Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 22, 2003 08:11 PM
“America may really be dividing into two nations, one secular and left-liberal, the other religious and conservative, or, at least, right-liberal.”

the division lines of red and blue would also separate along lines of those who drive pick-ups, listen to country&western, and have big-hair, versus those who drive suv’s, listens to npr and woundn’t be caught even dead with that hair don’t.

i find it just a tab bit too thick to say the red colored splotches of land where those aptly named trucks, country&western, and betty lou’s big hair resides is more religious or conservative than the blue splotches where soccer mom cars, npr’s classical music and girls with a modicum of taste reside.

those country&westerners may tend to vote republican, but they are not voting that way because they think the best use of truck bed is holding a prayer vigil.

Abby/Maureen with her superficial and irrelevant observations of lifestyle has, as one would expect of her, ignored what was actually said in the article I quoted. The 14 percent of voters who attend religious services more than once a week voted for Bush by a 27 percent margin, while the 14 percent who never attend church voted for Gore by a 29 percent margin. This is a stunning figure showing an enormous religious component in how people vote. Curiously, the religious-secular breakdown along party lines corresponds to the actual state tallies in the 2000 election. Most states had landslides, often huge landslides, with margins of 20 or 30 percent either for Gore or Bush.

The relationships among religion, politics, and the conservatism-liberalism split are so complex that the quoted percentages, although heartwarming, omit a lot that deserves scrutiny.

Take, for example, the fascinating book entitled LEAVING ISLAM, edited by Ibn Warraq. The essayists include both born Muslims and converts, both serious thinkers and silly egoists, both Americans and natives of Muslim countries who have harrowing tales to tell. Their political positions are probably varied, too, although that’s left to the reader to infer. Ibn Warraq is a pseudonym; the editor uses it to protect himself and his family from Islamofascists. His previous books have educated many readers about the nature and history of his former religion. Yet he and his institute are proudly atheist. I’m sure no one on this site would contend that that should lessen our appreciation of the service he and it have performed.

It’s even possible that the passage of some of those essayists from Islam to atheism is not permanent, but a way station to theism of a different sort. Nor is it necessarily irrelevant to our hope for an expansion of the red-state area.

Readers of this post will surely be interested in this article:

http://www.thepublicinterest.com/archives/2002fall/article1.html

It’s often argued (by neocons and some paleocons) that Americans are basically Christian/conservative but the “elite” is leftist.

I live in CT and there are few social or religious conservatives. I think the same as probably the case for large portions of the country.

“The ‘culture wars’ is the controversial metaphor used to describe the restructuring of religious and cultural conflict in the United States since the 1960s. The thesis is most closely associated with sociologist James Davison Hunter, whose 1991 book ‘The Culture Wars’ posited that ‘the dominant impulse at the present time is toward the polarization of a religiously informed public culture into distinct moral and religious camps.’ Hunter called these camps ‘orthodox’ and ‘progressivist.’ On the orthodox side are persons who locate moral authority in a transcendent source, such as God or the Bible. Orthodox morality, according to Hunter, adheres to an absolute standard of right and wrong and is based on universalistic principles. Progressivists, in contrast, embrace a humanistic ethic drawn from reason, science, and personal experience. Progressivist moral rules are ‘loose-bounded,’ pluralistic, and relative to circumstance.” —- (from the article linked in Mr. Cella’s post, § “The origins of the culture wars”)

There’s a fundamental flaw in the “progressivist” position. It is that morality’s foundations — its deepest rules and principles — cannot be deduced from reason, science, experience, philosophy, pure logic, or mathematics. These deepest tenets can only be apprehended through faith in God. Once felt — I say “felt” instead of “understood” because the process is more like “feeling” them, which is deeper than understanding them — once felt, they may serve as the basis for constructing a Newtonian, or Cartesian, or whatever, edifice by means of the application to them of pure logic, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, Blaise Pascal, and others undertook.

To Steve Jackson,

First, obviously, Connecticut is not the country. New England and the Northeast had landslides for Gore in 2000. But other parts of the country had landslides for Bush.

Second, I nevertheless agree that the “elites are leftist, the people are conservative” argument has been vastly overplayed by neoconservatives and mainstream conservatives who need to believe that America is basically just fine. But let us never forget that a majority of the people wanted to give Clinton a pass for turning the White House into a whore house.

Mr. Auster,

But how many of these people who voted for Bush have TVs in their homes, send their children to public schools, go to leftist churches, etc.?

Things aren’t equally bad in all parts of the country, but they aren’t all that good even in the most “conservative” sections.