And many more Christians in both parties want the separation between church and state maintained scrupulously, which is why Huckabee’s commercials have set off a backlash. No one is questioning whether a majority of Americans are Christians, just the role they think religion should play (if any) in our government.

The Reagan coalition is coming apart, at least during primary season. It may come back together during the general election as the GOP candidate faces Clinton or Obama.

Because 11% said they had no religious identity at all, and another 2% didn’t answer, these results suggest that well more than 9 out of 10 Americans who identify with a religion are Christian in one way or the other.

About 82% of Americans in 2007 told Gallup interviewers that they identified with a Christian religion.

There is no better way for me to illustrate the point I was making some time back. This nation for better or worse is a Christian nation. The religious right is alive and well in this country. The GOP will hopefully once again reexamine itself and reestablish that which it has always affirmed and this election will be about that one over riding necessity.

I would reiterate that the problem with the GOP is not Christianity or the Religious right. It is about a war and fiscal abandonment and a president that failed to lead his party and movement because he was so obsessed with a war.

There is nothing wrong with Christianity other then some intense screaming by the 11 percent here.

Yes, but it does so for corporate stupidity and greed as well. And many, like the mentally ill,many of whom are homeless, have no safety net aside from temporary shelters or soup kitchens.

The government lowers the risks and creates a safety net for stupid behavior. That is a true example of the nanny state.

Moral hazard! We’re seeing that now with the moves to bail out the banks and the foolish mortgage borrowers.

(In addition, we’re seeing unconstitutional confiscation in the form of proposed limits on interest rates that replace what is in existing contracts. It’s similar to the theft proposed in Conyers-Kucinish by conversion of medicine to not-for-profit and not compensating for lost profits.)

An no one is arguing that legalizing drugs will eliminate crime. Did repealing prohibition eliminate organized crime?

Our Prohibition was actually similar to what decriminalization of marijuana would be like today. There was no abolute ban, no stopping and searching all the time, etc.

Anyone who can get a copy of this book should read the chapter on Prohibition in order to dispel a number of myths.

(book)

(another book)

Organized crime existed decades before Prohibition.

Organized crime exists now, long after Prohibition.

Prison term reform: How funny it is, that I remember well a line from the book “Papillon” (about the real Henri Charriere) all the way back to when I first read it at age 12: “Here in Colombia it’s twenty years or death, nothing else.” That would be an improvement over what we have now. Long-term (life) sentences include free provision of health care. People put away for violent crimes should have terms that correspond to what works statistically most of the time, namely to put poeple in their teens and twenties away until they are at least 35 and probably well into their forties. Then they should be kicked out, not provided for any longer, and the scarce, expensive prison space used for another, more dangerous young criminal.

That and other reforms (requiring prisoners to work, to pay restitution to victims or their families, etc.) upset the authors of a book I got for a friend recently, but they are welcomed by most of the public. So would be what a Democratic author has said back in the 1990s, the introduction of rural work camps where the prisoners would have to raise their own food and create their own shelter or not survive.

I’m not sure what to do about overcrowding (which I’m convinced is the source of some of the stress and cause of some violence in prisons) other than build enough space to accomodate everyone in a reasonable way (solitary confinement at night for all would be much safer) and to engage the prisoners in outdoor work where possible (opposed by many but some prisoners would probably welcome a chance to be outside a prison’s walls).

You should look up the Peltzman Effect. If government provides full rehab costs for all substance abusers, you can bet that you will get more of them. The government lowers the risks and creates a safety net for stupid behavior. That is a true example of the nanny state.

An no one is arguing that legalizing drugs will eliminate crime. Did repealing prohibition eliminate organized crime?

We want paid government medical care to pay for all our drug and alcohol related health problems.

A government that nurses you back to health after the good times are long gone and a person has hit rock bottom.

What’s ironic is that one day, when health care costs force even lefties to face reality, many elites would say that utilitarian considerations “mandate” that we cease paying for liver transplants and spend the money on attempting rehab with several more potential beneficiaries instead.

Where are you seeing pathological hatred of the religious right ?

There’s no excuse for hatred.

I discussed this on Christmas (how’s that for timing?) with my radical friend in DC because she has a relative whose wife is associated with the Religious Right, and they live on Colorado’s Front Range, which is outside the Bible Belt (the South and Ozark portion of Missouri, in general) but which features one or more foci of some truly hard-core Religious Right elements. (You may be aware of Colorado Springs as a location of more hard-core Religious Right activity, meaning farther to the right than typical.)

These people claim persecution. The book I got for my friend (I get to read it first), which was from the mid-1990s (when the true far and radical and far-right Religious Right flexed their muscles the most, after the 1994 elections), discusses this “myth” of bigotry and hatred directed at it, and my friend is outraged that any Religious Right member would dare claim to be persecuted.

They claim too much when they retreat into the world of paranoia as well as fear (Roberson and some of his wackier New World Order UN-and-Lucifer stuff). That is obvious. But what we have seen in modern times, and in particular since the public no longer was reliably Democratic in general after the 1970s, is true hatred toward the Religious Right (and whites in the South, a different but often related target) in addition to gross misconstruction of the Constitutional requirement for Congressional (federal) neutrality on religion, as well as nearly consistent mischaracterization both of the group itself and of its goals. (Relatively few are “dominionists,” the kind who want to impose biblical-based laws on this nation, but that is the impression the Left wants everyone to have.)

Look at the scummy cartoons and references (replete with Southern dialectical features) to the Religious Right and religious people (at least, to Christians, who are all assumed to be radical Religious Rightists) on this site alone.

All I see is requests that their beliefs not be allowed to restrain the personal liberties of others.

That they not impose their views on others is common to everyone else — nobody else wants Sunday “blue laws.” But you would be mistaken if you believe that reforms often sought by the Religious Right in no way are also sought by most of the rest of the public, too.

Nobody has the right to behave personally whatever way they want, completely free of any intervention or interference whatsoever. That’s what toddlers believe.

You have hit on the ultimate nanny state. A government that nurses you back to health after the good times are long gone and a person has hit rock bottom.

many people who have decided that civil rights has to do with drugs and sex, always seem to want the government to pay for all of the negative impacts of their own personal decisions. Such an attitude is about as far from libertarianism as there is.

We want paid government medical care to pay for all our drug and alcohol related health problems.

Drugs are a destructive industry.

Some people that grow them are murdered for their crops. Some people that push them murder to get their drugs to market. Some people that take them murder to pay for their drugs. Or they become prostitutes. Not all but how many does it take to say umm mabey drugs are not such a good idea.

No industry so full of hate and crime can dare hope to stand up to “oh peshaw……let us alone……were not harming anyone.”

A waste of money? Tell that to the children of those dead by the hands of drugs from seed to smoke. Or tell it to the parents of those who have watched their children caught up in drug related gang wars.

Once again as DLS puts it. Its the left refusing to take NO for an answer and throwing a fit when they are told no.

Actually the pronouncement that Social conservatism is dead is just wishful thinking by the left as they pine for the days when they can institute their “Animal House” agenda over no opposition of any kind.

The left learned well from the right. What goes around comes around. The left needed something to demonize and polarize. Christianity and the Religious Right became their demon and they pulled it off….sending the average christian scurrying for cover scratching their heads in confusion.

Temporary. This election will be the defining moment for the GOP. It will be their 1994.

Where are you seeing pathological hatred of the religious right ? All I see is requests that their beliefs not be allowed to restrain the personal liberties of others.

Don’t be silly, that’s taking things to an extreme. Dont’ put laws on the books that are unenforceable and that waste resources that are needed elsewhere. The Bush administration has used the DOJ to crack down on the casual drug user, which just crowds the prisons, and teaches them to become more hardened. Arnold recently released thousands of these people, because Calif prisons can’t contain them.

The real question always has been where to draw the line and how much authority is appropriate.

Yes, I agree. I think the govt should worry more about whether there’s lead in children’s toys and less about whether we wear our seat belts, or if we can use embryos from fertility clinics for research or buy the morning after pill.

I believe his piece to be saying that religion has indeed been overplayed as a permanent fixture in US politics. It is indeed true that if you lined up the atheists on one side of the street and the lined up “people of some religious conviction” on the other side, you would have a monumental imbalance. (Do you think O’Reilly is actually 4 times funnier than Olbermann or maybe that there are just a whole lot more “regular folks” than “sarcastic paper-wad throwing twits” in the US viewing audience?)

But for the media to suggest those people with religious conviction are synonomous with Liberty University donors is indeed hype.

Starting a few elections ago, Falwell, Reed et al actually managed to pull off what Jackson and Sharpton can only flap their gums about……taking advantage of the naturally-already organized “congregations” and simply manipulating them into an “organized voting bloc”.

It is quite obvious, though, that the real or just perceived potency of that particular “voting bloc” scared the bejesus (pun intended) out of the Columbia University alum journalism majors noshing on brie and chardonnay while staring out at the Queensborough Bridge from their Sutton Place apartments. They have never recovered from the shock of it all……..that people who live in places like Birmingham, Alabama might actually significantly influence who might be elected POTUS……….therefore, every election they trot out their “religious right” pieces exactly the same way the KKK trotted out their hoods.

It is journalistic garbage, not to mention irrelevant reporting….. as the congregation has long ago realized they are not going to be automatically manipulated into focusing on single issue politics.

Wait until after the elections next month, and better still, until after February 5.

And stop the pathological hatred of the Religious Right. Grow up, please. Thanks in advance.

Legislating morality hasn’t succeeded in stopping it.

So we should stop legislating against murder, battery, theft, and such?

The real question always has been where to draw the line and how much authority is appropriate.