Synonym a Day

Every [George W.] Bush speech is richly encrypted with covert Biblical allusions and other secret handshakes with his fundamentalist listeners, but one need not be a fundamentalist to warm to this sort of religiose rhetoric, for it is every bit as much of an “American” thing as it is a “Christian” one. Rationalist liberals [are] tone-deaf to its appeal . . . (Jonathan Raban, “Pastor Bush: Why Do So Many Americans Dismiss the Evidence That the Occupation of Iraq Has Gone Disastrously Wrong?” Guardian [London], 10/6/2004.)