Boss: All right, all right, I’ll try to be more cheerful, truly I will.
There must be something good to be said about the state of the nation. I
shall seek it out and broadcast it from the rooftops.
On the religion point, I think the instinctive contrarian in me took over
there. I was writing about UK vs. US conservatism. The thing most commonly
said in that context is that our conservatism is more solidly founded than
theirs, because our religious Right acts as a sheet anchor for our
conservatism. I just wanted to pick up & expand on Jeff Hart’s argument
that this ain’t necessarily so. Which it ain’t. So this point, which one
hears all the time (e.g. from Micklethwait & Wooldridge) may be false
comfort for US conservatives.
(Plus, I am a bit under Jonah’s influence, having sat & listened to him
expound on some related themes at Mahogany Ridge in Atlanta the other night.
Ask him about Father Coughlin & you’ll see where my thoughts were going.)