sulawesigirl4 said:
Perhaps he means to say that their belief in freedom changed america. Grammar 101 would be in order.
Actually, Grammar 101 would be in order for the journalist who wrote the statement down, not for Bush.
The statement was written:
"It's very interesting when you think about it, the slaves who left here to go to America, because of their steadfast and their religion and their belief in freedom, helped change America."
It should have been written thusly:
"It's very interesting; when you think about it, the slaves who left here to go to America,
because of their steadfast (*word left out?) and their religion and their belief in freedom, helped change America."
So really, the only 2 things wrong are:
1)The absence of a semi-colon
2)Leaving out a word - steadfast "what"?
However, because of the placement of the commas, it could never be taken to mean that "Dubya thinks slaves went to America because of America's belief in freedom". The comma after the word "America" and before "because" serves to separate the 2 thoughts. And if that comma was not there, it would still not have anything to do with "America's belief in freedom", but rather the slaves' beliefs in freedom, and that's a ridiculous idea that no one would have. In fact, in order for that to be grammatically correct (as far as writing is concerned), the last comment would have to be dropped. To illustrate that point, here is the statment again, without the last 2 commas, but with the semi-colon, which should have been there:
It's very interesting when you think about it, the slaves who
left here to go to America because of their steadfast and their religion and their belief in freedom helped change America.
The grammar lesson is now over. Please send your payments promptly, so I can pay for my membership to the Grand Old Party.