Reading notes

Some attendees [of the 55th biennial College Republican convention in Washington, DC on July 25] were driven by spiritual conviction that seamlessly encompassed faith in two messiahs, Jesus and Bush. For the true believers, Bush is a man of wonder-working powers. Jason Cole, a 22-year-old senior at the University of Iowa, grew enamored of Bush when he heard his earnest, simple talk of God during the 1999 presidential campaign. Cole says he has little interest in working in politics beyond the 2004 election. “I do it,” he explained simply, “because I love President Bush.” …

The College Republican leadership echoed this pious optimism. Paul Gourley, the party’s treasurer, is a chiseled, broad-shouldered 21-year-old from South Dakota. “I am religious, and my religious beliefs steer me towards this party,” he says. Bush is somebody “students can identify with, somebody students can follow. His energy, his passion for America and freedom and his religious beliefs … I think he’s going to be one of history’s great presidents. We’re all honored to live during this presidency.”

I can attest that they’re really like this: I ran into another one last Sunday. Besides amazing me with her immovable certainty based on hardly any command of the facts, she evoked a deep sadness in me —

Participation in College Republicans in my early 20s has become one of my deepest points of shame now that I’m in my 40s. Could I really have been as uninformed, unthinking, and unseeing as the college kids in this article? Good Lord, deliver me. I repent, again and again.