Bird Dog of
Maggie's Farm reminds us of a fine essay by Bruce Thornton:
(W)henever Christians actually dare to make political choices on the basis of those beliefs, then the enlightened gatekeepers of American secularism in the academy and in the media rise up in righteous wrath and rush to the barricades to defend us against the barbarian hordes of true believers who if unchecked will transform our republic into a "theocracy" and impose their intolerant bigotry on everybody else ...
If Judeo-Christian belief is so central to the ideals that created our government in the first place—if, as de Tocqueville wrote, "Freedom sees religion as the companion of its struggles and triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its rights"—then the current anti-Christian fundamentalism strikes at the root of our political order. For if we are, as the secularists tell us, mere material creatures bound to one another only by contractual relations to be dissolved or altered at will, then what will provide the basis for all those selfless actions and emotions that any community depends on for its cohesion, and that keep freedom from degenerating into mere license, the power to do and consume whatever gratifies our selfish will and appetites? Where will fundamental values come from, all those beliefs that bind us into a community, and that we are willing to die and kill for, not because they have been scientifically proven but because we believe passionately that they are right and true and will benefit the greatest number of people?
The secularists have failed to provide an alternative for the religion that they have discarded ...
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