IT OCCURRED TO ME me watching Sen. John Thune's victory speech last night that one of the things the 2004 election campaign has done is brought America's religious faith back out of the closet, and I don't mean just for Fundamentalists, or only for those of us who are Christians, but in fact for anyone who recognizes and invokes a benevolent Higher Power. This may be the most profound impact of all, extending far beyond the election – the long-overdue reversal of the down-with-spirituality trend begun in the 1950s by Madalyn Murray (subsequently Madalyn Murray O’Hair), the late, unlamented queen of a singularly malicious brand of lockstep atheism. O'Hair, who was murdered by one of her own disciples of godlessness, successfully sued to prohibit prayer in the public schools and sought to suppress religious or spiritual observance in all of the nation’s public domains and functions.
While O'Hair did not entirely succeed in the latter quest, her endeavors were enthusiastically supported by most of the mainstream media, which generally endorses Marx’s notion that religion is merely an opiate of the masses – surely a hypocritical stance given that religion recognizes only one Sabbath per week, while the media peddles opiate 24/7/365. O'Hair was also beloved by the Hollywood pornocracy, and the resulting threesome – pornocrats, newsmongers and Mad Madalyn herself – bullied America into regarding religious faith as the ultimate faux pas. Christian, Wiccan, Buddhist, Jew, American Indian – it made no difference; you were pressured to hide your spirituality just as polite society once concealed its insanity, bastardy and masturbation. Indeed the only exception to the expression-of-faith taboo was Islam – encouraged no doubt because it includes particularly succinct expressions of the same hate-America doctrines that have motivated so much other mischief since the 1960s.
But now Americans are again becoming unashamed of their spiritual convictions, and I believe that one of the key results will not be the New Fundamentalist Inquisition the leftists anticipate with such fear and loathing but rather a renewed flowering of genuine ecumenicism. This is not to say the Left’s concerns are irrational. Alas, they are not; neither are the identical worries of libertarians and non-Fundamentalist conservatives. But I believe tolerance will prevail. And ecumenicism was the ultimate direction in which our public religious observances were gradually leading before Madalyn and her Madalynoids declared their vindictive war on the entire spiritual dimension of life, the one dimension without which being itself withers into meaninglessness – or so most Americans seem to believe, myself surely among them.
Two interesting links today. One is to an Associated Press story exposing how Kofi Annan demonstrated once again his Third-World-tyrant’s morals by arbitrarily suppressing an American woman’s sexual harassment complaint. The AP’s report – the sort of “this-is-your-real-United-Nations-in-action” revelation I expect we will see a lot more of during the next four years, is linked here. Then, to end on a positive note – something I promise I will try to do more often now that I’m no longer obsessed with the election – there is a genuinely wonderful dog story here, a report that illustrates vividly the true brilliance with which dogs sometimes find ways to express their love and concern – that and why it is a barking dog should never be merely dismissed or ignored.
Posted by Loren at November 4, 2004 04:42 AM