Ramesh:

I wasn’t that excited by their WSJ piece, though I think I liked their book

better than you did. (I reviewed it here.)They are

saying that the USA remains more conservative than your average European

country, and that the political left doesn’t have any inspiring ideas.

Well, yes; but that first could just mean we are following some way behind

Europe into the darkness. What are the trends? As for the second: M&W are

sufficiently good political scientists to be acquainted with the phrase

“Tory men but Whig measures.”

And their comment about several of our top leaders being Evangelical

Christians just plays into my point

(actually Jeff Hart’s point, plagiarized by me) that there is nothing

intrinsically or necessarily conservative, in the political sense, about

either of the main strains of religiosity in current American conservatism,

neither Evangelical Protestantism nor Roman Catholicism. The phenomenon of

the most religious Americans voting for the more conservative candidates may

be accidental, adscititious, and temporary. I am mildly suprised that there

isn’t more discussion of this point. American Catholics used to vote

reliably Democrat; and Wm Jennings Bryan was conservative about nothing

except religion.