Happy Holidays

All you pinko athiests by now have figured out you are in the epicenter of the Santa Battle, the newest front in the Culture War. The American Exceptionalism (beware, those who accept this concept are Blame America Firsters and will be advised to Love It or Leave It) that brought us Lincolns "last, best hope of earth", Madeline Albrights "indispensible nation" and many other such"City on the Hill" type pronouncments, is deeply rooted in a Protestant Millennialist nationalism that provokes the ire of the conservative defenders of Christmas.With God firmly on our side, this crowd is outraged they should be asked to bow before some false idol of multicultural political correctness. To do so would in effect be to deny our "calling".

"God, Senator Albert Beveridge declared during the debate over the annexation of the Phillipines,' had marked the American people as His chosen nation to ...lead in the redemption of the world.' John Hay, Mc Kinleys Sec .of State, described the Indian Wars as 'the righteous victory of light over darkness...the fight of civilization against barbarism." Its not much of a stretch from there to Saint Ronalds second inaugural( via Peggy Noonan) where he described Americans as "one people under God, dedicated to the dream of freedom that he has placed in the human heart,called upon now to pass that dream on to a waiting and hopeful world" and of course to Bushs' "we have been called to help the spread of freedom by the Maker of Heaven and the Author of Liberty." It is just this delicate mix of religion and politics which Sistani hopes to sustain in Iraq,but one I thought we had abandoned in the modern pluralistic democracies long ago.