December 2004

ARTICLE TOOLS

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Inside CT

This issue was edited before the U.S. elections, and I am writing as anti-Bush op-ed writers bemoan the loss of secularist America, an America that didn't really exist. A Village Voice columnist wails that the voters had given President Bush a mandate for theocracy. And historian Garry Wills calls November 2 "the day the Enlightenment went out."

Why were these pundits so surprised by the strength of the "values vote"? Opinion polls had long pointed to the growing strength of moral conservatism. And Wills's apoplexy over the end of the Enlightenment comes many years after postmodern academics conducted the Enlightenment's funeral.

It seems their real worry is that the President will actually listen to the values voters. As Wills said, the constituency to which President Bush owes his victory "is not a yielding one. He must give them what they want."

Pro-life, pro-family voters must be more realistic than Wills. The next four years will not be a cakewalk for the pro-life, pro-family cause. Nothing that happened on November 2 prevents sitting judges from deciding the people have this one wrong. The work of conservative public-interest law firms continues to be crucial.

The values voters must not only be persuasive, but we must be known for our breadth and winsomeness. It is important that we fight the stereotype of scientifically backward killjoys focused narrowly on personal morality. It is our love for humanity that drives us to fight the normalization of homosexuality, the sexual trafficking of women and children, the tyranny of Kim Jong Il, and the destruction of human life in questionable medical research.

Evangelicals must be careful not to overreach. The values voters turned out in such numbers because the progressive ...