedly, that he hopes for peace, yearns for peace, loves it. Bush does not enjoy war and he hopes and prays we can defeat the terrorists so they will not longer be a problem.
So, Leftists at Calvin, PLEASE stop bashing President Bush, and pretending you do it because you are Christian and he is not. Take the plank out of your own eye before you pay attention to the speck of sawdust in your brother, President Bush's eye. How can you vote for Demcrats who aggressively promote the killing of innocent unborn baby American boys and girls, through the painful and bloody procedure of abortion? 40 million innocent children have been summarily executed, and you prance around carrying signs and putting your little letters in the papers due to your partisan hatred of Bush. You lost the election, get over it! Sure, you may have policy differences with President Bush, and with 20/20 vision you may critique how one technique or another turned out in the war, please please stop the partisan Bush bashing under the guise of "Christianity".
With that said, Leftists at Calvin, I'd like to address this constant reference to "Blessed are the peacemakers", as an attempt to further your anti-American and leftist views. Some take quotes from Sermon on the Mount, and make ethical mistakes with it. Leftists at Calvin, the Sermon on the Mount is a declaration of personal Christian ethics, not the rules corporations and states should be run by. If you read Romans Chapter 13, you will see how God says governments should be run: with justice, mercy and grace.
Jesus said to "turn the other cheek". Imagine someone has broken into your house, broke your face, you sue him and take him to court. The judge says "did you hit this man?" The perp answers "Yes". Then imagine if the judge said: "Don't you go to church?" Perp: "yes". Judge: "well, this is simple, turn the other check, take another whack at him, buster!"
Why does that seem out of order? For a very uncomplicated reason: it is not the judges cheek! Duh! If he were standing there with a broken jaw and missing teeth, he wouldn't like that judgment.
Leftists at Calvin, the Sermon on the Mount says that we should give to those who ask. So imagine you are the President of a bank, and a homeless man walks in and says "I'd like to borrow $100,000. "Do you have any collateral?" "No" "Why do you think you can borrow $100,000 from this bank?" "Jesus says, 'turn thou not away .' What's wrong here?
It's not his money, it's yours that the bank president is giving away. Leftists at Calvin, this is a PERSONAL Christian ethic. He can give his own $100,000, that would not be a problem.
Leftists at Calvin, Romans 13 states: rulers are the messengers of God, the ambassadors of God, they are rending vengeance on evil doers, they are commanded by God to do that. They bear not the sword in vain. The sword is the symbol of capital punishment. The duty of government is justice. Our duty is to live in peace as much as possible.
As long as you have men that are as wicked in the extreme...Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, men of incredible wickedness, then I believe force must be used to bring them to cease their wickedness. Saddam has killed 2 million Iraqis, and caused 6 million more to flee the nation. Not to mention the number of Iranians he has killed. In Iran, veterans of war with Iraq are emaciated, dying a slow death from the poison he used on them. They are dying a slow death that had already taken 22 years in the hospital.
Ann Clwyd, from the British Parliament, talked about Saddam's use of a plastic shredder. Saddam's opponents were dropped into it, and they were forced to watch...head first, or feet first and died screaming. Witnesses saw 30 people die like this, and their remains were collected and used to feed the fish in their ponds. They saw Kusi, Saddam's son, personally supervise this torture. Others were dropped into acid which ate them alive.
Leftists at Calvin, how does anyone argue with the fact that such a man needs to be removed from power?
The Bible makes it clear force must be used to stop evil -- Jesus used force to cleanse the temple. He will use far greater force when he comes to end the war with Satan and his minions. The decisive battle with Satan was fought on blackened hill called Golgatha. There was great glee in hell, at last Satan thought he had the arch pretender in his grasp. There was delight in hell, when Jesus uttered his last words, "it is finished". Satan thought he had won the victory. Until that glorious morning when, as the sun rose above the horizon, spreading across the dome of the temple. People saw the tomb was empty, Christ had risen from the dead,
...
Calvin College may be predominantly Republican, but a visit from President George W. Bush on Saturday is stirring up some discontent among [liberal and leftist] students, faculty and alumni. [see http://www.discoverthenetwork.org for linkages]
One-third of the faculty members have signed a letter of protest that will appear in a half-page ad in the Grand Rapids Press on Saturday, the day Bush is to deliver the commencement address to 900 graduating seniors at Calvin. The ad cost $2,600.
[I did not know there were that many liberals and leftist professors at Calvin but it is good to know. I am glad this event flushed them out. Now we can address them directly and defeat their failed liberal ideas in the arena of ideas. We can also keep a close eye on them to make sure they do not inject their wrong-headed politics into the classroom.]
"As Christians, we are called to be peacemakers and to initiate war only as a last resort," the letter says. "We believe your administration has launched an unjust and unjustified war in Iraq."
[The liberal and leftist faculty members are wrong in their beliefs. Let's take them one at a time:]
"As Christians, we are called to be peacemakers and to initiate war only as a last resort"
[I'm sorry to say it, but to me that is nothing but sheer cowardice and refined selfishness.
Don't you get it? We fight wars not to have peace, but to have a peace worth having.
As a strong Christian, President Bush is a peacemaker and he does initiate war only as a last resort. For Calvin professors to present the leftist canards of Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Teddy Kennedy and Michael Moore as "Christian" beliefs is arrogant and wrong. What gives you the right to say that Christ did not want us to protect the safety and freedom of all Americans, while liberating 50 million innocent people in two countries? And if you think the Iraqi people are not happy we liberated them, I think you need a hug. See: http://www.cnn.com/interactive/allpolitics/0502/gallery.sotu.big/cont...
It's interesting to see how are the current leftist Democrats are linked to other extremist groups, George Soros, radical environmentalists, pro-abortion extremists, and so on. See http://www.discoverthenetwork.org
Leftists at Calvin, I ask you to think about this serious question: do you think Bush and Americans love war, or do they love peace?
Think about it seriously, Leftists at Calvin: I am not asking you to regurgitate the same old liberal mantras...I am asking you to really think...
Leftists at Calvin: I, and Bush, do not feel America is right to attempt to help spread democracy in the world because it is our way and therefore the right way.
Nor do I think America should attempt to encourage Democracy because we are Western and feel everyone should be Western. Not everyone should be Western, and not everything we do as a culture, a people or an international force is right.
Rather, we have a national-security obligation to foster democracy in the world because democracy tends to be the most peaceful form of government.
Democracies tend to be slower than dictatorships to take up arms, to cross borders and attempt to subdue neighbors, to fight wars.
Democracies are on balance less likely to wreak violence upon the world because democracies are composed of voters many of whom are parents, especially mothers, who do not wish to see their sons go to war. Democracy is not only idealistic, it is practical.
Leftists at Calvin, Americans and Bush are by nature peaceful. Americans don't want to send their sons, or daughters, off to war. They don't like that kind of excitement, or they don't like it for long. This is part of why we used to be called Isolationists.
We weren't and aren't isolationists--we just have a bias for peace. Can that bias be overcome? Of course. Pearl Harbor overcame it. The Soviet desire to expand and impose communism overcame it. Sept. 11 did too.
Leftists at Calvin, on Iraq: I think that there's no way 'round it but through it. We have to stay, and we have to win.
I define winning in Iraq as the yielding up of, at the least, a relatively stable society unafflicted by governmental sadism and dictatorship, and, at the most, a stable society in a fledgling democracy that demonstrates, with time, that the forces of Arab moderation, tolerance and peacefulness can triumph.
Such an outcome would give so much good to the world. What a brilliant beacon this Iraq could be, and what a setback to terrorists, who thrive in darkness.
Here is one thing I like about President Bush. He has the moral clarity to make it clear that he hates war, really hates it, and loves peace.
Bush always made it clear he thought the impending and then ongoing war a painful tragedy. Mr. Bush has made it clear, repeatedly, that he hopes for peace, yearns for peace, loves it. Bush does not enjoy war and he hopes and prays we can defeat the terrorists so they will not longer be a problem.
So, Leftists at Calvin, PLEASE stop bashing President Bush, and pretending you do it because you are Christian and he is not. Take the plank out of your own eye before you pay attention to the speck of sawdust in your brother, President Bush's eye. How can you vote for Demcrats who aggressively promote the killing of innocent unborn baby American boys and girls, through the painful and bloody procedure of abortion? 40 million innocent children have been summarily executed, and you prance around carrying signs and putting your little letters in the papers due to your partisan hatred of Bush. You lost the election, get over it! Sure, you may have policy differences with President Bush, and with 20/20 vision you may critique how one technique or another turned out in the war, please please stop the partisan Bush bashing under the guise of "Christianity".
With that said, Leftists at Calvin, I'd like to address this constant reference to "Blessed are the peacemakers", as an attempt to further your anti-American and leftist views. Some take quotes from Sermon on the Mount, and make ethical mistakes with it. Leftists at Calvin, the Sermon on the Mount is a declaration of personal Christian ethics, not the rules corporations and states should be run by. If you read Romans Chapter 13, you will see how God says governments should be run: with justice, mercy and grace.
Jesus said to "turn the other cheek". Imagine someone has broken into your house, broke your face, you sue him and take him to court. The judge says "did you hit this man?" The perp answers "Yes". Then imagine if the judge said: "Don't you go to church?" Perp: "yes". Judge: "well, this is simple, turn the other check, take another whack at him, buster!"
Why does that seem out of order? For a very uncomplicated reason: it is not the judges cheek! Duh! If he were standing there with a broken jaw and missing teeth, he wouldn't like that judgment.
Leftists at Calvin, the Sermon on the Mount says that we should give to those who ask. So imagine you are the President of a bank, and a homeless man walks in and says "I'd like to borrow $100,000. "Do you have any collateral?" "No" "Why do you think you can borrow $100,000 from this bank?" "Jesus says, 'turn thou not away .' What's wrong here?
It's not his money, it's yours that the bank president is giving away. Leftists at Calvin, this is a PERSONAL Christian ethic. He can give his own $100,000, that would not be a problem.
Leftists at Calvin, Romans 13 states: rulers are the messengers of God, the ambassadors of God, they are rending vengeance on evil doers, they are commanded by God to do that. They bear not the sword in vain. The sword is the symbol of capital punishment. The duty of government is justice. Our duty is to live in peace as much as possible.
As long as you have men that are as wicked in the extreme...Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, men of incredible wickedness, then I believe force must be used to bring them to cease their wickedness. Saddam has killed 2 million Iraqis, and caused 6 million more to flee the nation. Not to mention the number of Iranians he has killed. In Iran, veterans of war with Iraq are emaciated, dying a slow death from the poison he used on them. They are dying a slow death that had already taken 22 years in the hospital.
Ann Clwyd, from the British Parliament, talked about Saddam's use of a plastic shredder. Saddam's opponents were dropped into it, and they were forced to watch...head first, or feet first and died screaming. Witnesses saw 30 people die like this, and their remains were collected and used to feed the fish in their ponds. They saw Kusi, Saddam's son, personally supervise this torture. Others were dropped into acid which ate them alive.
Leftists at Calvin, how does anyone argue with the fact that such a man needs to be removed from power?
The Bible makes it clear force must be used to stop evil -- Jesus used force to cleanse the temple. He will use far greater force when he comes to end the war with Satan and his minions. The decisive battle with Satan was fought on blackened hill called Golgatha. There was great glee in hell, at last Satan thought he had the arch pretender in his grasp. There was delight in hell, when Jesus uttered his last words, "it is finished". Satan thought he had won the victory. Until that glorious morning when, as the sun rose above the horizon, spreading across the dome of the temple. People saw the tomb was empty, Christ had risen from the dead,
...
Examine your soul. Whose side are you on? See the write up on Michael Moore and the rest of the Shadow Democrat Party, George Soros, Hillary Clinton, etc. at http://www.discoverthenetwork.org
Michael Moore: "The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation [i.e., U.S., British and other democratic coalition forces] are not 'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'The Enemy.' They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow - and they will win." -- Michael Moore
Like other Moore documentaries, Fahrenheit 9/11 was, in fact, packed with lies and calculated distortions, a cheap and shoddy Swiss cheese fabricated with more holes than substance. One of Moore's biggest claims in his film was that members of Saudi Arabia's bin Laden family (in which Osama is one of 53 children, a disowned black sheep born not to the patriarch's wives but to a concubine) had been allowed by Bush to fly out of the U.S. unquestioned only hours after 9-11. In fact, they did not leave for at least six days, after being questioned by the FBI, and permission for their departure was given without any outside prompting solely by Bush critic and Fahrenheit 9/11 hero, Clinton counter-terrorism holdover Richard Clarke, as Clarke himself acknowledged.
At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Moore was treated like royalty and given a seat of honor at the side of former President Carter in his presidential box. (Mr. Carter's toppling of America's ally the Shah of Iran precipitated the Iran-Iraq War, the military buildup of Saddam Hussein, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that empowered Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, led to the oppression of millions of women and opened a Pandora's Box of other problems, including America's incursion into Iraq. But Moore was proud to sit next to the Democrat whose incompetence had paved the way for all this horror.)
Democratic leaders such as then-Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota embraced him and joined other prominent Democrats at the premier of Moore's documentary that trashed President Bush. Moore was invited to write columns from the conventions for the newspaper USA TODAY. Propaganda and the left had carried Michael Moore a long way from Flint, Michigan.
How far left is Michael Moore? "Capitalism is a sin," said Moore on the Cable News Network (CNN) show Crossfire in 2002. "This is an evil system."
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