"A 'spark of decency' is not so clean cut an issue as you portray."

I can't say that I agree, Thomas. It's pretty clear-cut to me. I think everyone has that spark of decency within them. In some, it shines like a beacon. In others, it's buried so deep that you wonder if they have it at all. Whether or not one chooses to listen to that "still, small voice" is the true test of a person's character.

I don't know Bush personally, but as someone once said, "By their fruits ye shall know them." When a man who claims to be a "compassionate conservative" shows compassion only for his rich friends and does it at the expense of the millions who actually need a little compassion, that pretty well says it. If he is a Christian, as he claims to be, there are a few passages in the Bible about compassion that I would recommend that he read. He seems to have missed those parts.

And anyone who got his influential father to pull strings for him so he could avoid getting drafted when he was legally as eligible as hundreds of thousands of other young men, then starts a war as cavalierly as he did with so little reason . . . well . . . I don't have to know him personally to know all I need to know about him.

Don Firth