I also detest the tendency of Americans, Westerners, or "Moderns" to boast of how they've customized their religious views to fit their lifestyles. "I don’t believe in organized religion, but I’m a very spiritual person." Yuck. It simply strikes me as intellectually offensive to pretend that the engineer of it all goes out of his way to let individual people order off-menu their religious preferences in just such a way so as pretty much everything they do is exactly how God wants it. And, even if that were the case, even if God customizes the heavens, space, and time so as to make every personal indulgence divinely inspired, the trend of people being their own priests is not one I celebrate. I’d hate to sound like I'm lending my voice to that chorus — I’m not. Indeed, my belief that religion is important depends on it being a social institution. If everyone has his own church, each designating himself a personal messiah, we’ve slipped out of the realm of faith and, ultimately, into the arena of the übermensch where whoever has the religion which condones the most barbarity, wins.

Okay... NOT Algerian: Algeresque - as in "Bush nominees exemplify Horatio Alger heros," but it did get your attention, didn't it!?

That's what so amazed me about Bush's latest cabinet picks: their individual stories're so Horatio Algeresque - each PROVES that (1) the American Dream is alive and well, and that (2) the elusive qualities which make some people rise to the top from unbelieveably humble origins are qualities that our President admires in people, that (3) he seeks out these kind of people - and depends on them. YUP: these picks say a lot about America, and a lot about Bush, too.