Considering the savagery with which the Snarling Right excoriated President Clinton as a "sociopath," blocked judicial appointments, undermined U.S. military operations from Kosovo to Iraq, hounded Vincent Foster and then accused the Clintons of murdering him, it is utterly hypocritical for conservatives to complain about liberal incivility.

 

But they're right. ...

The most striking cleavage is the God Gulf, and it should terrify the Democrats. Put simply, liberals are becoming more secular at a time when America is becoming increasingly religious, the consequence of a new Great Awakening.  Americans, for example, are significantly more likely now than in 1987 to say they 'completely agree' that 'prayer is an important part of my daily life' and that 'we all will be called before God on Judgment Day to answer for our sins.'

 

The Pew survey found that white evangelicals are leaving the Democratic Party in droves.  Fifteen years ago, white evangelicals were split equally between the two parties; now they're twice as likely to be Republicans.  Likewise, white Catholics who attend Mass regularly used to be strongly Democratic; now they are more likely to be Republican.

 

Since Americans are three times as likely to believe in the virgin birth of Jesus as in evolution, liberal derision for President Bush's religious beliefs risks marginalizing the left.

GOP will trumpet preemption doctrine
By Anne E. Kornblut, The Boston Globe 11/12/2003 

WASHINGTON -- Faced with growing public uneasiness over Iraq, Republican Party officials intend to change the terms of the political debate heading into next year's election by focusing on the "doctrine of preemption," portraying President Bush as a visionary acting to prevent future terrorist attacks on US soil despite the costs and casualties involved overseas.

The strategy will involve the dismissal of Democrats as the party of "protests, pessimism and political hate speech," Ed Gillespie, Republican National Committee chairman, wrote in a recent memo to party officials....

Now that the American empire is collapsing around our ears, it is the turn of those who favored a multipolar world - and one in which the United Nations plays a key role - to show that they can do better.

 

Although no one in Washington has noticed it yet, the days of the American empire are numbered. The notion that one can govern the world by military might has found its limit. It is now widely understood that the United States cannot take out the North Korean regime because some of its weapons of mass destruction are in caves, beyond the reach of bombs. Trying to use force against North Korea might cause the deaths of millions of South Koreans, which forces the United States to pursue negotiations, despite noises to the contrary. The macho declaration of pre-emption is already passé.

 

Moreover, the U.S. armed forces are stretched thin in Iraq and Afghanistan and the American public willingness to accept more casualties and costs is rapidly fading. Far from going it alone, the United States is courting allies and friends, hat in hand, to share the burden of nation-building in these two countries. Washington felt forced to go pleading with the United Nations to grant its blessing for what needs to be done. Although it has obtained a UN resolution, it will not provide much relief in terms of funds or military forces.

 

All this is a long way from the posture of unilateralism, yesterday's neoconservative battle cry. Indeed, the negotiations with North Korea are taking place in close collaboration with several other key nations - Japan, Russia, China and South Korea. It is less clear how Iran's nuclear program is going to be dealt with, but this situation, too, seems to be moving in a multilateral direction.

 

Finally, nation-building is not working. When the United States was unable to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and when the preinvasion claims of Al Qaeda connections proved to be hard to sustain, the Bush administration chose to rely more and more on what had previously been a sort of an afterthought: that the United States was out to liberate Iraq and turn it into the first shining prosperous and democratic Arab republic, a model that would change the whole Middle East. In reality, the United States has had a hard time pacifying central Iraq, and the rest of the country is run by mullahs (in the south) and Kurdish warlords (in the north), mirroring the state of Afghanistan outside of Kabul. This last rationale for the American empire is not holding either.