Although it is probably, from a practical standpoint, less harmful than the defunding of family planning clinics in the 3rd world or ensuring that the layabout children of the Uberrich get their inheritances protected from the IRS -- I find Bush's appeal to more "faith-based" charities exactly the kind of thing that makes me almost more exhausted than outraged. How can you fight this kind of thing without seeming like a cynic or a doctrinaire atheist?I always had the notion that implicit in the whole separation-of-church-and-state was an unpsoken value that creating just civil society didn't require some sort of religious backing: that a commitment to the religious multiplicity of the country meant that our leadership would be comfortable remaining with relationship to churches and the like. I know that you're laughing at me, but I feel attached to the notion of a secular, civil society, and I have a feeling that it's currently among the things being openly sneered at by the triumphant Right, and for some reason I take that particularly personally.

Bush To Push Faith - Based Initiative