Peter Beinart argues that the Democratic Party will reemerge from its political exile only if it recovers a clear vision for protecting democracy and freedom from their enemies. In “A Fighting Faith,” published in the December 2, 2004 edition of The New Republic, Beinart asserts that the Democrats have been taken over by Michael Moore and MoveOn.org and is now in the hands of leaders who refuse to support the war on terror and have instead associated the party with far left positions on social and domestic issues. As a result, the Democrats have lost both elections and political capital.

The greatest moral question hanging over America’s increasingly secular culture is this: Can we be good without God? That vital question–though almost always unasked–is the backdrop for most of the issues aflame in the media, the schools, and the courts.

Students in one Washington State school district won’t be participating in Halloween parties this year–at least not at school. The Puyallup School District has cancelled all plans for Halloween parties, explaining that classroom time should be used for other activities. Parents might have accepted that explanation at face value, had the district provided further reasons for its decision.

Are you Retro or Metro? That’s the question raised by a series of unusual advertisements placed in some of the nation’s leading newspapers. Featuring the question in bold relief, the ads portray “Retro Americans” as backward, rural, conservative, and Christian, while “Metro Americans” are forward-thinking, technological, urbane, and sophisticated–as well as secular. Newspaper readers have been scratching their heads for days, wondering about the meaning of these odd representations. Now we know–these ads are nothing less than a declaration of culture war from the Left.

Attacks on Christianity are nothing new, but a book now hitting the nation’s bookstores argues that faith in God is not only out of date, but dangerous. As a matter of fact, Sam Harris argues that belief in God is the root cause of world terrorism and virtually every other problem faced by humanity.

Are you ready for an army of secularists to invade the sanctuary of your church, looking for evidence to use in complaints to the Internal Revenue Service? That is a question now faced by evangelical pastors and many Catholic priests as critical issues of moral importance are preached in the pulpit. Developments in Arkansas, Kansas, and across the nation draw attention to a real and present danger faced by Christian churches.

Peggy Noonan is right. At some point, in some moment, all of us must admit that something remarkable has happened to American culture. Mrs. Noonan, a former presidential speechwriter, recalls that this moment came for her during a high school graduation in the early 1970s. A young girl walked across the stage to receive her diploma. The girl was obviously pregnant. Noonan recalls that her first impulse was admiration for the girl’s grit and determination against social disapproval. “But,” recognized Noonan, “society wasn’t disapproving. It was applauding.” As she reflected, “Applause is a right and generous response for a young girl with grit and heart. And yet, in the sound of that applause I heard a wall falling, a thousand-year wall, a wall of sanctions that said: We as a society do not approve of teenaged unwed motherhood because it is not good for the child, not good for the mother, not good for us.”

Today’s culture wars can be directly traced to the cultural transformations of the 1960′s. As a matter of fact, that critical decade represented nothing less than a cultural revolution of sorts–a revolution Stanley Kurtz describes as “both a fulfillment and a repudiation of the vision of America’s founders.”

If you haven’t caught on by now, you must have some psychological illness. No kidding–at the very center of our postmodern culture is an inflexible belief that all of us are either in therapy or in denial. We have finally arrived in the age of universal psychosis, when every malady, mood, or misunderstanding is rooted in some syndrome that must be cured by therapy or by psychotropic drugs.

Will Christmas be pushed into the catacombs? A new round of animosity toward Christmas is further proof that the political correctness police are busily at work. Furthermore, we are witnessing the re-paganizaton of Christmas. One of the great achievements of Europe’s Christian culture was the transformation of various pagan winter festivals into a celebration of the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. In a stunning reversal of history, secular antagonism and New Age spiritualities threaten to recapture Christmas for paganism.

The holiday police are at it again–looking for violations of the nation’s new policy of separating faith and civic celebrations. The same folks who will soon be trolling courthouse squares looking for manger scenes are now calling on Americans to have a happy Thanksgiving . . . but leave God out of it.