It’s been slightly more than 24 hours since the two-hour CNN/You Tube GOP debate finally sputtered and wheezed to its conclusion (appropriately, with a silly question to Rudy Giuliani about why, as a fanatic Yankee fan, he rooted for the Red Sox in the World Series).

Conventional wisdom suggests that this flashy show with its quirky, often frivolous questions will have scant influence on the electoral outcomes in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and other early, crucial states in the nomination process. For two reasons, I suspect the conventional wisdom is wrong, and televised extravaganza could profoundly and immediately scramble the already confused contest for the Republican nomination.

First, no one can ignore the fact that this confrontation, whatever its insipidities and excesses, drew an unexpectedly huge viewing audience. Some five million people watched the Republican candidates go at each other with gusto and expertise -- 25% more than watched the Democrats in their biggest debate of the pre-primary season. The Republicans pulled more viewers than any other political debate in cable TV history. The press coverage and water cooler factor also brought some of the debate high lights (and low lights) to people who didn’t watch it live. The Iowa Caucuses are only one month and four days away, and there’s reason to believe that voters across the country have begun to concentrate on a wide open and fascinating race.

And it is wide open – more so than ever after Wednesday night. The second reason this particular debate will matter is that the putative front runner, Rudy Giuliani, delivered an unexpectedly clumsy and uncertain performance that should badly damage (if not shatter) the aura of invincibility and inevitably he had begun to construct around himself. Rudy is usually sharp and likeable in these debates, but this time he looked petty, immature, defensive and un-Presidential.

The first few minutes of the evening provided Rudy’s worst moments of the entire campaign so far, and if his opponents know what’s good for them they’ll come up with ways to remind people of the former mayor’s awkwardness. The first You Tube questioner asked Giuliani about charges that he had made New York a “sanctuary city” and asked if he planned to continue “aiding and abetting” illegal immigrants in “their flight into this country.”

Rudy gave a dry, legalistic response, trying to defend his record without ever communicating any real emotion or indignation about our porous borders. Mitt Romney then pounced, insisting that New York had indeed been a sanctuary city and slamming Rudy for declaring that “undocumented” were welcome in New York.

At this point, it began to look like a playground brawl involving fifth graders, taunting each other over meaningless trivia --- “your mother wears combat boots!”/ “oh yeah? So’s your old man!”—but, sadly, the exchange only got worse.

“It’s unfortunate,” Giuliani snarled, “but Mitt generally criticizes people in a situation in which he’s had by far the worst record….At his own home, illegal immigrants were being employed, not being turned in to anybody or by anyone. And then when he deputized the police, he did it two weeks before he was going to leave office, and they never even seemed to catch the illegal immigrants that were working at his mansion. So I would say he had a sanctuary mansion, not just a sanctuary city.”

No one listening to this childish cheap shot could fail to cringe--- especially those of us who admire Mayor Giuliani and want him to do well in this campaign.

Romney fought back with the altogether reasonable point that “if you hear someone that is working out there, not that you have employed, but that the company has. If you hear someone with a funny accent, you, as a homeowner, are you supposed to go out there and say, ‘I want to see your papers.’ Is that what you’re suggesting?”  Rudy shot back that Mitt deserved the criticism because of  his “holier than thou attitude” – perhaps some subtle reminder of his presumed vulnerability as a devout Mormon.

In any event, if Team Rudy wanted to slime Mitt Romney because some landscaping company that once worked at his home used to hire illegals (surely, the only landscaping company in the entire nation to ever employ the undocumented), then there were other ways to make the point. Why not let a surrogate, or a campaign spokesman, raise the issue with the press? Why make the Mayor himself look so unbelievably small and mean as to raise the charge to Romney’s face on national TV?

The result of the interchange was that the very beginning of the debate, when the biggest part of the audience was still watching, showed both front-runners looking undignified and nasty, like mean-spirited light-weights rather than inspiring leaders.  

While our economy struggles to avoid recession, we face a looming entitlement meltdown, and millions of Islamo-Nazis still want to slaughter every one of us, the two top Republican candidates spent considerable time and energy in front of a huge TV audience trying to score points with each other regarding a crew of gardeners who worked on the Romney home several years ago.

How pathetic.

During the entire course of the debate, none of the candidates or questioners even mentioned the big Middle East Peace Conference that President Bush and Secretary Rice had just convened in Annapolis. Do the candidates think it was a good idea, or just another trap to force Israel into dangerous and unilateral concessions? The candidates surely have some thoughts on this matter (Rudy—who possesses dazzling expertise on the whole Middle East conflict – most surely does) but they never got to express them.

The result?

Any sense that the Republican struggle had come down to a two-man race between Rudy and Romney evaporated with their nasty spat. Throughout the evening, Huckabee and McCain and even, unexpectedly, Fred Thompson, looked more presidential, displayed more gravitas, than the two bickering front-runners. The Rasmussen Poll released before the debate already showed Huckabee moving into an Iowa lead and the televised smack-down will only add to his momentum. In New Hampshire, McCain was already in the hunt (running second or third in most polls) and some Giuliani supporters will shift toward him after the debate (because he spoke more passionately and substantively on the war than his rivals, and looked like a bigger man than Rudy). Some of the same independents who made McCain a Granite State winner in 2000 landslide might ultimately come back to him, so the Arizona Senator could make a credible run at Romney

In other words, the field remains wide-open, with none of the clarity or shape or predictability Republican operatives always crave. With most of the big states dividing their delegates (only New York and New Jersey among the early major delegations hand out their prizes as winner-take-all), four or even five candidates could grab major delegate hauls on Tsunami Tuesday, February Fifth.

My pal Hugh Hewitt claims that “a vote for Huck is a vote for Rudy,” but that’s like telling Democrats that a “vote for Edwards is a vote for Clinton,” on the theory that Obama’s the only one who could beat Hillary. In fact, all three Dems are bunched together in an Iowa dead heat, and the national polls will begin to show similar multi-candidate divisions on the GOP side (in several national polls, Huckabee’s already passed both McCain AND Romney, for third place after Rudy and Thompson. Since Giuliani and Fred both rely on name recognition rather than real enthusiasm for strong showings in these early polls, Huckabee’s rising stock looks particularly impressive)

At this point, if Edwards wins in Iowa among the Democrats (entirely possible) he’s an instant contender in a host of other states, and if Huckabee wins in Iowa he’ll also show unexpected strength in numerous other states.

Could Huckabee, plausibly, score the early knock-out that many pundits expect someone to win after the February 5^th big state primaries? 

No way, but then it looks like Rudy or Romney may also face a tough time closing the deal some six months before the convention.. The votes will remain divided, contradictory, making for an open field for months to come.

That’s good for the party in the long run, so even Rudy loyalists should take comfort after their guy’s disappointing performance.

And for those who believe that one debate can’t alter the direction of a campaign, just look at the Democrats: Hillary’s televised stumbling over driver’s licenses for illegals, her inability to answer direct questions, brought about an instant and drastic decline in the polls. She’s now fighting to maintain her front-runner status.

Rudy may also find his poll leads evaporating, until he can clean away the unpleasant taste he left behind after the confrontation in Florida. He should remember for the future: no talk of sanctuary cities, no sanctuary mansions, and no sanctuary for serious candidates from conducting themselves like applicants for the world’s most important job rather than hormone-addled adolescents.  

The United States has displayed a remarkable and long-standing tendency not only to tolerate, but to honor and reward, those who decry the nation’s morality and predict its imminent and inevitable doom.

Consider Pat Buchanan’s new bestseller, “Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology and Greed are Tearing America Apart.” This magnum opus follows his similarly cheerful (and successful) releases, “State of Emergency” and “The Death of the West.” In the opening pages of the most recent book, “Pitchfork Pat” dramatically declaims:

“Truly, America faces an existential crisis… It is the belief of the author and the premise of this book that America is indeed coming apart, decomposing, and that the likelihood of her survival as one nation through mid-century is improbable- and impossible if America continues on her current course. For we are on a path to national suicide.”

Buchanan hardly stands alone in announcing the upcoming destruction or dissolution of the republic. John F. MacArthur, the influential California pastor, President of The Master’s College, and author of some fifty books on the Bible and contemporary life, recently declared: “There comes a point in God’s dealing with men and nations, groups of people, when He abandons them….Sin is so rampant in our country, it is so widespread, it is so tolerated by people in leadership and even people in the church, it is so widely tolerated it is pandemic: it is endemic; that is, it is in the very fabric of our life that I believe God has just taken away the restraining grace that might preserve our nation, and has let our nation run to its own doom.”

Similarly, the late Jerry Falwell described the September 11^th terrorist attacks as a tragic but inevitable, divinely ordained response to rampant immorality and Godlessness on the national scene. “God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve,” he said during a hugely controversial television broadcast (for which he subsequently apologized). He singled out immoral ideas and behaviors spiraling out of control across the country, accusing those who insisted on “throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked.” Three days later, trying to explain his comments to John F. Harris of the Washington Post, Reverend Falwell more modestly observed: “When a nation deserts God and expels God from the culture… the result is not good.”  On many other occasions, the affable preacher from Lynchburg, Virginia, drew bemused chuckles with the observation: “If God doesn’t wipe out San Francisco some time soon, He’s going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.” His words conjure up a compelling vision of the Environmental Protection Agency someday striving mightily to clear the sulphur, brimstone and salt pillars from the Golden Gate.

And speaking of San Francisco, Michael Savage (nee, Michael Weiner), the perpetually enraged talk radio Jeremiah of Baghdad by the Bay, joins the Loonie Left in seeing the impending onset of Naziism. “I am more and more convinced that we have a one-party oligarchy ruling our nation,” he warned in “The Savage Nation,” his 2002 national bestseller. “In short, the ‘Republicrats’ and 'Demicans’ have sacked our Constitution, our culture, our religions, and embarrassed the nation…Again, the last years of the Weimar Republic of pre-Nazi Germany come to mind – where decadence completely permeated a free society.”

While activists and academics on the political left have always played the lead role in passionately promoting the many pernicious lies about America’s allegedly guilty past, it's mostly commentators on the cultural right who enthusiastically embrace the lies about the nation’s guilty present and doomed future. Looking down on previous generations and condemning our Founding Fathers as Indian-slaughtering, slave-owning, Euro-centrist, money-grubbing elitists can bring obvious psychic rewards to those who endorse such caricatures. If our ancestors deserve more condemnation than reverence, we face little obligation to live up to their ideals or examples and can feel free to make our rules, shape our own values, with an unshakable sense of greater wisdom and moral superiority. It’s much harder, however, to see the emotional or practical payoffs in apocalyptic hysteria about our current condition.

Smearing prior generations can enhance our sense of unique and unprecedented excellence (“Never trust anyone over thirty,” the notorious Baby Boomers once declared). Perhaps, in the same sense, the militant alarmism about our current moral state can promote the conviction that confirmed gloom-and-doomers are much smarter, more righteous, more attuned to horrifying realities than the obtuse people (or “sheepel,” as they are derisively designated) who refuse to acknowledge looming disaster.

This doesn’t mean that selfish or insincere motives always shape the outlook of those who see America as corrupt beyond redemption. Most moral alarmists nurse the forlorn hope that their stern warnings will somehow motivate the society to abjure its evil ways before we pass the final point of no return. For many reasons, however, common sense dictates that exaggerating our decadence, dysfunction and desperation will make revival and renewal less likely and more difficult.

Even so, it’s impossible to deny that those who regularly wail about The End Of American Civilization As We Know It. (TEOACAWKI) take their part in a long and (mostly) honorable tradition that goes all the way back to the earliest days of Colonial settlement.

NEARLY FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OF “THE END IS NEAR”

We prefer to think of William Bradford, the long time leader of the Pilgrim Separatists and for thirty years the elected governor of Plymouth Colony, as a courageous man of faith who calmly overcame every obstacle to establish his profoundly significant settlement in the Massachusetts wilderness. Some twenty-five years after taking shore at Plymouth Rock, however, Bradford himself became the first major American commentator to see evidence of deadly moral decay and a betrayal of his society’s heroic past.

In 1645, he made one of the last significant entries in his journal while in an obviously mournful mood: “O sacred bond, which inviolably preserved! How sweet and precious were the fruits that flowed from the same! But when this fidelity decayed, then their ruin approached. O that these ancient members had not died or been dissipated (if it had been the will of God) or else that this holy care and constant faithfulness had still lived, and remained with those that survived, and were in times afterwards added unto them. But (alas) that subtle serpent that slyly wound himself under fair pretenses of necessity and the like, to untwist these sacred bonds and ties….It is now a part of my misery in old age, to find and feel the decay and want thereof (in a great measure) and with grief and sorrow of heart and bewail the same. And for others’ warning and admonition, and my own humiliation, do I here note the same.”

Historians argue about the reasons Bradford looked so harshly at his own prospering and secure settlement. A few years earlier, in the “horrible” year of 1642, a Plymouth youth named Thomas Granger had to be executed for the unspeakable sin of bestiality (along with all the animals he had defiled). Whatever the cause, virtually every subsequent generation echoed Bradford’s certainty that new attitudes, sins and shortcomings proved unworthy of a sacred, noble past.

One of the old Pilgrim’s spiritual successors, the great preacher (and President of Princeton) Jonathan Edwards, wrote that the 1730’s represented “a far more degenerate time…than ever before.” In his immortal 1741 sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” he riveted the devout Puritan churchgoers in Northampton, Massachusetts and Enfield, Connecticut, by telling them: “ Yea, God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now on earth: yea, doubtless, with many that are now in this congregation, who it may be are at ease, than he is with many of those who are now in the flames of hell…The wrath of God burns against them, their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is whet, and held over them, and the pit hath opened its mouth under them.”

Almost exactly a century later another New England preacher, anti-slavery firebrand William Lloyd Garrison, denounced the impiety and hypocrisy and degradation of his own temporizing generation: “I accuse the land of my nativity of insulting the Majesty of Heaven with the grossest mockery that was ever exhibited to man,” he thundered. He also denounced the Constitution as “a covenant with death and an agreement with Hell” and frequently burned copies of the nation’s founding document to signify God’s righteous wrath.

Billy Sunday, former major league outfielder (for the Philadelphia Phillies and other teams) and famous revivalist, led another moral crusade against the decadence of early twentieth century America: as “the sworn, eternal and uncompromising enemy of the Liquor Traffic. I have been, and will go on, fighting that damnable, dirty, rotten business with all the power at my command,” he fervently pledged in his most famous sermon, “Get On the Water Wagon.” The Evangelist also opposed public dancing, card-playing, attending the theatre, reading novels, and baseball games on Sunday. Even before the “loss of innocence” associated with America’s entry into World War I, he asked one of his huge audiences: “Did you ever know a time in all history when the world was worse than it is now? People are passing up the Church and the Prayer Meeting for the theatre, the leg show and the movies. Oh, Lord, how we need someone to cry aloud, ‘Return to God!’”

In view of our nostalgic view of earlier epochs in U.S. history, these energetic denunciations may look excessive or inappropriate, but they represented men of conscience and character righteously (and mostly rightly) pointing out the sins and shortcomings of the society around them. In some cases, they managed to play positive roles in various awakenings and revivals that periodically changed American society for the better—giving the lie to the common assumption that moral degradation is a one way street that leads year by year, generation by generation, only downhill.

HISTORY OFFERS ABUNDANT EVIDENCE OF MORAL TURNAROUNDS

Most Americans properly revere the remarkable Revolutionary generation and associate lofty moral standards with the spectacularly gifted and energetic colonists who defied an Empire and shaped a durable Republic. Of course, such uncritical adulation of the past must look beyond the highly questionable sexual adventures of many of the most prominent Founding Fathers, including Franklin (an illegitimate son in New Jersey, and numerous romantic conquests during his missions to France), Jefferson (a deep love affair with a beautiful married woman and probable long-term relations with his own teenaged slave, Sally Hemings), Hamilton (a torrid affair with a married woman, while paying blackmail to her husband) and Aaron Burr (literally scores of passionate affairs and persistent rumors of incest with his glamorous daughter). Statistically, a high percentage of first children in Colonial marriages (as much as 30% in some cities) arrived less than seven months after the wedding ceremony ---a powerful indication that strict self control escaped young Americans of more than two hundred years ago much as it escapes too many young people today.

In one area, however, today’s citizens display vastly better discipline and higher moral standards. In their essay “Drinking in America,” historians Mark Lender and James Martin report: “One may safely assume… that abstemious colonials were few and far between. Counting the mealtime beer and cider at home and the convivial drafts at the tavern or at the funeral of a relative or neighbor, all this drinking added up….While precise consumption figures are lacking, informed estimates suggest that by the 1790’s an average American over fifteen years old drank just under six gallons of absolute alcohol a year… The comparable modern average is less than 2.0 gallons per capita.”  This indulgence created worrisome problems with public drunkenness in Philadelphia, Boston, New York and other Colonial centers that mirrored, though never equaled, the appalling alcoholism that plagued contemporary masses in London.

In terms of building the nation’s wealth and providing for the comfort of its citizens, American progress has been inexorable in one direction. In terms of any measure of morality, however, the nation has experienced a dizzying roller-coaster of steep ups and downs, zig zags, climbs and reverses, and even loop-the-loops. Religious historians refer to four distinct “Great Awakenings” that profoundly impacted the course of history and the ethical outlook of the populace: the first (from the 1730’s through the 1750’s) led by fiery preachers like Jonathan Edwards and British visitors George Whitfield and the Wesley Brothers, spread from rural districts to the largest cities and helped lay the groundwork for the American Revolution. The second (from 1800 through the 1830’s) brought camp meetings that drew tens of thousands even in remote frontier settlements, the founding of pious, non-conformist sects (including the Mormon Church), and new energy for the anti-slavery and women’s suffrage movements. The Third Awakening (1880’s through 1900’s) brought the Holiness movement, the beginnings of American Pentecostalism, Christian Science, the Social Gospel, Progressive politics, and the resurgent Temperance movement. Many sociologists and theologians see a Fourth Awakening beginning in the late 1970’s and continuing to the present day, evidenced by the power of the so-called “Religious Right,” the growth of Evangelical “Mega-Churches” and a vastly expanded Christian influence in popular culture. Regardless of how one evaluates the significance and lasting impact of each of these periods of revival and turbulence, they give evidence that the nation’s moral and religious history has hardly followed a straight line toward degeneracy and shattered traditions.

In her supremely valuable book “The De-Moralization of Society,” historian Gertrude Himmelfarb focuses on the British model to show that reformers can exert a profound impact on a nation’s manners and morals, virtues and values. The Victorian Era, popularly identified with stuffy, restrictive and judgmental codes of behavior, actually represented a conscious reaction to the excesses and debauchery of the 1700’s.  The raising of social standards (readily apparent in statistics on illegitimacy, drunkenness, crime, abandonment of children and more) resulted from conscious efforts by mobilized moralists. “In addition to societies for the promotion of piety and virtue,” Himmelfarb writes, “others were established for the relief of the poor and infirm- for destitute orphans and abandoned children, aged widows and penitent prostitutes, the deaf, dumb, blind, and otherwise incapacitated….The idea of moral reformation also extended to such humanitarian causes as the elimination of flogging in the army and navy, the abolition of the pillory and public whipping, the prohibition of cockfighting, bull-baiting, and bearbaiting, and, most important, the abolition of the slave trade…Less formally, but no less effectively, they promoted those manners and morals that have come to be known as ‘Victorian values.’….The ‘moral reformation’ initiated in the late eighteenth century came to fruition in the late nineteenth century.”

The inspiring story Himmelfarb tells represents one of the most spectacular examples of self-conscious social betterment in all of human history –an improvement in which the United States without question followed the British example. As Himmelfarb concludes: “At the end of the nineteenth century, England was a more civil, more pacific, more humane society than it had been in the beginning. ‘Middle-class’ manners and morals had penetrated into large sections of the working classes. The traditional family was as firmly established as ever, even as feminist movements proliferated and women began to be liberated from their ‘separate spheres.’”

In addition to such sweeping changes of direction, the United States has experienced more limited periods of disruption or renewal. In the Twentieth Century, two world wars undermined the stability of family life and traditional mores, while the 1950’s and its era of American dominance, prosperity and religiosity, saw dramatic improvements in divorce rates, criminality, drug and alcohol addiction, and access to higher education.

The counter-cultural explosions of the 1960’s, viewed by many as the final blow to parental authority, sexual self-discipline, sobriety, and the work ethic, gave rise in less than twenty years to the era of Reaganism and “Morning in America.” Some of the same Baby Boomers who sang drug anthems by the Stones or the Beatles in 1968, came back to church and suburb by 1988, enrolling their children in religious schools and honoring the patriotic and entrepreneurial values the Hippie era so colorfully scorned.

Dr, Allen C. Carlson and Paul T. Mero, authors of “The Natural Family: A Manifesto” see these advances and setbacks as part of a long, indecisive struggle to preserve “the natural family – part of the created order, imprinted on our natures, the source of bountiful joy, the fountain of new life, the bulwark of ordered liberty.” Industrialization brought the “great disruption” that undermined “the natural ecology of family life” when “family-made goods and tasks became commodities, things to be bought and sold” with the factory and “mass state schools” taking children away from their previously home-centered lives. When the French Revolution gave ideological basis to these changes, “advocates for the natural family –figures such as Bonald and Burke – fought back. They defended the ‘little platoons’ of social life, most of all the home. They rallied the ideas that would show again the necessity of the natural family. They revealed the nature of organic society to be a true democracy of free homes.” After the British-led alliance crushed the revolutionary forces of France, “families reclaimed authority. The new, growing middle class soon crafted a moral order centered around the hearth and the mother in the home. More broadly, religious leaders and social reformers worked successfully to tame the industrial impulse.”

Of course, other pendulum swings rapidly followed – with the all-powerful state of Communist and Fascist ideology declaring open war on the family. When ‘60’s free-spirits intensified their own struggle, Carlson and Mero report, they never won the expected easy or sweeping victory. “As the culture turned hostile, natural families jolted back to awareness. Signs of renewal came from the new leaders and the growth of movements, popularly called ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-family’ which arose to defend the natural family. By the early twenty-first century, these – our- movements could claim some modest gains.”

While many social conservatives perversely refuse to recognize such gains, they need to be acknowledged and solidified to facilitate further progress in the future.

EVIDENCE OF IMPROVEMENT, ALONG WITH DECAY

Those who insist on the recent moral collapse of the United States as a dogmatically unchallenged article of faith need to consider a shocking report in the New York Times on November 23, 2007.

“New York City is on track to have fewer than 500 homicides this year, by far the lowest number in a 12-month period since reliable Police Department statistics became available in 1963,” noted America’s Journal of Record. “But within the city’s official crime statistics is a figure that may be even more striking: so far, with roughly half the killings analyzed, only 35 were found to be committed by strangers, a microscopic statistic in a city of more than 8.2 million.

“If that trend holds up, fewer than 100 homicides in New York City this year will have been strangers to their assailants. The vast majority died in disputes with friends or acquaintances, with rival drug gang members or –to a far lesser degree- with romantic partners, spouses, parents and others…In the eyes of some criminologists, the police will be hard pressed to drive the killing rate much lower, since most killings occur now within the four walls of an apartment or the confines of close relationships.”

The stunning enhancement of public safety in America’s largest city represents a stinging rebuke to those who persist in viewing the nation as a victim of one-dimensional moral breakdown and spreading anarchy. The change could hardly be more dramatic: New York recorded its greatest number of killings in a single year in 1990, with 2,245, and a majority of those deaths involved terrifying violence between strangers. Seventeen years later, the city saw only 428 killings by mid-November – a projected reduction in the murder rate of more than three-fourths, with a likely total of well under 100 victimizing strangers.

Other major cities may boast less spectacular progress than New York (with its two successive—and successful – crime-fighting Republican mayors) but they all show less violent and property crimes from their peaks in the 1970’s or ‘80’s. The criminal ethos regularly associated with social chaos and moral disorder has sharply retreated across the country, while other indicators also show a nation struggling to improve its spiritual and cultural health.

In July of 2007, the Associated Press reported on more encouraging numbers involving the next generation of Americans: “Fewer high school students are having sex these days, and more are using condoms. The teen birth rate has hit a record low. More young people are finishing high school, too, and more little kids are being read to, according to the latest government snapshot of the well-being of the nation’s children. It’s good news on a number of key wellness indicators, experts said of the report being released Friday by the National Center for Health Statistics…. In 2005, 47% of high school students – 6.7 million – reported having had sexual intercourse, down from 54 percent in 1991.”

Even the Guttmacher Institute, affiliated with Planned Parenthood, reported similar declines in teenaged sexual activity. In September, 2006, the Institute observed that “teens are waiting longer to have sex than they did in the past…The proportion of teens who had ever had sex declined …from 55% to 46% among males” in just seven years between 1995 and 2002.

The reduced sexual activity has also brought about a sharp reduction in rates of abortion. The Guttmacher Institute (May, 2006) acknowledges that abortion rates peaked in 1981, just as our most outspokenly pro-life President, Ronald Reagan, entered the White House. In that year, doctors and clinics performed 29.3 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44. Twenty years later, after tireless efforts by pro-life activists and educators, that number had dropped steadily, year by year, all the way to 21.1, a reduction of nearly 30%. Meanwhile, the number of U.S. abortion providers also declined by 11% in just four years between 1996 and 2000 and, according to all recent reports, continues to decline.

In terms of family structure, common assumptions receive little confirmation from available statistics. The divorce rate, for instance, certainly soared in the late ‘60’s and ‘70’s, reached its peak in 1981, then has gone down steadily (if slightly) since that time. Despite worrisome increases in out of wedlock birth, that phenomenon also began to recede in the 1990’s (most notably in the African-American community). Though the much derided “Ozzie and Harriet” family no longer looks as solid or ubiquitous as it did fifty years ago, the Census Bureau’s most recent statistics (2003) show a surprising total of 68.4% of all children below the age of 18 (of all races) currently living in households with two parents; among white children that number reaches 74.2%. Despite its battering in the media, the family remains the normal, prevalent unit of social organization for the purpose of child-rearing.

Moreover, the characters on “Desperate Housewives” may display attitudes and behaviors that represent today’s realities as poorly as some of the idealized family TV shows (“Father Knows Best,” “Leave It to Beaver”) portrayed the complexities of real-life relationships in the 1950’s. In their enormously helpful book “The First Measured Century,” scholars from the American Enterprise Institute report: “The declining incidence of extramarital sex may seem implausible to television viewers who see a world of wholesale promiscuity in which marital fidelity is the exception rather than the rule. The data tell a different story….The remaining bars on the chart, based on the 1992 National Health and Social Life Survey, show an unmistakable decline in extramarital sexual activity during the latter part of the century, especially among married men.”

The various numbers and analyses hardly paint a portrait of some golden age of moral rectitude, or even of functional families: not at a time when nearly thirty per cent of all American children enter the world without the benefit of married parents, or when cohabitation before marriage (despite indisputably increasing the likelihood of divorce) has become vastly more common (and even the norm to many young people).

Nevertheless, the notion of a nation falling apart – “decomposing,” in Pat Buchanan’s pungent phrase – also fails to emerge from any honest examination of the data. The effort to “remoralize” America after the eruptions and disruptions of the ‘60’s has met with some success, but its future will depend to a great extent on the continued vitality of traditional religious faith.

KEEPING THE FAITH

During the heralded “New Age” of the Woodstock Generation, various celebrities and influential intellectuals pronounced the death of old-style American religiosity, and heralded its replacement with assorted cults, fads, and crackpots. Time magazine ran a cover story in 1969 that featured a black background with stark white lettering, proclaiming simply “God Is Dead.”  A generation later, the Deity might authorize His representatives on earth to paraphrase Mark Twain: “reports of My demise have been greatly exaggerated.”

Few oracles predicted the stubborn resilience of Christian religious faith, with the most demanding and scripturally rigorous denominations showing the greatest vitality of all. Triumphal talk about the “Fourth Great Awakening” may have begun to evaporate between the Bush re-election of 2004 (with its much discussed emphasis on “Values Voters” of traditionalist religious leanings) and the countervailing Democratic triumph of 2006 (featuring Congressional leaders and prominent candidates openly hostile to the priorities of the so-called “Religious Right”).

Nevertheless, the United States remains an incurably religious society, with levels of belief and participation vastly higher than our counterparts in Western Europe. For instance, Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the Wall Street Journal (November 24, 2007) reported regular attendance at religious services in the United Kingdom at 7% (and a pathetic 2% for the official Church of England). The lowest comparable figures for the United States (reported by Professor Robert Wuthrow of Princeton in a Heritage Foundation Lecture of October 4, 2007) ranged between 30 and 35% of the adult population.

Meanwhile, the Gallup Organization offers its own “Index of Leading Religious Indicators,” measuring a variety of variables: belief in God, the importance of religion in lives, membership in churches, weekly worship attendance, confidence in organized religion, confidence in ethics of clergy, and relevance of religion in today’s society. Gathering data on these issues going back to 1941, Gallup (like other surveys) shows 1957-58 as a peak year for religiosity, followed by precipitous declines, then another rise between 1977 and ’85. After another  thirty point decline between the Reagan Era and the Middle of the Clinton Era (1996) religion resumed its upward march, with another twenty point rise. The headline for the overall study appropriately proclaimed:

AMERICANS MORE RELIGIOUS NOW THAN TEN YEARS AGO, BUT LESS SO THAN IN 1950’S AND 1960’S.

In any event, the quickening of religious enthusiasm and the growth of evangelical denominations remains an undeniable fact of American cultural life. Professor Wuthrow of Princeton, generally skeptical of all talk of a religious revival, unequivocally acknowledges the swelling power and influence of conservative forces in scriptural interpretation. “First, as a proportion of the entire U.S. public, evangelical Protestant affiliation grew from around 17 to 20 percent in the early 1970’s to between 25 and 28 percent in more recent surveys. Second, because the affiliation with the more liberal or moderate mainline Protestant denominations was declining during this period, the relative strength of conservative Protestantism was even more evident. For example, conservative Protestantism had been only about two-thirds as prominent as mainline Protestantism in the early 1970’s but outstripped it by a margin of 2 to 1 in some of the more recent surveys.”  

This phenomenon has produced an increasingly common generational contrast: young people (and especially young couples) who embrace a more fervent, more impassioned, more rigorous religiosity than their parents or grandparents. The clichd melodramas in the ancient style of “The Jazz Singer” (1927) – where a youthful, assimilated, show business-crazy American rejects the pious, immigrant orthodoxy of his parents – have given way to distinctive Twenty First Century tales of a new generation renouncing pallid secularism and re-discovering long-forgotten traditions associated with an earlier era. USA TODAY reported on this new pattern and indicated that “clergy of all stripes say they are seeing a small wave of young adults who are more pious than their parents. And they’re getting an earful from boomer moms and dads who range from shocked to delighted.”

In other words, religiously as well as morally, Americans refuse to march in lock step along a single parade route, at the same time that we find ourselves unable to stand still. All measures of morality show a complex, multi-faceted, dynamic and, to some extent, turbulent nation. Some Americans (unfortunately concentrated in the entertainment industry, academia and other centers of major influence) explore decadence and experimental values with more daring or abandon than ever before. At the same time, many others flock to our churches and synagogues (where religious services regularly draw four times more participants than all feature films every weekend) and affirm faith-filled values with energy, self-confidence, and dedication that continue to energize the religious conservative movement. In a sense, most Americans have boarded one of two express trains racing in opposite directions – toward more radicalism, or more traditionalism; heading to greater skepticism and secularism on the one hand, or to more spirited religious commitment on the other.

In all cases, no passage is final: life-long skeptics and cynics may embrace Biblical truth in their ‘70’s or ‘80’s (like the celebrated and controversial case of the British professor Antony Flew) or prominent religious leaders, especially when tainted by scandal or tagged with hypocrisy, may walk away from the faith of a life time. Choice remains an option, both nationally and individually – even for those who believe that a Higher Power ultimately forces our hand.

Moreover, in the United States no story concludes with a single generation. Those raised in strictly religious homes will, on famous occasions, throw over the faith of their fathers with an angry and dismissive attitude while pursuing other sources of satisfaction. More frequently today, many children of un-churched, disillusioned and disaffiliated parents may become religious leaders and teachers – and even go home to recruit various siblings or elders.

America remains, as always and in all things, on the move. Those who have already written off this great and good society as the victim of inevitable moral disintegration or unstoppable degeneracy don’t understand the unfailing national capacity for fresh starts and new life. 

Democratic pollster Peter Hart has interviewed thousands of voters from every ideological perspective and reports on a powerful, nearly unanimous longing for a unifying candidate—a president who can tame bitter partisanship in Washington and get Republicans and Democrats to cooperate.  

This deep-seated, widely-held desire is actually bad news for the front runners in both major parties: no figure in American politics is more divisive, more polarizing than Hillary Clinton, and the combative Rudy Giuliani will have a tough time unifying the GOP, let alone the nation at large.  

The yearning for consensus-building and a constructive tone may benefit more soothing, less edgy candidates—like Barack Obama on the Democratic side, and Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee among Republicans. In addition to mobilizing activists on the left or the right, viable contenders should begin thinking about assembling a broad consensus and ultimately bringing the nation together at a time of terrorist and economic threat.

The  Mid-East Peace Conference in Annapolis stands little chance of success due to obviously contradictory demands by the Palestinians.

They insist, for instance, on a so-called “Right of Return”—authorizing millions of grandchildren and great-grandchildren of one-time refugees to claim homes they’ve never seen in Israel. At the same time, they demand that Israel dismantle long-established Jewish communities in the future state of Palestine.  

They expect Israel to accommodate unlimited numbers of Palestinians in its territory while simultaneously refusing to accept any Jewish residents in the potential Palestine. In effect, they’re pushing for two homelands, not just one: claiming both Israel and the future Palestine as refuges for their dispersed people. Israelis will accept the right of unlimited numbers of Palestinians to settle in a Palestinian state—that’s the whole idea of establishing the new nation. But they’ll never agree to the simultaneous right of millions of hostile Arabs to swamp the state of Israel.

 

In a recent column, the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, Jr. unwittingly exposed the vast ideological gap between Republicans and Democrats.

 

Dionne chose to praise Maryland’s new Democratic governor Martin O’Malley for a massive tax increase designed to close the state’s $1.7 billion budget deficit. Hailing O’Malley’s decision as “government for grownups” the columnist noted that the liberal Democrat “led the Maryland legislature to approve $1.4 billion in taxes and $550 million in spending cuts. It has been a long time since we’ve seen that kind of balance from the federal government.”

 

Say what?

 

Does Dionne honestly believe that spending cuts of $550 million actually balance tax increases that are nearly three times as large? Is a revenue-raising plan that’s 72% tax hikes, and 28% spending trims, in any real sense “balanced”?

 

Dionne goes on to note that O’Malley raised the income tax rate for top wage earners from 4.75 percent to 5.5 percent – a hefty increase of some 16%. To him, this represents “a modest step in the right direction.”

 

E.J. Dionne clearly wishes that Governor O’Malley had gone even further than he did in boosting taxes, and not relied on placing 15,000 new slot machines around the state to produce additional revenue, but he still clearly celebrates the liberal leader’s initiative: “The sound you are hearing not only in Maryland but in state capitals across the nation,” he writes, “is the crashing and crumbling of ideology, specifically a right-wing ideology that demonizes taxes and government….”

 

Actually, conservatives don’t “demonize” taxes and government, but honestly acknowledge that whatever worthy goals tax hikes might fund, they mean less money in the hands of the people who earned it.

 

Republicans believe that individual earners can make better decisions about spending their own money than bureaucrats who seize it. Democrats like Dionne maintain an unshakable faith in the superior wisdom of government officials and the political class to spend the people’s hard-earned gains.

 

This remains the permanent, fundamental difference between the two parties – an undeniable distinction that means more than all other arguments about social issues, the cost of health care, immigration, or time-tables for Iraq withdrawal.

 

Those who believe that it shows admirable “balance” to close a yawning deficit by raising tax rates, or who consider a 16% rise in top rates a “modest step in the right direction,” or who believe that the desire for reduced tax burdens and less intrusive government amount to unjustified “demonization,” will no doubt vote Democratic in the next election.

 

Those, on the other hand, who reject these assumptions and find Dionne’s column unintentionally revealing, must stick with the GOP and its consistently tax-averse candidates – regardless of their innumerable foibles and shortcomings on a host of other issues. If we hope to avoid a repeat of the Maryland model on the national stage, conservatives must rally behind Republican candidates who can win – for the House, the Senate and, above all, the White House.

 

 

In the midst of their feverish fight for the presidency, politicians love to decry the “war on the middle class” and suggest that ordinary Americans face bitter hard-times. In this context, it’s ironic that the Democrats most recently debated in Las Vegas – which draws more than 39 million visitors a year, 87% of them American. Most of these Sin City thrill-seekers are solidly middle class; only 24% boast household income above $100,000. Yet they manage to spend an average per trip of $652 on gambling, $261 on food and drink, and $141 on shows. Meanwhile, even more Americans—45 million – visit Orlando and its theme parks in a year, and those mostly Disney-bound tourists boast an average household income of $73,000. Sure, the middle class feels pinched with the scary price of gas, medical care and college tuition, but considering our ongoing investment in pricey vacations or regular restaurant meals, some of the whining may be inappropriate.

The Thanksgiving holiday provides an opportunity to refocus on the motivations of early New England settlers, who crossed the ocean not to escape the Old World, but to change it by the force of their example. For Pilgrims in Plymouth, or their Puritan neighbors in Massachusetts Bay, the idea of a “city on a hill” was to create an ideal society that the corrupt world would be forced to admire and, ultimately, emulate it. In the fine new book “Dangerous Nation,” Robert Kagan makes clear that the drive to bring justice and democracy to the rest of the world didn’t begin with “neo-cons,” or even with Woodrow Wilson. It began with our New England forefathers, and it’s always been a motivating force in America’s international role.  Among many reasons to feel grateful to New England’s founders on this Thanksgiving, we can appreciate them as originators of the idea of our nation’s special, even sacred, mission in the world.

Most commentary about the recent Democratic debate focused on Hillary Clinton and her stronger, more self-assured performance. But the truly alarming aspect of that exchange involved the unanimous position of all candidates in preemptively opposing military action against Iran. They say they want to use the power of diplomacy to stop Iran from going nuclear, but their strident denunciation of any sort of American strike gives the Iranians much less reason to negotiate. The Democrats seem to worry less about Ahmadinejad getting nuclear weapons, than they do about President Bush taking decisive action to stop the development of those weapons. Senator Joe Biden even said he’d push for impeachment if the president launched a strike against Iranian nuclear facilities without a prior vote from Congress. Before the Iraq war, Bush sought such a vote and Biden, Clinton, and Edwards all voted for it. For partisan reasons, Democrats now undermine our Iran policy at a delicate and dangerous time.

Are voters ready to get behind a Presidential candidate whose undergraduate degree is from Ouachita Baptist University? Republican insiders face that question because of the powerful surge in Iowa for former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.

Four of our last six Presidents held Yale degrees; if Hillary wins, that makes five Yalies out of seven. Skeptics say Huckabee’s hurt by his background as the first male in family history ever to graduate from high school, and by the “hillbilly” sound of his name. But polls show a good chance for Huckabee to win an upset victory in Iowa, and if he does, the underdog factor will work powerfully to his advantage. The internet, and sudden press attention, can make him instantly competitive across the country. And concerning his educational background, he did graduate “magna cum laude” in just two-and-a-half years.

One of our other non-Yale recent presidents was Ronald Reagan, whose degree from Eureka College didn’t stop his two landslide victories.

Brian de Palma’s new movie “Redacted” (released in a handful of theatres this weekend) is a loathsome, crude, amateurish and grotesque assault on our troops in Iraq, offering a make-believe documentary about a half-dozen Marines who viciously rape and murder a fourteen year old girl and simultaneously slaughter her family. The movie also takes a snide, incidental swipe at talk radio, featuring a fat, loud-mouthed ring leader of the rapists identified only as “Rush.” The worst part of the film, beyond the clumsy acting and sloppy script, involves its portrayal of a simple, two-dimensional conflict in Iraq: the only violence on screen pits brutal Americans against oppressed Iraqis, who react with justified rage and determination in resisting the sadistic, sex-mad Yankee invaders. Nowhere does DePalma indicate that the chief victims of the so-called insurgents aren’t US forces, but Iraqi civilians. All reputable sources show Iraqi terrorists taking the lives of far more of their countrymen then American troops have claimed, and there’s no sane basis to expect that this murderous rampage will magically cease once our soldiers come home. The idea that the US remains in Iraq in order to torment and dominate Iraqis – rather than to protect innocent civilians from the monstrous cruelty of Islamo-Nazi killers – remains one of the big lies of the anti-war movement. That lie has received odious cinematic expression with “Redacted” – a wretched, irresponsible film that richly deserves the public rejection it will, inevitably, receive.

With Americans worried over the price of gas, the foreclosure crisis, Islamo-Nazi terror, Democratic tax-and-spend policies, global warming, the shrinking dollar and Britney Spears’ parenting skills, it’s hard to whip up too much hysteria about the writers strike in Hollyweird. Nevertheless, as a long time (but inactive) member of the WGA (“Writers Guild of America”) I feel honor-bound to make some comment about this famous labor stoppage. Moreover, savvy observers should be able to pick up a few significant lessons from the picket lines in Beverly Hills.

 

1)      MANY OF YOUR FAVORITE T.V. STARS AREN’T NEARLY AS CLEVER AS YOU BELIEVED THEM TO BE. The fact that the absence of writers forces talk shows like Jay Leno and Jon Stewart into re-runs must come as a revelation. When major stars, famed for their witty repartee, agree to shut down production because their writers refuse to work, it indicates an unhealthy (and embarrassing) dependence on other people to put words into their mouths.

2)      THE CULT OF VICTIMIZATION HAS DRIVEN HOLLYWOOD LIBERALS CRAZY. Most Americans feel envious of screen-writers: they work at a job anyone would cherish and some of them make big money. Nevertheless, the Gucci crowd manning (or personing)  the picket lines in Glitter Gulch clearly wants to identify with abused and impoverished working men in the Great Depression or the Third World. In this context, rhetoric about “oppression” and “exploitation” sounds ridiculous – as do references to “bosses” and “workers.” Instead of taking pride in their success and creative achievements, they choose to identify with humble, downtrodden, powerless losers who can find salvation only in their union. This sense that someone is always taking advantage of you—that despite all the trappings of privilege, you’ve been perpetually gypped – is an essential element in the worldview of Tinseltown radicals.

3)      YES, THERE IS LIFE AFTER TELEVISION. According to all reports, viewers feel annoyed by this strike, rejecting the re-runs and reality shows offered as replacements for their suspended favorite series. This experience may benefit America at large, even while it damages the entertainment industry. The average American watches TV nearly thirty hours each week, but the writers strike should help break that destructive, distracting habit for many disgruntled consumers. If this interruption in our standard television addiction helps ordinary citizens watch less of the Boob tube then the writers and producers may both lose in the strike, but the American people will come out as the big winners.

 

On November 12^th, America’s most prestigious newspaper offered an alarming indication of its priorities in covering the ongoing struggle in Iraq. A front-page article in the New York Times announced: “SECURITY GUARD KILLS IRAQI DRIVER: Eyewitnesses Say Taxi Posed No Threat.” Readers had to dig deep inside the paper, however, before they found an account (on Page A8) of announcements by the Iraqi government and US military officials about dramatically reduced violence. Suicide attacks, car bombings and other terrorist attacks fell 77 percent in Baghdad since this time last year, and thousands of displaced families have begun to return. Moreover, Major General Rick Lynch, commander of US forces south of the capital, told the press that he believes the decrease in violence will hold—but the New York Times altogether ignored his words. General Lynch cited the 26,000 Iraqis recruited in his own area of command to help target militants. “If we didn’t have so many people coming forward to help, I’d think this is a flash in the pan. But that’s just not the case,” he declared. The Times not only failed to report this aspect of the story, or to feature any of the good news on the front page, but also chose to highlight the case of a single taxi driver allegedly shot by an American contractor. No wonder that the courageous Joe Lieberman commented last week about those who “have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq, reluctant to acknowledge the progress we are now achieving.” The newspaper that exists to publish “All the News That’s Fit to Print” might consider a revised slogan: “All the Bad News that Fits, We Print.”

Tom Tancredo has run an angry, mean-spirited presidential campaign, trying to foment national hysteria over illegal immigration. The embarrassing failure of his candidacy proves that public attitudes on this issue are more complex and conflicted than Tancredo’s single-minded hostility.

In Iowa, Tancredo spent more money than any other candidate except Romney, and visited the state more than 20 times—more than all rivals except Romney and Huckabee. But for all this time and money, he registers only 1 percent in Iowa polls, with similarly insignificant showings in all other states.

Tancredo spent more than three times the Iowa money as Huckabee, but the former Arkansas governor—a relative moderate on immigration—draws 19 times Tancredo’s support. The failure of Tancredo’s ranting demagoguery is good for the GOP, encouraging realistic approaches to border security and dealing with millions of illegals already here. His recently announced retirement from Congress also signals new chances to move beyond slogans and rage toward constructive debate.

Governor Mike Huckabee derserves the current surge in his presidential campaign, but he ought to drop a phrase that’s raised needless controversy. Several times, Huckabee described the 40 million American abortions since Roe v. Wade as a “holocaust,” a characterization that hurts the pro-life cause.

In Hitler’s Holocaust, the government committed murder; since Roe, our government has, at worst, permitted murder. The government didn’t kill those babies: doctors and mothers did, with more than 25 percent of American women over 21 admitting to at least one abortion. Comparing these women to Auschwitz killers won’t help win their support for the cause of human life.

For those who organized and operated Hitler’s gas chambers, death would have been an appropriate fate, but should a responsible leader imply that abortion providers and women who’ve gotten abortions similarly deserve to die? Huckabee should drop the ill-considered analogy, which also troubles Jews and all others who lost relatives in the Holocaust.

The recent debate of Democratic Presidential candidates featured a disastrous performance by front-runner Hillary Clinton. She gave conflicting, equivocal answers to every question she faced—waffling on Iraq, Iran, taxes, social security, drivers licenses for illegals, and even the prospect of opening her own papers at the National Archives.

To mitigate the damage, aides appealed for sympathy based on gender—portraying Hillary as one defenseless woman with ten hostile men, including NBC moderators, ganging up on her. This approach raises painful questions: if Hillary can’t stand up to Tim Russert, how is she supposed to stand up to Vladimir Putin—especially since Russert doesn’t have nuclear weapons behind him? If she buckles and doubletalks facing John Edwards, how will she confront Ahmadinejad or Hugo Chavez?

Her weakness gives Republicans a great opportunity if they hone their ability to answer tough questions directly and unequivocally—giving America the straight talk that they’re certainly not getting from Senator Clinton.