Does failure to support Mitt Romney’s presidential bid qualify an individual as an anti-Mormon bigot?  

That’s the annoying message subliminally conveyed by the Romney campaign and expressed far less subtly by some of the governor’s increasingly desperate supporters. At a loss to explain the under-funded Mike Huckabee’s polling leads in Iowa, South Carolina, Florida and elsewhere, Romney loyalists assume that the Arkansan’s startling electoral rise depends entirely on prejudice against the LDS church. According to this theory, Evangelical Christians are too suspicious of Mormons even to consider supporting one of them for President, so instead they turn to an unqualified, unimpressive, unknown country bumpkin. 

For the record, let me say that I for one would be honored and proud to vote for a Mormon for president. As I’ve made clear on my show many times, members of the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints are good citizens and great people – hard-working, generous, morally serious, patriotic, and pro-family. All Christians and Jews can learn a great deal from the spectacular success and refreshing wholesomeness of this vigorous religious community.  

But the fact that I’d be glad to vote for a Mormon, doesn’t mean that I want to vote for this Mormon ---and.Governor Romney looks less and less like a viable candidate to me. Part of the problem is the arrogance behind the current posture of the Romney camp. His backers suggest that their guy is so obviously qualified and brilliant and charismatic and wonderful that the only possible reason anyone could fail to endorse him must have something to do with his religious faith. 

There’s an odd sort of jujitsu employed in some of the public arguments: the only way you can prove, definitively, that you’re not an anti-Mormon bigot is to support Mitt. That line of reasoning parallels the notion that you can’t show you’re not a woman-hater unless you endorse Hillary, or that you won’t demonstrate that you’ve conquered racism without backing Barack. 

Come on, guys – there’s plenty of reason to oppose any or all of these candidates without imputing racism or sexism or religious bigotry to your opponents. 

It’s troubling that it was Mitt Romney, not Mike Huckabee, who gave the campaign’s biggest address on religion and politics, and it’s the Romney rooters, not the Huck-a-Nuts, who seem most eager for every opportunity to discuss the role of faith in the campaign. 

In response to this manipulation, we need a clear assertion that refusal to join the Romney bandwagon doesn’t provide evidence of religious bigotry. It may, however, indicate a need for the former Massachusetts Governor to upgrade his campaign with a more positive focus, a clearer issues message, fewer attacks on rivals, and a less defensive edge.   

Americans can’t agree on key issues in next year’s election, but we all expect integrity in the electoral process itself – which means, in part, making sure that only U.S. citizens get to cast a ballot. With at least twelve million immigrants living here illegally, the threat of non-citizens swaying elections is very real and the need for producing tamper proof photo ID’s at the polls is clear and obvious. Nevertheless, a new survey by Parade Magazine showed an overwhelming majority – some 61% -- gave a “No!” answer to the question, “Should You Need a Photo ID to Vote?”  One typical opponent of requiring identification for voters said: “Mandating photo IDs would adversely impact the poor, young and elderly and skew the results toward what privileged voters want.” Another survey participant said that “voter fraud isn’t a problem in the U.S., but getting people out to vote is.” Unfortunately, those who want to expand the number of voters at all costs – even if it means giving the franchise to those who are legally ineligible – are often joined by conservatives who are allergic to any form of national, government issued identification card. Attempts to require ID for voting ran into judicial trouble – and solid Democratic opposition – in Georgia and the evidence suggests that officials across the country will be forced to accept hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of questionable votes in the election of 2008. When we can’t even organize and require identification for voting, how can we ever hope to put in place a functional national system to demand that only legal residents get  to work in this country? The first step toward any meaningful reform is a standardized, tamper-proof identification card (probably with some form of biometric verification) that would be restricted to legal residents and would clearly note citizenship status – making sure as quickly as possible that no non-citizens are allowed to vote. 

. Recent headlines announced a sudden rise in the teen birthrate and Planned Parenthood and CNN lost no time in blaming the abstinence education programs backed by Christian conservatives. For one thing, the unexpected increase in pregnancies among teenagers hardly represents a crisis: it’s a 3% increase after 14 straight years of decline, and teen pregnancy rates are still more than 30% lower than they were in 1991. It’s also ridiculous to single out the limited funding for abstinence education, when the federal government still devotes six times the money toward programs that emphasize birth control and that Planned Parenthood enthusiastically supports. Moreover, most commentators forgot to mention that birthrates not only increased for teenagers, but also went up for women in their 20’s, 30’s and even 40’s. This increase could even indicate a cultural change that’s basically positive: with more and more Americans looking at children as a blessing rather than a burden. Unfortunately, it also no doubt reflects the rapidly disappearing stigma attached to out-of-wedlock birth and the general obsession with sexuality in our society. In any event, it’s outrageous to blame religious conservatives who are the strongest voice for placing that sexuality in a responsible marital context.  

Every year, the media churn out stories about the so-called “December Dilemma” --- accounts of mixed families trying to balance Christmas or Hanukah. Considering that far less than a million households feature partners of split Jewish and Christian commitment this fascination seems odd, even bizarre. A recent New York Times story called “A Holiday Medley, Off Key” focused on these Jewish-Christian conflicts, citing the absurd figure of 28 MILLION mixed-religion households – when the highest number ever cited for all Jews in the United States is 5.2 million. The times featured a gay couple in which the Jewish partner said he “felt guilty” about decorating their Christmas tree. Actually, Jewish tradition is far more emphatic in disapproval of homosexuality than of hanging ornaments. The problem with all these stories – about blending religious elements, with Menorahs and “Silent Night,” dreydels and manger scenes – is that they trivialize both religious traditions. One of the couples described by the Times made that trivialization sickeningly explicit by describing a Jewish husband married to a Christian wife who honored his “tradition” by taking a bagel, covering it with shellac, inserting a red Christmas bulb into its hole, and placing it atop their tree as an interfaith ornament. I don’t believe that the Children of Israel have survived exile and pogroms and holocausts over the course of two millennia in order to see their faith expressed by a non-edible (and no doubt non-kosher) “Everything Bagel” that’s been carefully shellacked. The truth is Christmas is a serious holiday about the birth of the Savior; Hanukah (just concluded tonight)  is a serious holiday about resisting assimilation and standing up to paganism. Both deserve more respect than they get in cutesy stories about the “December Dilemma.”

Within hours of his triumphant and historic speech on religion and politics, Mitt Romney faced a shabby embarrassment closer to home. The Boston Glone discovered that the landscape company he employed to take care of his lawn still hired illegal aliens to provide that service – some three months after Romney had promised publicly to deal with the problem. The former Massachusetts governor is right that he shouldn’t be expected to check personally on the papers of his hired gardeners. But the fact is that Romney, like other immigration hard-liners, has called for a massive crackdown, even criminal penalties, for all businesses that hire illegals. If he’s serious about that, why would he keep the same landscape company for months after he first learned they had a problem with undocumented workers? The deeper question for Romney – and the rest of us – is whether we really want to divert limited law enforcement resources to pursuing and busting companies that provide services that even presidential candidates, apparently, find indispensable? If we do, we’ll have to reassign police and prosecutors from going after violent criminals to going after lawn care businesses—or else we’ll need a massive expansion of law enforcement and a big growth of government.

In his big speech on religion and politics, Mitt Romney sought to achieve two blatantly contradictory goals. 

First, as a member of a minority faith that’s viewed skeptically by many Americans, he needed to persuade people that his religion shouldn’t matter in a political context. 

Second, as a conservative and a candidate for the GOP nomination, he needed to identify with the Republican majority that believes religion in general should matter a lot – and should play a role in informing governmental and political decisions. 

How, then, could he simultaneously argue that faith must be an important factor in politics, but that his faith should count for nothing in evaluating his candidacy? 

To an amazing extent, Romney’s speech earlier today succeeded brilliantly in satisfying both goals. The key to that notable and perhaps historic success involved the candidate’s eloquent ability to insist on the proper distinction between religious values (which nearly all Americans share), and specific doctrines and traditions (on which we differ dramatically).  

The former Massachusetts governor drew this distinction with the most memorable rhetoric of the Presidential campaign so far.  

He satisfied his first goal – arguing that his Mormon faith shouldn’t disqualify him – and he did so while affirming his personal loyalty and devotion. While acknowledging that there are some who “would prefer it if I would simply distance myself from my religion…or disavow one or another of its precepts,” he stoutly and emphatically refused to bend. “That I will not do,” he declared. “I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers – I will be true to them and to my beliefs. Some believe that such a confession of my faith will sink my candidacy. If they are right, so be it.” 

This is, frankly, precisely the sort of clarity and courage Americans expect of a presidential candidate. Romney would have already locked up the GOP nomination had he applied the same consistency and precision in facing other issues. 

Meanwhile, in today’s Texas speech he also refused to try to defend the history or theology of his church from its sometimes virulent critics. “There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church’s distinctive doctrines,” he said. “To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes President he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths.” 

In other words, he expressed the same refusal to discuss dogma as has his rival Mike Huckabee. When the former Arkansas governor is asked his opinion about whether Mormons are Christians, for instance, he doesn’t  “waffle” or “dodge,” but appropriately points out that such questions might be appropriate for a potential president of a theological school, but not for a potential President of the United States. George W. Bush similarly avoided questions about whether he personally believed that Jews and other non-Christians would go to heaven, as did Joe Lieberman when he firmly closed the door on all inquiries on why he didn’t embrace Jesus as his Savior. 

If Romney sounded persuasive about the inappropriate nature of theological discussions in a political campaign, how then could he simultaneously make the case -- as he emphatically did – that religion should play a greater, not lesser role in our public life? 

He did so by stressing the common beliefs of all major American faiths. “We should acknowledge the Creator as did the Founders- in ceremony and word,” he said. “He should remain on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history, and during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places…I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from ‘the God who gave us liberty.’ Nor would I separate us from our religious heritage. Perhaps the most important question to ask a person of faith who seeks a political office, is this: does he share these American values: the equality of human kind, the obligation to serve one another, and a steadfast commitment to liberty. They are not unique to any one denomination. They belong to the great moral inheritance we hold in common. They are the firm ground on which Americans of different faiths meet and stand as a nation, united.” 

Even the most embittered critic of the LDS church must read these words and agree with them – and grant that Romney and his rivals for the GOP nomination all share the values he describes. Would an outspoken atheist share the core religious values of the rest of the populace? Probably not, and that’s why judging a devout, church-going Mormon is different from evaluating, say, a Christopher Hitchens or a Richard Dawkins who is openly hostile to organized religion.  

The key question that divides people of faith from militant secularists is the utility of religion for this society. Does America benefit – or suffer – from the tens of millions who regular attend church, synagogue, temple or mosque?  

Romney aligns clearly with religious Christians and Jews in his affirmative view on the role of faith – and the desire to see not just his faith, but all faiths, vital and flourishing and nourishing the Republic. 

In the most memorable words of a wonderful speech, Mitt Romney declared: “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom…Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.” 

I’ve been critical of the former Massachusetts governor in other contexts, but these words deserve to be remembered. It’s possible – desirable, even – that future school children will recall them for their power and elegance. 

There’s still more than three weeks before the Iowa Caucuses and I still feel potent admiration and affection for Romney rivals Huckabee, McCain and Giuliani. 

But in Mitt’s remarks today, he not only looked and sounded like a President – he actually looked and sounded like a great one. All Americans should feel encouraged and grateful.    

The new movie “The Golden Compass” is a slick, expertly crafted and captivating piece of pop culture entertainment but it goes out of its way to convey aggressive anti-religious messages. The bad guys in the fantasy film are involved with an international conspiracy called “The Magisterium,” headquartered in imposing cathedrals, and trying to force free-spirited children to follow its rules. Unlike the Harry Potter series, the movie is based on books by an author who’s proud of his atheist, anti-Christian agenda. Some commentators say that children should be allowed to reach their own conclusions about the messages of the movie, but parents who make big sacrifices for religious education should think twice before exposing their kids to such seductive propaganda for allowing emotion to triumph over authority. After all, how many religious households would welcome the idea that the word “daemon” applies to cuddly, protective animal companions that accompany each child—until the mean, fun-killing Magisterium tries to remove them?  

The brutal truth about the holiday of Hanukah, which begins this year on December 5^th, is that it is intensely and incurably politically incorrect. The heroes of the Hanukah story—the Maccabees—were uncompromising zealots and fundamentalists, vigorous representatives of the Judean “religious right” of the Second Century B.C.  

There was nothing tolerant or relativistic about them: they risked their lives to take back the Holy Temple in Jerusalem from the Hellenistic multi-culturalists who had installed a variety of idols and pagan gods to provide worship alternatives. The very name Hanukah comes from the Hebrew for “dedication” or “consecration”: it’s about purification and re-commitment on a national and personal level, and standing up to misguided alien cultures, no matter how popular, seductive and powerful.

This year, when the Jewish holiday arrives nearly three weeks before Christmas, there’s a good chance to keep its bracing and challenging themes appropriately distinct from the generalized seasonal cheer. 

  Why is Mike Huckabee surging in the polls?

  He’s not only moved into a five point lead in Iowa (according to the latest Des Moines Register Poll) but he’s also in second place in Florida and within striking distance of the lead in South Carolina (which is virtually a four way tie).

   Some voices in the Romney camp suggest that the recent strength of the former Arkansas governor derives from religious bigotry. According to this logic, Evangelical Christians who can’t accept Mitt’s Mormonism, have rallied to the Baptist Pastor, Huckabee. Romney’s scheduled speech on Thursday at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library in Texas will confront the doubts about his affiliation with the LDS church and, Romney supporters ardently hope, show skeptical Christians that he shares their values. Meanwhile, they focus on the religious prejudice against their candidate because it offers the only comfortable explanation for the fact that no poll shows him with a strong Iowa lead over Huckabee despite outspending his Arkansas rival by a ratio of some 20 to 1.

    Meanwhile, other campaigns (Thompson, Giuliani) dismiss Huckabee’s growing support as a fluke and a flash-in-the-pan, focusing on his tepid fund-raising success (even Crazy Uncle Ron Paul has raised far more) and his lack of organization in the states that follow Iowa in short order. Some talk show hosts have even discerned a media conspiracy in the press coverage of Huckabee in the last few days—suggesting that liberal journalists are building up the former clergyman as a way of discrediting the Republican Party as rural and fundamentalist, while undermining the only GOP contenders with a real chance of winning in November.

   Actually, it seems obvious that the real reason for the intense media attention to the Huck Man involves an irresistible story line: the ultimate underdog coming out of nowhere with charm and folksy humor to challenge established candidates with vastly more financial resources and greater name recognition. In baseball, the Colorado Rockies became a huge story for a few weeks, beating teams with big-name stars and lavish payrolls in a hugely improbably winning streak – until the well-funded Red Sox machine crushed them in the World Series.  America loves “Cinderella” stories in politics as well as sports, and in that context the “Impossible Dream” of a President Huckabee makes a great fairy tale--- at least until he wakes up during he primary process and finds out the glass slipper doesn’t fit, or that his White House coach has turned back into a pumpkin.

     Aside from eternal affection for an underdog, there’s another crucial factor driving Huckabee’s surge: he’s run a far more positive, less petty, less bitter campaign than his prominent rivals. “I’m a conservative, but I’m not angry about it,” Huckabee tells eager crowds. Meanwhile, Rudy and Romney snipe at each other with childish, demeaning, “gotcha” assaults (who didn’t cringe at the “Sanctuary City” vs. “Sanctuary Mansion” exchange in the last debate?) and damage their credibility, dignity and stature.

    For Giuliani in particular, his recent counter-punching with Romney makes America’s greatest mayor look sad and small: in asking the confidence of his fellow citizens for the nation’s highest office at a time of terrorist and economic threat, does it truly matter that his opponent once contracted with a landscaping company that may have employed illegal aliens?.

   Huckabee, meanwhile, floats above the battle and conveys an unshakable sense of warmth, decency, good humor, and unmistakable (and appropriate) affection for his Republican opponents.

   It’s not an accident that in nomination battles since 1980, the most affable, positive, optimistic Republican candidate always wins. Reagan and both Bushes earned the Presidency because they shunned anger (unlike rivals like Bob Dole or Pat Buchanan or the 2000 model John McCain) and came across as pleasant personalities, comfortable in their own skin.

   In this sense, Huckabee fits the bill – and naturally gains on his bickering competitors.

   Meanwhile, it’s also worth a few lines here to defend the Arkansan from the claim that he’s a secret “big government liberal” or, in the phrase of the Club for Growth, “Tax Hike Mike.”

   According to figures from the non-partisan Tax Foundation (based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Department of Commerce), Huckabee’s term as governor (1996-2007) led to a modest increase in the overall State-Local tax burden for Arkansas: from 10.1% in the year he became governor to 11.1% the last year he served. In terms of overall tax burden (state-local-federal) Arkansas remained virtually unchanged--- from 30.3% (39^th among the 50 states) to 30.5% (32^nd place).

   Mitt Romney, on the other hand, saw sharper increases in taxes during his single gubernatorial term (2003 to 2007) in Massachusetts. The state-local burden rose from 9.8% the year of his election to 10.5% his last year as governor. Meanwhile, the total tax burden went up from 31.2% to 33.9% -- vaulting Massachusetts from 9^th place to 7^th place in the nation.
   These numbers don’t prove that Huckabee was a great governor, or that Romney was a poor governor: actually, both men count as exemplary public servants and authentic conservatives (and both of them have taken Grover Norquist’s “No New Taxes” Pledge—in contrast to their rivals Giuliani, Thompson and McCain, who have refused to do so). Both candidates deserve respect for doing a solid job in handling state legislatures with overwhelming Democratic majorities and scoring some notable achievements as governor (though both states flipped to Democratic control in 2006).

    For those who are interested in the truth, however, the growth of the tax burden in Arkansas under 11 years of Huckabee looks no worse (and actually a tad better) than the growth of taxes in Massachusetts under 4 years of Romney.

   Oh yes, and as to the total tax burden under President Bush---

   Federal Taxes went down from 22.5% in 2001 to 21.7% this year, and the total tax burden (including state-local-and-federal) shrank from 33.0% to 32.7%. Inspiring progress? Hardly. But in view of the substantial cost of defending the nation against the terrorist threat, it certainly counts as a step in the right direction.

   One can only hope that Huckabee, Romney or any other Republican will more decisively in that direction (particularly through tax simplification), while all Democrats have announced their attention to raise taxes. On this particular Democratic promise, there's every reason to believe them.       

Polygamy advocate Mark Henkel asks a powerful question: “If it’s all right for Heather to have two mommies, then why can’t she have two mommies and one daddy?” His challenge provides perspective on current demands that government endorse same-sex marriage. Why should society support the novelty of gay relationships ahead of polygamy, which was practiced nearly everywhere for thousands of years and would probably appeal to far more people than homosexuality?  

The right answer to polygamists should be government neutrality: if private relationships involve consenting adults, then it makes no more sense to prosecute a male who claims he has two wives than to go after a guy who boasts of two girlfriends. But that doesn’t mean government should license polygamous relationships, any more than it should sponsor homosexual coupling.  

In both cases, those who choose unconventional alternatives to one-man/one-woman marriage—still the best situation for child-rearing—shouldn’t be punished, but they shouldn’t be promoted either.

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.