I accede to your uncanny powers of prognostication. Science did not, as I had predicted, liberate the minds of men from rank superstition and ecclesiastical imposition. In 2002, I find, to my chagrin, priestly dogma infects the highest levels of American government. The president, one George W. Bush, doubles as priest-in-chief of a Holy American Empire.

At a "prayer breakfast" attended by foreign dignitaries, congressmen, and prominent clerics, Mr. Bush urged the populace to turn to prayer midst a national crisis precipitated by a conclave of Mohammedan saboteurs. Not to Reason, I say, but to prayer! Recent events had put him, he said, "on bended knee."

Was he, sir, petitioning a despot swayed by servility? Does the potentate favor the most obsequious groveler? Is the Creator, who endowed us with intelligence, freedom, and liberty, actuated by vanity rather than justice?

Like an avatar of the Bishop of Hippo, the priest-president extolled faith. He asseverated that faith empowers, faith abides, faith surmounts every obstacle. Unfortunately, his eminence didn't clarify the efficient mechanism by which faith effects its preternatural marvels. I opined, sir, that faith works in tandem with groveling.

Faith seems to jostle with fiscal policy. "Faith," Mr. Bush averred, "shows us the way to self-giving, to love our neighbors as we would want to be loved. It teaches us never to target the innocent."

Now, Mr. Bush purports to admire Jesus Christ. One might therefore expect Mr. Bush to conform schemes of taxation to Jesuine ethics. The historical Jesus, sifted from the mythic Christ of triune humbuggery, threatened mammon with eternal damnation. He unremittingly contemned Dives. The Galilean, sir, was a paladin for the destitute, the downtrodden, the impecunious hoi polloi.

Does our people's president, then, fetter patricians with adamantine taxation? "Indeed, he must," you will say. "He would otherwise be impugned as deficient in rectitude."

Well, sir, hear and perpend: The pious Mr. Bush proposes a $2 trillion tax cut, 43 percent of which goes to the wealthiest one percent of the populace!

And yet, sir, so has the popular mind prostituted itself to mummeries of piety, Mr. Bush passes for an humble and sincere Christian!

With kindly regards and best wishes,

As ever your humble and obedient, etc.,