The present occupant of the Oval Office has committed impeachable offenses, and moral lapses. He has shown himself to be incompetent as a chief executive. He is clueless as a commander in chief. But as an long time teacher I find this unforgivable, he misquoted a hymn! He distorted the clear intent of the text he was quoting, giving the impression that the hymn gave authority for his rationalizations.
Thanks to Tom Degan for coming to the defense of I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day
Tom writes: The other night, as George W. Bush concluded his address from the oval office, he ended it by quoting the old civil war era Christmas carol, I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day:
The wrong will fail
And right prevail
With peace on earth
Good will toward men....
Yeah, beautiful. Leave it to these guys to take something as beautiful as that tune out of context. He wouldn't have dared to quote that song in its entirety. Had he done that he would have had to recite these timely words:
And in despair I bowed my head,
"There is no peace on earth", I said
For hate is strong
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth
Good will towards men.
Here's Ken Sawyer's 2002 UU World article about "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear," which notes that the antiwar hymn was written in 1849, in the aftermath of the Mexican-American war. Sawyer also observes that conservative Christians have lobbied to pull the carol from their denominational hymnals for its theological omissions: no mention of Jesus, for example.
http://www.uuworld.org/2002/06/lookingback.html
My bad! I confused "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" with "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," which Longfellow (another Unitarian) did write in 1864. Somehow I dredged up my memory of this article about Sears even though it's not directly related to the point you're making. Shame on me.