This year, on Father's Day, I honor my Dad, a real liberal who was never even tempted to become a "Reagan Democrat." To him, putting the two words together was curiously blasphemous. He never needed government asistance for himself or his family, although he never earned much money. But he simply was against the idea of abandoning those who were less fortunate.

Millions of American families moved toward Reagan in 1980. The Democratic party and the Nation have never been the same, and, this year, we would like to win them back.

But in 1980, my Dad was truly a Democrat with a big "D" and did not abandon the party due to disappointment with programs that didn't work, or a change of heart, or an attraction to a Hollywood actor. My family was similar to most Reagan Democrats in that they were working class, although my Dad worked for 19 years after work to earn a bachelor's degree on the GI Bill.

And he never switched parties or beliefs. He remained loyal to his upbringing and philosophy of equality, and never voted Republican, particularly for Reagan, because he believed in the principles of the party and would not give up on them simply because of the past failures of a handful of social programs.

Let me speak for him.

Winning back so-called "Reagan Democrats" is not worth it if it means moving the party in the direction of the Republicans and Reagan himself. Principle-driven politics is the only kind of politics that is worth having.

Many voters react to the times or, as they grow older, simply start voting for what they percieve to be their personal interests. We have seen the results of self-centered voting. Taxes may go down for a bit, but tax loopholes for the well-heeled expand more and more. We have closed our eyes to the realities of the globe and to our weakest citizens for the misnomer "freedom" and at the expense of "justice and equality for all." The FDR-Truman-Kennedy-Johnson goal of eliminating poverty is further from reality than ever because of the lauded Reagan Democrats.

So, on Father's day, I honor my Dad who never lost faith. He is not alive this year, but he would have smiled and shook his head over the nomination of Senator Obama.

Obama is fortunate to be running in a political atmosphere that favors Democrats after the Bush years. He is also fortunate to have the skills necessary to finally campaign in a smarter way than the opposition and to expand the voter base for change.

This is hardly the time to retreat from principles. This is the time to regain the high ground after 28 years of scandalous Reaganite policies that have created the worst chasm between rich and poor since the industrial revolution. Let's welcome back Reagan Democrats if the will come back -- but let's not concede the principles they abandoned.

Thank you, John, for helpfully guiding the political debate in a useful direction. That one word you kept coming back to, "principles", is the key to framing the debate. Principles are the key to framing the debate because they are the very keystone of politics.

The most subversive force for good in the media today is Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show". Playing the role of court jester, Stewart is relentless in exposing the sartorial status of the emperor. This week Stewart showed a video clip of George Bush trying to explain why his administration's use of torture and related practices didn't violate the Geneva Convention's unequivocal ban on "outrages upon human dignity". <link>

Bush is far too juvenile to grasp the concept that respect for human dignity is the foundation principle upon which Western civilization is built. The principle has deep Biblical roots. The Founding Fathers almost took the status of the principle for granted but, anticipating a horror like the Bush administration, they wisely banned cruel and unusual punishment in the Eighth Amendment in the Bill of Rights. They could not have anticipated Bush's end run around the Constitution with a wink and a nod from idiot-savants like Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia.

The question I would like to put forward for consideration is this: How did we come to a state of affairs by which the Republicans, with the willing collusion of the Democrats, have casually tossed the foundation principle of Western civilization out the window? More to the point, how did they do it without provoking riots in the streets? And doesn't that make the citizens of the United States passive accomplices in what has devolved into a betrayal of our principles and of our precious heritage of being bound to those principles?

There is a saying that it is hard to remind yourself that your objective is to drain the swamp when you're up to your ass in alligators. The "lessons of history" can be boiled down to this: Never forget that your objective is to drain the swamp. Maintaining perspective in the face of crises and distractions is of critical importance to any nation, but especially to a nation that has assumed the many burdens that America has.

America's narrowing of perspective over the last six decades, tunnel vision now bordering on blindness, has gotten us into a terrible and unforgiving nonpartisan national nightmare. Electing "an insecure, sadistic juvenile incapable of moral reasoning", in the words of Steve Almond, has now taken us to the very brink of the cliff. Can any politician take the hand of this nation stumbling around in the dark, lead it away from the cliff, and guide it back onto a narrow path illuminated with principles? Frankly, that is a question that leads me to despair because all of the evidence points to "no" as the answer.

pwoxby;

Thank you for your great comment. I just wish that you could avoid despairing so much. Even when despair is in some rational sense justified, it is at least just as productive to be hopeful.

Anyway, the question you asked was:

How did we come to a state of affairs by which the Republicans, with the willing collusion of the Democrats, have casually tossed the foundation principle of Western civilization out the window?

Well, I can't account for all of history but in the last five decades the answer seems to have three compontent answers.

1. Voting Rights & De-Segregation. These changes, the pillars of civil rights and the greatest acts of reversing racial hatred and neglect, occurred quickly in a period between 1955 and 1968. During this time, although Lyndon Johnson deftly used Southern Democrats to help him pass some of the enabling legislation, the Democratic party essentially lost the South for 10 successive Presidential election cycles and will still have not regained it by this year. Before this, Democrats, in return for toleration of Southern practices, had been able to enact New Deal reforms, far reaching social programs, and continued progress for a liberal society (with the exception of our black population). What ever you called it -- the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, or the Great Society, the point was always to adhere to a principle of perfecting the union. When the South deserted the party over the race issue, the liberal coalitions in Washington were fractured, and governing by Democrats became sporadic and more difficult even when majorities were in power.
2. Reagan. In 1980, after a decade of battling over issues like busing for integration, Vietnam, abortion rights, the death penalty, gun control, human rights, welfare, and crime -- the philosophy of the Southerners started seeping into Northern politics as well. The Republicans had already secured the South by 1980, but white working class voters in cities like Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Detroit began deserting the cities for suburbs in the great "white flight" and began adopting right wing beliefs and racial animosities. Reagan won among these so-called "Reagan Democrats" and they have stayed in the Republican party since.
3. Coaltion Between the Evangelical Right & Wall Street. The final blow to liberal principles occurred in the time between the 1980's and 2006 when politics became dominated by the manipulation of a huge part of the middle and lower class voters by the fiscal, anti-regulatory wing of Corporate America (i.e., most of it). Big money and big religion combined to create what seemed like an unbeatable force which mainly benefited the corporate elite who wanted low corporate taxes, special corporate loopholes, permission to gut workers' rights, and a back-off philosophy regarding regulation. But the actual constituency for these wall street values was miniscule in a nation with an average income of less than $50,000. In order to hoodwink folks into supporting their real goals, big money was merged into efforts to promote a right wing agenda on so-called "values" issues like guns, anti-abortion rights, pro-death penalty, prayer in the schools, anti-evolution, and most importantly, fear. Ironically, one of the most successful tactics employed by this wealthy elite, was to label liberals as the intellectual elite who were "out of touch" with American values. The wall street gangs behind these campaigns had no interest whatsoever in these "values" issues-- their only agenda was money. And you'll notice that, other than a handful of Supreme Court decisions, the "values" voters have actually gotten little or nothing for their capitulation. Rubes.

That's how it happened. The question now is whether we are ready to turn the page. The factors that give me hope are (1) a new sense of urgency about the environment; (2) the generation Y's new commitment to political participation and acceptance of gay rights; (3) a new electoral map that does not count on the South; (4) Obama; (5) a thirst for economic reform symbolized by huge majorities for universal health care; and (6) a new revulsion to war in part fueled by Bush's deceptions and in part by his incompetency.

These are real, palpable reasons to be cheerful and hopeful about a new direction. I will only begin to despair in November if these hopes to turn out to be naive.

I went to my wife's church, a fundamentalist non-denominational branch of a church originally founded by Amie Semple MacPherson.....I was amazed at the pastor at the pulpit railing about liberals and gun control....How God would come down on the issue of gun control was interesting to contemplate, but the message was obvious.

@ john adkisson:

Thanks, John, for the booster shot of a more hopeful perspective. As you point out, many of the factors that led to the ascendancy of Reagan/Bush/McCain Republicanism are transitory in the large scheme of things. The worst policy prescriptions of this toxic brand of conservatism have been discredited and the voters are not likely to give us another dose this election cycle.

But as I mulled these questions over in my mind today, a thought occurred to me. A piece of the puzzle is still missing. America is no longer widely considered as a force for moral good in the world. The chronology of events spanning seven decades that have taken us to this point is clear enough. But what is conspicuously missing, what has gone AWOL in our time, is moral outrage, moral accountability, and moral leadership.

My choice of seven decades is not arbitrary. As a Boomer, I was born in the shadow of the Second World War. I am haunted by the history of that conflict and, in particular, by the terrible moral compromises we made to prevail. Those moral compromises continued during the long Cold War and, almost as if by their own momentum, have come to characterize the so-called War on Terror.

So have we as a nation become so inured to our moral compromises, our moral failings, that we no longer see them? Does that explain the lack of outrage, the lack of accountability, the lack of leadership? This is what I fear has happened, what I fear is true. So how is it possible for a people not to see what is in front of their faces? Denial? Delusion? Distraction? Deception? All four? Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.

Denial. "I will never apologize for the United States. I don't care what the facts are." This was Vice President George H. W. Bush's infamous response to the American destruction of an Iranian commercial airliner with the loss of 290 civilians in 1988.

Delusion. "What moral compromises?" If everything we as a nation do serves a higher moral purpose then there can be no moral compromises. The ends really do justify the means. From Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.

Distraction. "America is the most powerful nation on earth." "Our President is the leader of the free world." "Our manifest destiny is to remain the world's sole superpower." " Americans are now God's chosen people." "Criticism of America is treason." You get the idea.

Deception: "Trust us." It's not about oil. Saddam Hussein really is behind 9/11. Iraq really is a direct threat to the U.S. Iran really is a direct threat to the U.S. and this time we don't have our fingers crossed behind our backs.

When a person cannot acknowledge their manifest moral weaknesses or failings we call that person a psychopath. What word do we apply to a nation with that condition? You see, John, I can be prone to more than just despair. As an idealist and a moralist, I would like to see our nation try live up to high standards of idealism and morality. As a realist, I know that we will fall short and sometimes fall tragically short. But what really generates a simmering anger deep within me is the sheer hypocrisy of a nation that trots around the globe pointing out the motes in the eyes of other nations while ignoring the beam in its own eye.

It is this anger that can yield to despair when I look at Barack Obama's campaign and see that Obama wouldn't touch this kind of discussion with a ten-foot pole. As a connoisseur of irony I simply note that Obama's pastor of twenty years wouldn't have the slightest difficulty in relating to the perspective offered here. Nor would Obama himself but in the name of precious electability he runs like a coward and a hypocrite from the root cause of America's moral decline, our self-destructive capacity for denial, delusion, distraction and self-deception.

Is Barack Obama really naive enough to believe that he should get elected before he shares with us his plan for reversing America's declining moral stature in the world? Is that how democracies work? Is American democracy now predicated on the belief that the American people can't handle the truth? If so, then Rev. Wright has it half right. We should scrap "God Bless America" and humbly pray that "God Help America".

pwoxby;

That was a really good comment. I simply don't understand why understandable anger should be the resting point of those feelings in a year of transition. We need warriors of hope.

There is also a new story just published in today's New York Times which should give you even more pause. I am about to write a post about it.

John McCain's lesson after his Vietnam War captivity, in an academic paper written in 1974, was that the failing of soldiers who gave in to torture were due to the likes of Bobby Kennedy and George McGovern (he cited them by name) because they had the unpatirotic gall to question the country's war mission. Absent from his analysis was any appreciation for the First Amendment or that historians have unanimously condemned that war and its tactics.

His solution? His solution which explains his stiff, unrelenting support for the war in Iraq, no matter how wrong, led him and leads him today to the following (paraphrased): soldiers should be indoctrinated before entering a conflict as to America's reasons for a war and that they are right and righteous. If a soldier fighting only out of patriotism or protection of his fellow soldier, doesn't agree with the policy, that soldier is not fit wear the uniform.

That McCain does not see this as shameful brain-washing that is fundamentally un-American, explains how various factions in our country see the country through very different lenses. Imagine if his indoctrination program were implemented and Obama were elected with a new Iraq mission --what would a solldier do? Fight for the new mission he specifically was trained to oppose? Desert? Or be sent through another indoctrination class to de-program.

Defeating this man is an imperative.

You call yourself in part a realist and in part an idealist. Your idealism is obvious -- and that is the side, not the other, that leads to your despair. I am also so afflicted at times.

But it is the realist in me who is angered by Wright, not Obama, whatever merit one can find in Wright's words. In your previous comment you wondered how we got here. I laid out the process, but I left out my own complicity. I demanded that my candidates lose.

You are incorrect, I think, that Obama is not speaking about his principles. He has sent a clear message to his supporters that in realistic terms he will change our direction. And I will not demand that he commit political suicide. I want him to be the toughest Chicago pol he can on the ground while elevating the debate and avoid personal gutterball. We should hold him to his basic principles, but remember that in this time and in this place, he must win.

The last occasion on which an American president treated his fellow citizens with respect and shared with them an uncomfortable truth was Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address to the nation. In the first draft of that speech Eisenhower coined a term, "the military-industrial-congressio­nal complex". He warned us to be on guard against allowing too much power and influence to accrue to the web of military officers, arms manufacturers, and legislators granting contracts.

Eisenhower's advisers who read the draft deemed his new term to be too provocative. They urged him not to suggest that the representatives of the people could be corrupted by a conflict of interest. That, apparently, was a truth the people couldn't handle. Eisenhower caved and cut off one leg of his three-legged stool by letting Congress off the hook. A warning that originally put the burden of vigilance on we the people became vague and was predictably ignored.

There is a cautionary tale here. From the founding of our Republic there has been a tension implicit in the term "representative democracy". Should our representatives faithfully express the will of their constituents? Or do we select representatives for what we hope will be judgment superior to that of the common man? Or are these two extremes with a golden mean lurking somewhere in between?

Eisenhower's address directly addressed this point: "Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together." What a magnificent statement, fully worthy of inclusion with the best statements of the Founding Fathers. Eisenhower forcefully reminded us that we the people hold the reins of power and that we the people cannot hold those reins passively.

Contrast that statement about the critical role of an alert and knowledgeable citizenry in a democracy with the utter contempt in which we the people are held by George W. Bush. Bush and his surrogates lied through their teeth to American citizens to con us into a war Bush craved for glory and which his accomplice and enabler, Richard B. Cheney, craved for oil loot.

In a second act, Bush has used the full machinery of the federal government to keep American citizens in the dark about his other illegal and shameful activities ranging from the torture of prisoners to warrantless domestic spying to the discrediting of American patriots dedicated to telling us the truth.

This familiar litany of Bush's "high crimes and misdemeanors" serves to illustrate how far we the people have fallen. The point isn't that Bush is utterly despicable. It's worse than that. Much worse. This insecure, shallow, sadistic, juvenile little man, incapable of moral reasoning (to expand on Steve Almond's description), stepped into a moral vacuum that we the people allowed to form in the first place. That is the uncomfortable truth that hovers over and haunts this presidential campaign.

So, John, you say that you "will not demand that [Barack Obama] commit political suicide. ... We should hold him to his basic principles, but remember that in this time and in this place, he must win." This, of course, is the perennial political dilemma. I don't envy Obama the position he is in. But if Obama is truly serious about a new kind of politics, he will turn this dilemma on its head.

The particular dilemma Obama faces, either tell the American people the harsh and necessary truth or win the election, is not a dilemma that any candidate for the American presidency should face. It is the ultimate absurdity. It is a concession that the American democratic experiment has ended in failure. It is a concession that we the people cannot govern ourselves. Well, in the immortal word of General McAuliffe, to that I say "Nuts!".

In your scenario, Sheriff Obama rides into town, clears out the bad guys, reestablishes the rule of law, and thereby puts the town back on the path to peace and prosperity. I like that scenario and I believe as you do that it will work. In the short term. But what about the long term? Suppose that conditions in the town aren't quite morally unambiguous. Suppose that the bad guys are a symptom, not a cause, and that the cause is getting worse year by year. Now suppose that Sheriff Obama is obligated to turn in his badge after eight years. What happens then?

If I were Sheriff Obama I would consider modifying your scenario. I would sit down with the townspeople before I put on the badge and I would have a little heart-to-heart talk with the people. I might ask them not what I can do for them, but what together we can do for the town. Without being too in-your-face about it, I might suggest to the townspeople that they were responsible for setting up the conditions that allowed a gang of outlaws to take over. And I might suggest to the townspeople that if they aren't willing to take responsibility for cleaning up those conditions, then they might as well consider choosing the best of the outlaws to be Sheriff.

There are two huge risks in this campaign. The first is that Barack Obama loses. The second is that Barack Obama wins under terms that will make matters far worse in the long run. The very last thing a democratic republic in moral decline needs is an infatuation with the idea that just the right leader will reverse the decline. On this point history offers the clearest, most unambiguous lesson. If you want to quickly put a democracy in moral decline out of its misery, then glom onto the idea that a heroic savior is needed to rescue the democracy.

Obama doesn't have it in his power to reverse America's moral decline. Period. Only we the people have that power in our democracy. We created the decline. We ignored the decline. We ignored warnings about the decline. We passively watched the decline get worse. We let the decline worsen into a crisis. Now we have a really simple choice. Either we the people accept responsibility for our nation's moral decline or we pass the buck to the first charismatic politician with a catchy slogan that passes by.

Am I suggesting that Obama is irrelevant? Not at all. I am suggesting that his current trajectory, if not corrected, will make him irrelevant even if he is elected. Obama has to lay out the two choices we the people face before the election. He can't make the choice for us after the election. We the people can either choose to address the root cause of America's moral decline, our self-destructive capacity for denial, delusion, distraction and self-deception or we can choose the status quo and be consigned to the dustbin of history.

Pwoxby;

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. Or he who was off on some undefined wrong trajectory. That is just not reality.

I have worked for left causes all my adult life and have watched the goals get trammeled upon not because someone in leadership did not toe an ideological line. The reason we have lost on the environment, on poverty, on holding the President accountable, and on all the things you described so well -- is because we failed when it came to political competency.

I have not compromised my core principles to support Obama. Of those willing to stand up and go through the ring of fire to realistically run for president, his principles were the closest to mine. And thank God he was competent enough to win against Hillary and Bill Clinton. He would have become irrelevant had he possessed less acumen and less appeal than he did.

I am all for people expressing their principles. I do it all the time, and I won't desert a winnable or necessary cause. Sometimes I will work for losing causes if the losing advances the larger cause. 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?

All of the talk about impeachment is a side show. I know quite well that this president and this vice-president deserved to be impeached. But they could not be-- despite all of the fundraising groups in the world that exploited good people's anger. To me, they wasted human capital that could have been used for some realistic purpose. Dennis Kucinich's quixotic journey was honorable but merely symbolic in times that call for real action.

When you say:

I am suggesting that [Obama's] current trajectory, if not corrected, will make him irrelevant even if he is elected. Obama has to lay out the two choices we the people face before the election. He can't make the choice for us after the election. We the people can either choose to address the root cause of America's moral decline, our self-destructive capacity for denial, delusion, distraction and self-deception or we can choose the status quo and be consigned to the dustbin of history.

My good compadre, what is that supposed to mean? I want a President who begins the process to save our planet, to unite the world against war, to begin the job of ending poverty, to address long neglected needs, and to do these and many other things with integrity and competence. I could not care less if he speaks in terms of delusion, distraction, self-destruction, etc.

I take this even further. I know many politicians from safe districts who sound like the most straightforward, untainted folks ever elected. But then they change positions and are not so safe anymore, they literally start governing by polls.

I once asked a a friend of mine who manages campagns: who was the best candidate you ever managed? He said: it was the guy who called me from a campaign event and asked me--what's my position on the death penalty? He was the "best candidate" from the perspective of the campaign manager, but the "worst possible elected official" my friend told me. (I wondered why he worked for the guy.)

I can only tolerate so much of compromise before I abandon a candidate. At some point, you're right, they cease to be relevant. Hillary Clinton is a good example of someone who, I believe, started her career with realistic, idealistic intentions, but was eventually sucked up into thinking it was all about her. I would have supported her in the general election, but I could not have campaigned ardently for her.

Obama is not perfect either. I hope he will not let us too far down. But I have been following his career since it started and he is remarkably direct and consistent about his views and is as progressive a Democratic nominee as we have had since George McGovern. And Obama can win! He is not merely inspirational.

And here's the thing -- I disagree with him on a host of issues-- I favor same sex marriage; I am unalterably opposed to the death penalty; I believe nuclear power should be off the table; and I would go further than he will on health care, tax reform, benefits for workers, and several other policy areas.

Then who should I to turn to if we don't match up perfectly -- or if he doesn't speak in the terms of strict social truths that would turn off most of America? Kucinich? That is what I mean by political suicide. I don't want Obama going around hitting people over the head with deep social truths-- I want him to win because this may be our last chance.

Peace.

P.S. The Eisenhower speech was great, but as historians have established, he did nothing about this dark truth during his entire career. Nor has anyone since.

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.

Dear pwoxby;

I like Ike. But I like Obama better.

I don't believe in a defined God, and therefore don't know who this Satan character is.

We've got to return to earth on this stuff.

Peace

[But in 1980, my Dad was truly a Democrat with a big "D" and did not abandon the party due to disappointment with programs that didn't work . . .This is hardly the time to retreat from principles.]

I thought it was we conservatives who were supposed to be the ones who put ideology before evidence.

Seriously, folks. If the programs don't actually, you know, work, then doesn't that mean that maybe we should rethink whether or not they are a good idea?

It's all fine and good to want to build public policy around being [against the idea of abandoning those who were less fortunate.] So am I. But if you are going to commit literally trillions of dollars over a generation to actual government policies, doesn't the question of whether or not they actually work matter?

Dear the true conservative;

I used to believe that conservatives believed in helping the less fortunate as you say, except that they believed there was another, better way. This appears to be the suggestion of your comment.

I have lived too long to believe that anymore.

Many Great Society programs failed spectacularly while others succeeded. If conservatives did not stand in the way, the real problem solvers would have discovered better, more efficient ways to achieve universal objectives.

And let's be honest: all so-called conservative alternatives have failed because they have not actually been aimed at solving anything for the less fortunate. At various times, conservative programs helped the wealthy, particular industries, military objectives -- but never the less fortunate, who have been allowed to wallow in their lack of fortune without a squeak of complaint from conservatives.

Watching as the poor become poorer and chalking it up to "they don't work hard enough" in an economy that guarantees tens of millions of losers, no longer passes my smell test.

For example, I could not care less specifically how we achieve universal quality healthcare for all. I would hope it could be done for the least cost that produces the most benefit. But once the best minds have studied this for decades, it is a principle to me that we need to get on with it, because to do otherwise is irresponsible and negligent.

A true liberal wants to help the poor, but does not want it to be accomplished through wasteful programs. I work in and around a state legislature and see the real tug of war between the left and right. The left fights within its own ranks over the specifics of ideas. But in the end, short of a huge majority and a sympathetic Governor, none of the ideas are implemented. Why? Because the conservatives literally don't care about the goals much less the specifics of programs.

If legislation is finally passed it is undermined by compromises between serious reformers and anti-reform lobbyists and their conservative supporters. The result is often a program that "doesn't work."

So what does a liberal do under such circumstances? Give up on his basic moral principle that poverty should be addressed? Or switch sides because the conservatives have blocked every workable program in the past? Our only hope is to stay in the fight until the political stars realign. It appears to be generational -- I have hope that the new millennial group will have more sense than their twisted conservative forebears.

Ya know what I'd like to hear from one of your "true conservatives" just once? Not-- hey, we're not a bunch of heartless creeps, but-- hey, here is a conservative way to end poverty, or envrinomental waste, or to create universal healthcare. And I don't mean discredited trickle down idiocy -- I mean a real plan that can be measured for its success or failure within a reasonable amount of time.

If a true conservative proposed to my company a way to increase sales that didn't have a measurable effect within a given amount of time, I'd go back to a more direct method. After firing the conservative, I would do a cost benefit analysis and get going on the problem. But then I'm a liberal and I care about results.

John,

With unerring accuracy, you again steer the discussion in the direction of core issues. Although I disingenuously claimed to introduce the personification of evil, Satan, into my argument as a literary device, as a Christian I take my own argument literally.

But that poses yet another problem to be addressed. Every four years we view the ritual of the presidential candidates affirming their Christian faith. It is hard to image that a Christian president, or his advisers, would be unaware of the Christian doctrine on warfare as laid out first in the Gospels and then as refined by Saint Augustine.

And yet here is America, after an uninterrupted succession of 43 Christian presidents, hopelessly addicted to militarism. [I can just imagine Christopher Hitchens with a smug grin on his face. Annoying bastard.] A simple answer would invoke the concept of separation of church and state. But no, that's not simple. It's simplistic.

Believers don't ask presidential candidates to affirm their Christian faith and then expect them to park their Christian principles at the door of the White House. That makes no sense. And that's not what separation of church and state means. The Establishment Clause is unambiguously specific and limited in scope. But before I continue in this vein, allow me to make a wide digression.

It is said that military men abhor war the most. Perhaps that why it was ex-General Dwight Eisenhower who sounded the alarm about creeping militarism. Here is the full text of his farewell address: <link> Almost every paragraph in the speech is worthy of note, but two jump off the page:

"Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

During the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield."

Eisenhower plays futurologist in only these two paragraphs. In 1961, long before the Club of Rome warned of the "Limits to Growth", he warned of global resource depletion. He then continues with an admonishment for America not to become pretty much what America has become a half century later. So why was Eisenhower ignored? Was is that the height of the Cold War was just the wrong time to get people's attention?

The term "Cold War" had been coined in 1947 during that fateful period when America lost its moral bearings. The term "Cold War" was the "War on Terror" of its day. It was a term of propaganda. Words are powerful things as George Orwell, a journalist by profession, knew. Words can shape people's perception. Words can warp people's perception. People who use words for a living ought to be mindful of the danger that the words they use can warp their own perception.

Politicians fall into that category. Eisenhower is unique among presidents since the Second World War in that the first political office he held was President of the United States. In that sense Eisenhower wasn't a politician. His successful leadership of Allied forces in Western Europe shows that Eisenhower was a clear-eyed realist. His farewell address showed him to be a remarkably prescient idealist. Eisenhower was no propagandist. More to the point, he was no self-propagandist.

Eisenhower took his Christian beliefs seriously. He converted to Presbyterianism while in office. He put "under God" in the pledge and "In God We Trust" on the currency. So of all of the presidents who have presided over America's catastrophic moral decline since the Second World War, Eisenhower sticks out as the anomaly, the outlier. He didn't let a politician's propensity for self-propagandisation compromise his moral ideals. Seeing clearly, he was able to sound the alarm about America's self-destructive slide towards militarism and he had the moral courage to do so.

And Eisenhower was ignored. Why? It didn't help that his farewell address was followed three days later by Kennedy's inaugural address, but that's too facile an explanation. More important than that is that actions speak louder than words and Eisenhower conspicuously failed to act during his presidency. This wasn't the only occasion when Eisenhower failed to act when it might have made a difference.

Joseph McCarthy rose to national attention during the Truman administration. Eisenhower largely sat on the sidelines while others brought McCarthy down during Eisenhower's administration. Many years before, another Joseph, surnamed Stalin, had been infuriated by Eisenhower's reticence to open a Western front in Europe while Germany's Wehrmacht was reducing the Soviet Union to rubble. So Eisenhower was a cautious man and his caution, in retrospect, wasn't always wise.

But the most important reason why Eisenhower's warning about militarism was ignored was that warnings need audiences willing to hear and heed them. Eisenhower's warning was made on 1961 January 17. That was thirteen years after the catastrophe of 1947 September 18. Those intervening thirteen years saw the rise of a propaganda machine within the United States that would drown out not only Eisenhower's warning but all voices of reason up to and including those in the current presidential campaign.

Most of us might ask "What propaganda machine?" That's a bit like a fish asking "What water?" To describe the history and the nature of the Great American Propaganda Machine (GAPM) is a task that could occupy a lifetime. For the purpose of this discussion, and to return to my original theme, I'll just ask how the GAPM interacts with basic principles of Christian morality. Let's see. How about, "The GAPM chews up basic principles of Christian morality and spits them out."?

Yes, that sounds about right. Set the GAPM loose in the nation and watch what it does to basic principles of Christian morality over a sixty year period. The Vietnam War. "We had to destroy the village to save it." Mutual Assured Destruction. "I will never apologize for the United States. I don't care what the facts are." The Iraq War. The Bush administration. Abu Ghraib. "...we would be able to totally obliterate [Iran]"

When the GAPM chews up basic principles of Christian morality and spits them out that creates a moral vacuum. When the GAPM extols American exceptionalism and American power then militarism will fill the moral vacuum. And that's how the succession of twelve Christian presidents since the Second World War have presided over America's catastrophic moral decline and hellish descent into militarism.

[Many Great Society programs failed spectacularly while others succeeded.]

I can name lots that failed. What are one or two that succeeded?

[Ya know what I'd like to hear from one of your "true conservatives" just once? Not-- hey, we're not a bunch of heartless creeps, but-- hey, here is a conservative way to end poverty, or envrinomental waste, or to create universal healthcare. And I don't mean discredited trickle down idiocy -- I mean a real plan that can be measured for its success or failure within a reasonable amount of time.]

How about this:

I want to help the poor. That's why I give thousands and thousands of dollars every year out of my own pocket to help those who through no fault of their own have fallen into hard times.

I care about the environment. That's why I clean up my own messes, and support responsible, fact based legislation to protect clean water, clean air, and the like.

I want everyone to be able to afford health care. That's why I advocate for the government to enact real reform that would allow insurance companies to offer people the coverage they actually need and restrict lawsuits to recompense for actual harm.

I also advocate the government allowing the poor and middle classes to invest their SS money in the same investment opportunities already available to every federal and state employee in the country so they can actually afford to retire.

I advocate allowing poor parents to choose where they want to send their kids to school without having to pay twice so they can get the same educational opportunity as rich kids.

See, here's the thing. What you are looking for is a government program to transfer wealth to the poor in a more effective manner. That, by definition, regardless of the details, is a liberal solution. Well, after a few trillion dollars spent on welfare, trillions more on government education, and multiple trillions more yet on government run retirement, I'd say the liberal approach has been given a fair shake already.

If you still aren't happy with the results, why not try a different approach?

true conservative;

Good response. But let me disagree.

1. Head Start to start with.
2. Your ideas are classic conservative "solutions." But if you will examine them, none of them are designed to ensure that the problem is solved. Picking up your own garbage is virtuous, but it has nothing to do with environmental results, except in your own yard. Giving to private charity is virtuous but never in history has this been sufficient to alter the systemic problem of poverty. All of your proposals have the same flaw -- they are, pardon the cliche, knee-jerk anti-government platitudes. Forget conservative/liberal -- give me a private sector or public sector solution that will show actual results. I hate to think this of you, since you sound so civil, but these ideas sound to me as though you would rather stand on an abstract principle than to really help the less fortunate, provide universal health care, or solve any of the other problems.

Peace. (I know you hate that.)