Ross Douthat has an outstanding piece in today’s WSJ on the so-called theocons. No link, sub req’d). Rather than run through all the places I agree let me offer two quibbles. The first is his willingness to make the Progressives sound like a relatively benign and positive force in American politics. Conservatives should never concede that ground. It’s one thing to admire the civil rights movement and highlight its religious impulses. While the Progressives were certainly “theocratic,” their religious impulses often led to precisely the kind of government and politics we do not like and should not like.

Second, I really wish he hadn’t lent credibility to Andrew Sullivan’s term “Christianist,” even to criticize it. Sullivan’s invested a lot of rhetorical blather into the term and, contrary to Ross’s suggestion, it has failed almost completely to take off. A quick glance at Nexis shows that with the exception of Hendrick Hertzberg, virtually no one has picked up the silly and shabby term. It’s a good thing too.

Note: I fixed a typo in the first paragraph.