george bush; citizen's quote

Indeed it has, and that position is that George Bush is a bigot.

On February 21, 1~90, American Atheists wrote to every member of the United States Congress asking that body to pass a resolution condemning discrimination against Atheists by any elected or appointed official of government. The offered resolution read:

"No person in public life may be free to impugn the patriotism of any minority group because of that group's opinion in respect to religion. President George Bush is herewith censured for his public expression of August 27, 1987, at which time he stated: 'I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.'"

You don't need to guess how many senators and representatives answered that letter: there were none. At this point, American Atheists sent a list of the members of Congress to all of its membership and asked each one to write or telephone their congressmen. Hundreds of angry letters and telephone calls were received at the American Atheist GHQ during the next several months as it became obvious that the elected Congress was composed entirely of politicians too damn yellow to challenge Bush. In just one campaign incident, American Atheists was able to teach thousands of the nation's top-notch citizens that their government did not give a damn about them.  This exercise added appreciably to the malcontentedness in the nation and rightly so.

American Atheists then sent every single columnist in the United States a packet of information-- from Pat Buchanan to Jim Fain.  Only one was courageous enough to write a lengthy article on the matter: Tom Tiede.  And the newspapers in which Tiede was syndicated did print his column taking the president to task. A little later, the CNN feature program "Larry King Live" broadcast a quarter-hour interview with Mr. Robert Sherman, as he detailed the perfidy of President Bush.

When George Bush appeared on the campus of the University of Texas on May 19, 1990, American Atheists placed a full-page advertisement in the Austin American-Statesman detailing the above and demanding an apology and an explanation.  The founders of American Atheists, a thirty-year-old organization, are both honorably discharged veterans: Richard E O'Hair, U.S. Marines (totally and permanently disabled); and Madalyn O'Hair, Women's Army Corps. Both served in World War II.

On December 23, 1990, in Chicago, Illinois Mr. Robert Sherman met with Ed Derwinski, the secretary of the Department of Veteran's Affairs, to discuss exclusion of American Atheists from veteran's groups which have been chartered by the United States Congress. Mr. Derwinski said he would do "absolutely nothing" about the discrimination.  On January 3, Mr. Sherman crossed paths with Ed Derwinski again at the Illinois inaugurations.  He asked Mr. Derwinski, at that time, what American Atheists could do to have the Bush administration take an interest in the problem of discrimination against American Atheist veterans. Mr. Derwinski's response was:

"What you should do for me is what you should do for everybody: Believe in God.  Get off our backs."

When Mr. Sherman was in Washington, D.C., on another issue on March 20, 1991, he again met with Mr. Derwinski, who, on this occasion, shouted that the Atheists should "get off his back," that the Bush administration would do nothing for them, and that they would need to "sue" to end discrimination against them.
To add pointed insult to injury, the City of Chicago Commission on Human Rights refused to permit American Atheist Veterans to appear as a group in the Fourth of July "Welcome Home" parade for the veterans of Desert Storm in that city.

In the corridors of American history, Atheists have loomed large: Clarence Darrow, Margaret Sanger, Mark Twain, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, Albert Einstein, California's Governor Culbert L. Olson, Thomas Edison, the great botanist Luther Burbank, and James Smithson, founder of the Smithsonian
Institution. The list is [can become very] long.

American Atheists ask that you write to George Bush, President of the United States, at The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. 20500 and ask him for an apology to this group which comprises 9 percent of the population.

Copies of this brochure (order #8286) are available at the cost of ten cents each from: