John, now we're getting down to basics. This is very good.

"You were doing so well until you started going off on Obama as if it were he who who was standing in the way of our goals."

Our goals? What are our goals? Barack Obama's policy proposals are pretty much the same as those of Hillary Clinton. But I didn't fight against Clinton tooth and nail over nuanced policy differences. Again and again Obama talks of a new kind of politics. But to what end? Pundits hear Obama's words and apply the word "transformational". What does that mean? Or as Walter Mondale famously asked, "Where's the beef?"

Part of Obama's genius as a politician has been his saleman's skill in using the words "hope" and "change" in a deliberately non-specific way to manipulate people with quite different hopes and agendas for change. Fine. He's got our attention. We're in his showroom. Now I want to see the goods. If Obama is peddling what Clinton was peddling then what, exactly, was all that fuss over?

"But I have never been tempted to rail about perfection when the country is being taken over by right wing zealots. Do we have a responsibility to our children or not?"

Yes, I am mindful about Voltaire's caution about the best being the enemy of the good. "But let's work the problem. Let's not make the problem worse by guessing" [Ed Harris - Apollo 13]. We agree every last vestige of Reaganism and its bastard child Bushism should be swept from power. You'll get no argument from me on that.

But is Reaganism the underlying problem or is it a symptom of the underlying problem? Do we have a responsibility to our children to identify and address the underlying problem? My perspective leads me to conclude that the underlying problem didn't originate with Ronald Reagan. Nor is the underlying problem the inherent imperfectibility of human nature. The underlying problem lies elsewhere and it can be addressed and solved.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was onto something fundamental with his farewell address even if it was a bit hypocritical. It is a cruel irony of history that his important but forgotten farewell address was eclipsed three days later with John F. Kennedy's frivolous but memorable inaugural address. (An uncanny foreshadowing of Obama?) The military-industrial-congressio­nal complex Eisenhower warned us of was so abused as a whipping boy by the radicals of the 60's that Eisenhower's larger point has been lost.

Conventional wisdom has it that the United States triumphed in the Second World War. Tom Brokaw popularized the term "The Greatest Generation" to descibe those who fought. But Eisenhower clearly saw the darker side of that "triumph". I am going to make the case that America's "triumph" in the Second World War set us on a path of catastrophic moral decline. To that end, indulge my use of a literary device to personify evil.

Imagine what Satan's consternation must have been like when he surveyed the world situation in the opening decade of the twentieth century. The newly industrialized world was peaceful and prosperous. Democracy and social reform were spreading outwards from this base. An explosion in international trade was binding historical enemies together. And those pesky United States of America were poised to stride onto the center of the world stage with their really annoying idealism and moralism. This rubbed salt in a wound, for Satan had been nursing a grudge against America since the Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln's ill-considered boast that America was "the last, best hope for earth" had gotten Satan's full, undivided and wrathful attention. Satan had jealously regarded this earthly realm to be his domain ever since his masterstroke with the fruit. But Satan didn't let his anger at Lincoln's presumption blind him to the possibility of exploiting America's propensity for self-righteous hubris. At the dawn of the twentieth century Satan saw his opening to put America in its place once and for all.

This required exquisite planning on Satan's part. Satan's game is not chess or poker. It is the solitary version of dominoes. Set them up just right on the stage of history, give the first one a tap, and stand back. (See "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" for a brilliant parable on this theme.) Satan had one of his dominoes strategically placed in a Balkan backwater called Sarajevo. When that domino fell in 1914 it started a chain of falling dominoes of which the Great War (so-called before we sensibly decided to index them) was only the first. Communist Russia was another.

Long story short, the First World War led inexorably to the Second World War as Satan's dominoes fell. The trick now was to entice a stubbornly isolationalist America into the trap. Two key strategic dominoes had been in place in the fateful year of 1898, one domino in Cuba and another in Hawaii. The falling of these dominoes in 1898 had almost by accident given America a colonial presence in the Pacific. America's "accidental" presence in the Pacific put her on a collision course with Imperial Japan. Satan's domino at Pearl Harbor was waiting.

[Of course, in Satan's schemes there are no accidents. An idealistic country deeply hostile to overt colonialism had been tempted in the name of idealism to acquire colonies. See how Satan works? Use a nation's self-righteous hubris to tempt it into betraying its most precious ideals. Apply this tactic as often as necessary. Count on the nation's self-righteous hubris to blind it to your repeated temptations. Patiently wait for the nation's precious ideals to wither and die. History of America? You tell me. Destiny of America? We'll see soon enough.]

So what can be said of the Second World War? It opened up the gates of Hell here on earth. That precious idealism of America and her allies was tested. So how well did we do? Let's just touch on the highlights. Hamburg, 45,000 innocent civilians killed, Dresden, 35,000 innocent civilians killed, Tokyo, 120,000 innocent civilians killed, Hiroshima, 140,000 innocent civilians killed, Nagasaki, 80,000 innocent civilians killed.

In fairness, these numbers sum to about half a million lives which is only 1% of the estimated total killed in the Second World War. Moreover, the sacrifice of half a million lives saved millions more by shortening the war. Do you notice that Satan is smiling? This is exactly what he has been waiting so patiently to hear. It's the sound of precious ideals being ground into dust by the millstone of rationalization. It is the sound of America's Second World War "triumph" being ground into dust by the millstone of self-delusion.

Saint Augustine thought deeply about the dilemma and the challenge that warfare posed for Christians. The dilemma is simple. Be damned if you do wage war. Be killed or enslaved if you don't. The challenge for Christians is that a "turn the other cheek" moral philosophy only allows for the "be killed or enslaved" option. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that is the option that Jesus ultimately chose after agonizing over the decision in Gethsemane. If the decision was agonizing for Jesus, it should be no less agonizing for those who call themselves Christians.

Augustine attempted to square this circle with a solution that makes passing camels through the eyes of needles seem easy by comparison. Take up the sword only if you must, he said, and with the knowledge that you risk damnation if you strike your enemy for any motive other than love. Yeah, right. Now that's an impossibly high standard for anybody not a saint. But the thing about impossibly high standards is that they aren't meant just for saints.

Augustine's impossibly high standard should tell us something about the nature of war. The idea that there can be "triumph" in war is a morally wrong delusion. "Triumph" in war is a moral oxymoron. Taking up the sword has to be an admission of a moral failure to meet Augustine's impossibly high standard. Now, there is a nuance to this. We cannot avoid moral failure. In my tradition, Catholicism, this simple fact of life is formalized in the doctrine of original sin.

So where does that leave the moral status of our warriors? This is not an academic question for me as my son serves in the military. The answer is not comforting. We ask those who fight for us to put themselves at physical risk to be sure. But from a Christian perspective, that's not the worst of it. We ask those who fight for us to put themselves at the very gravest moral risk. There is no Christian doctrine I know of that supports the Nuremburg defense.

Until shortly after the Second World War, the Department of Defense was called the Department of War. If I had to assign a date to the beginning of America's catastrophic moral decline it wouldn't be 1945 August 6. No, it would be 1947 September 18 for it was on that date that we formally changed the name of the Department of War. Assigning to the word "war" the euphemism of "defense" was a morally catastrophic mistake. Another of Satan's strategically placed dominoes fell on that September day.

Think carefully about what happened on 1947 September 18. War is the very worst of bad things humans can be tempted into. But defense? Defense of our loved ones? Defense of innocent civilians? Isn't the defense of innocent civilians morally right, even morally imperative? Hold that thought for a moment.

Hamburg, 45,000 innocent civilians killed, Dresden, 35,000 innocent civilians killed, Tokyo, 120,000 innocent civilians killed, Hiroshima, 140,000 innocent civilians killed, Nagasaki, 80,000 innocent civilians killed. Are you still holding that thought about the moral imperative to defend innocent civilians? Yes? Well, now you know the meaning of cognitative dissonance. Or the meaning of hypocrisy. On moral issues they are the same thing.

On 1947 September 18 America changed war into defense. On that September day the very worst of bad things humans can be tempted into was changed into a morally righteous imperative. It is said that revenge is a dish best served cold. Satan let his revenge on Lincoln and Lincoln's "last, best hope for earth" cool for 82 years before it was served. And, Satan's greatest triumph, America didn't even notice what had happened on 1947 September 18.

By a strange coincidence, or maybe not, George Orwell was writing "1984" at the time. Orwell's fictional Oceania aslo had a Department of Defense. Orwell called it the Ministry of Peace. Around the same time, General Curtis LeMay, formerly in charge of reducing Japanese cities to heaps of ash, was organizing the Strategic Air Command. LeMay built SAC into an instrument capable of reducing Russian cities to heaps of ash. Not lacking a dark sense of humor, LeMay gave SAC the motto "Peace is Our Profession".

So not only do we ask those who fight for us to put themselves at the very gravest moral risk, but we also do everything we can to disguise that moral risk. We use all of the elements of denial, delusion, distraction and deception to convince our warriors that taking up the sword is something other than what it is, an admission of our moral weakness and failure.

Note that I am not passing judgment on our warriors. I am not a pacifist. I hope that I am not a hypocrite. In rejecting pacifism, I am admitting to my own cowardice, my own moral weakness and failure. In the Garden of Gethsemane, I would have chosen differently from Jesus. The dilemma and the challenge that warfare poses for Christians is the very worst dilemma and the very stiffest challenge Christians face.

Reluctantly rejecting pacifism is one thing. Embracing and glorifying militarism is another thing. Jimmy Carter famously admitted to committing adultery in his heart by lusting after women. I don't recall Carter ever admitting to engaging in orgies. If we as a nation chose to make the moral compromise and reject pacifism, we owe it to ourselves, and more importantly to our warriors, to reject the denial, delusion, distraction and self-deception that disguises the moral weakness and failure implicit in our choice. We have to admit that, in rejecting pacifism, we are flirting with Satan and putting ourselves and our warriors at enormous moral risk by doing so.

By embracing and glorifying militarism, and by wrapping it in the cloak of a moral imperative to defend the innocent, America now stands at the very threshold of the gates of Hell. We are way beyond flirting with Satan. First date, the Second World War, a war against evil. Second date, the Vietnam War, a war over ideology. Third date, the Iraq War, a war over oil. I detect a disturbing trend here about what it takes to motivate America to go to war. Hillary Clinton recently talked about being provoked into obliterating Iran. We have no idea where or when the next of Satan's strategically placed dominoes will fall and tempt us into igniting a nuclear Third World War. To repeat, America now stands at the very threshold of the gates of Hell.

So is there another political issue you would like to raise, John, that better merits my full and undivided attention? I am sympathetic to your point of view that getting the current batch of warmongers out of office is our top prioity. But the underlying problem is nonpartisan. Democrats Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson were deeply complicit in creating America's hellish addiction to militarism. Democrats Carter and Clinton were mostly content to let it fester. Even if Obama gets us out of the Iraq quagmire, that only returns us to the Carter/Clinton status quo ante.

That's just not good enough for me. It's certainly not good enough for my son who is literally in harms way. It's not good enough for every other warrior we put at moral risk when we ask them to take up the sword. So yes, I'll continue to support Barack Obama's candidacy but not unconditionally. Obama says he'll get us out of Iraq. That's great. I'm glad to hear it. It's a good start. But Obama will still be Commander in Chief after we leave Iraq and I haven't heard Obama say anything about America's self-destructive addiction to militarism.