Something's been bugging me about the FBI conducting surveillance on the Quakers, PETA and the Catholic Workers. And it isn't just
the civil rights problems. No, what stuck in my craw was the fact that in 2001, George W. Bush
has quoted Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the Catholic Workers in a commencement speech at Notre Dame in what was at the time a lame assed attempt to sell his faith based program.
"Any effective war on poverty must deploy what Dorothy Day called 'the weapons of spirit,'" Bush told the crowd.
Now, let's be real. It was just a cynical attempt to try to play well with the Church. And he didn't know who Day was. He just knew that Catholic Worker had the word Catholic in it and he was pandering to the Notre Dame crowd.
But the fact is that of all the Catholics that he could chose to quote, he went for the one that his FBI would later call "semi-communistic." I'd say this tells us a bit about the man.
Cross posted at the Political Report.