I grew up in a small town. "How small was it?" you ask. So small that the "Welcome to" and the "Come back soon" signs were on the same post. Its small but progressive - we're going to get a stop light as soon as the city council can decide on what colors they want. It was small enough that if I ever tried to buy cigarettes, my parents would have known about it before I got home. Its so small that you don't give directions by street names but by history. "Turn left where the old hotel was, then left just past where the Underwoods used to live." In school, it was not unusual to be called by the name of your older sibling. Sometimes teachers remembered your parents - like the Latin teacher that told my (now) wife, "Your father had trouble with ad with the accusative too." I can still go back there and drive to the post office, the drug store, the bank and the hardware store blindfolded, because the roads haven't changed in 40 years. Second Avenue is on the edge of town. At my advanced age I'm still "young Alan." I dialed a wrong number last time I was home and talked for 15 minutes anyway.

You get the idea - it was really small. I tell you that to let you know that I really knew the author of this article. Back then his family lived next to the judge. My mother-in-law used to work for his father. Like I said, it was a small town.

He is what Francis Schaeffer used to call a "co-belligerent" - someone who holds to conservative values, even though he doesn't necessarily believe Jesus is the Messiah (Read Don's first book, A Jewish Conservative Looks at Pagan America where he lays that out). If you're "small c" conservative, you'll probably enjoy the book. The article below is thought provoking or irritating, accurate or inflated, depending on which part of the political spectrum you are on. I did find it thought provoking.

Did I mention he's from the same small town as I am?


IN APPEALING TO RELIGIOUS VOTERS, DEMS ARE PEW-LESS
GrassTopsUSA Exclusive Commentary
By Don Feder
06-19-07   

With the predictability of a John McCain temper tantrum (or a John Edwards $200-haircut), every two years the Democrats announce that they're going to fight like hell for the religious vote - a vow duly reported by the media in the hushed tones of revelation.

Thus, a story on the recent CNN Democratic presidential forum began with the following observation: "After barring their souls in a live television confessional, top Democratic White House hopefuls have put Republicans on notice that religious voters are up for grabs."

At the forum, sponsored by Jim (Hugo-Chavez-Is-My- Shepard) Wallis and his Sojourners collective, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards all did passable impressions of Billy Graham. (Al Gore was off worshipping a tree and praying to the Earth Goddess to smite fossil fuels.)

Hillary confessed that but for her faith, she might not have pulled through the dark night of the soul when she learned that her hubby (notorious for his sexual escapades) was doing some Biblical knowing with a White House intern.

"I am my brother's keeper," Obama proclaimed, adding in gender-correct fashion, "I am my sister's keeper." Given enough time, the Illinois Senator, who's nominated himself for sainthood, probably would have gotten around to his aunts and uncles, second-cousins once removed and every Democratic primary voter in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Edwards expressed his absolute conviction that "The hand of God today is in every step of what happens with me and every human being that exists on this planet." God is my hair-stylist? God is my booking agent? Edwards recently received $50,000 for telling a college audience how to fight poverty. A good thing for him that the poor will always be with us.

Dems' God-talk isn't limited to the campaign trail.

Speaking in support of increased federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sermonized: "Science is a gift of God to all of us, and science has taken us to a place that is biblical in its power to cure... And that is embryonic stem cell research."

Embryonic stem-cell research involves destroying human embryos in a search for cures. Pelosi is saying that the destruction of God-given life is a gift from God. Would that make Dr. Josef Mengele, Auschwitz's notorious Angel of Death, a miracle-worker in Pelosi's eyes?

Don't try to make sense of any of this. The Democrats' doctors-of-spin have told them to talk God. Whatever drivel they're selling (including themselves), try to justify it in spiritual terms.

The pursuit of religious voters has becomes the Democrats' quest for the Holy Grail.

Values voters are believed to have swung the 2004 election from John Kerry (AKA: The Altar Boy) to George W. Bush. The president got 61% of those who attend religious services weekly, as well as 78% of evangelicals. Running against the first Catholic nominee since John F. Kennedy, W. received the support of 52% of Catholics.

According to the latest Gallup poll, when asked to rate the state of moral values in America, just 1% said they were excellent, 16% said "good," and 44% rated the nation's moral health "poor." Moreover, 8 in 10 Americans think morality has declined in the past three years. They are not talking about the "lack of affordable health care," but the products of the Democrats favorite industries - Hollywood, the courts and public education.

Democrats are to traditional religion what Islam is to tolerance.

But, with typical elitist arrogance, the Party of Perjury thinks it has only to go through the motions - bow their heads collectively and mumble meaningless pieties -- to make the faithful believe Hillary and Company could walk on water and turn Kool-Aid into wine.

When it comes to walking the walk - they can't even crawl. Some of them can't even talk the talk. In 2004, Rep. Jim McDermott (Democrat, Washington State) was asked to lead the Pledge of Allegiance at an opening session of the House.

In doing so, McDermott intentionally omitted the words "one nation under God." Baghdad Jim (part of Saddam's Congressional auxiliary, prior to the Iraq war) explained that due to a federal appeals court decision, he didn't know if God was still constitutional.

McDermott's office said the Congressman was "unsure of what to do" because the U.S. 9th. Circuit Court of Appeals said it constituted an establishment of religion for schoolchildren to say the pledge with an acknowledgement of God.

Apparently, McDermott was unaware that: 1) The House of Representatives isn't a public school (although its members often behave like schoolchildren), 2) Washington, D.C. is outside the 9th. Circuit and 3) The 9th. is the most overruled of federal appeals courts - as it was in this case.

No, McDermott was just another liberal Democrat going to absurd lengths to create another God-free zone.

If Democrats are down with the G-man, why is it the federal judges appointed by Democratic presidents insist that: 1) Public displays of the Ten Commandments violate the Establishment Clause, 2) Student-initiated prayer before football games is unconstitutional, 3) Jesus was invoked too often in prayers at opening sessions of the Indiana state legislature, 4) Municipal seals can't reference God, 5) A cross erected as a memorial to the nation's war dead on city property in San Diego had to go, and 6) Creches can only be displayed on public property in the presence of Santas and candy canes.

Democrats may believe in God - but have a humungo problem with the word of God.

You might say the Bible frowns on same-sex relationships, which it calls an "abomination."

When the Federal Marriage Amendment came up in the Senate in 2004, on a procedural vote, 45 Republicans voted for the FMA (which defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman), while 43 Democrats voted against it. In other words, 93% of Senate Democrats voted to turn marriage into unholy matrimony, while 88% of Republicans endorsed Genesis.

Speaking to the Human Rights Campaign (the nation's largest homosexual lobby) in March, after comparing their special-interest pleading to the Civil Rights movement, Senator Clinton told the sodomites assembled that she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with them in their fight to secure their "sacred values," - including gay adoption. The right of children to a father and a mother apparently doesn't count.

Hillary pledged "to make sure that nothing stands in the way of loving couples, gay or straight, who want to adopt children."

"Therefore, a man leaves his father and his mother And cleaves to his husband, and they become one flesh," Book of Hillary, 2, 24.

Through an expansion of federal hate crimes legislation, Congressional Democrats are determined to criminalizing Christianity - in furtherance of the long-range goal of homosexual activists: censoring speech critical of their lifestyle.

If the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 (S 1105) passes and a reverend preaches on Romans Chapter 1 or I Corinthians, Chapter 6, and someone who hears the sermon gets into a physical or verbal confrontation with a homosexual, the preacher could be held liable.

As of March 30, the House version of this attack on the First Amendment had 137 co-sponsors - all but 8 of them Democrats. God is my diversity trainer?

To whom do the Dems turn for metaphysical guidance? One usually associates the party with such moral exemplars and spiritual giants as the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton.

But these days, the Democrats are more likely to seek soul-power from the Sojourners' Rev. Jim Wallis, sponsor of the aforesaid CNN forum. For the top-tier Democratic hopefuls to appear at forum run by Wallis would be like Republican candidates addressing the John Birch Society.

Usually described in the media as a "peace activist" or an "anti-poverty campaigner," Wallis is an out-of-the-closet Marxist who went from fronting for the Viet Cong in the '60s, to making excuses for Khmer Rouge atrocities and mocking Vietnamese boat people in the 1970s (They had been infected by capitalism, the Rev. jeered, and were fleeing "to support their consumer habit in other lands") to sanctifying Nicaraguan and Salvadoran communists in the '80s, as part of the clerical useful idiots Witnesses for Peace.

Today, he bestows the same loving kindness on Islamic terrorists that he previously reserved for People's Republics. In a 1979 interview, Wallis expressed the hope that "more Christians will come to view the world through Marxist eyes" - that is to say, those Christians who hadn't been murdered by Marxists in Russia, Poland, Hungary, Cuba, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Korea, Ethiopia, Angola etc., etc.

Is this the Democrats' ambassador to the Bible Belt? Perhaps they'll next enlist Mel Gibson to appeal to the Jewish vote.

It's not that Democrats aren't religious - rather that they practice a religion alien to both Christianity and Judaism.

Its doctrine includes support for abortion on demand, hate crimes legislation, the Kyoto Treaty, driver's licenses for illegal aliens, multiculturalism and a socialism of property and values.

Its priesthood is composed of feminists, environmentalists, gay-activists and radical secularists, presided over by its college of cardinals --Rosie O'Donnell, Bill Maher, Barbra Streisand and Al Franken.

It calls for atonement for the sins of sexism, homophobia, the religious right, the gun lobby, pharmaceutical companies, big oil, Guantanamo, Halliburton and trans-fatty acids.

Its vision of Kingdom Come looks a lot like San Francisco on a Saturday night.

It would be easier for most committed Christians and serious Jews to relate to Baal worship than to join hands with the established church of liberalism. When it comes to appealing to religious voters, the Democrats are pew-less.