[skeeter]

This imaginary enemy has gone by many names. In the 1970s and '80s, it was known as "secular humanism," a fiendish anti-religious movement that had supposedly taken over the schools, the courts, the media and the government.

Thats right folks. We've just imagined all of those court rulings, laws and vitriol in the mainstream media directed against Christians and expressions of their faith over the past 40n years.

Just recently we imagined that Barack Obama mandated that Catholics violate a major theological precept of their's.

Speaking of imaginary, how about that constitutional grounded principle of 'seperation of church and state'?

[tbpiper]

Sen. Rick Santorum, who is campaigning to become America's second Catholic president

?? I haven't seen that any of the literature.

[Cicero]

Well, yes. The Baptist ministers were worried that if elected President, JFK would be a puppet of the Pope, since their view was that Catholics have to do whatever the Pope tells them, no matter what.

So Kennedy said, “separation of Church and State,” which is NOT the same things as “there shall be no ESTABLISHMENT of religion.” Meaning, no official national religion, as there was in England at that time. Kennedy kept his word, and governed like a liberal atheist.

Now, the situation is entirely different. Most Evangelicals realize that the dire threat today is not the Pope, but the Communist big government dictators who want to destroy Christianity, root and branch, Catholic and Protestant.

Catholics and Evangelicals can work together against that threat, while still disagreeing about other issues.

Incidentally, Gingrich is now a Catholic, too.

[Fiji Hill]

Many evangelicals hated JFK not for his Catholicism but for being soft on Communism, pro-Third World, pro-union and a welfare-state socialist.

[DManA]

Before my time but I doubt Evangelicals HATED JFK.

[DManA]

Also it seems the secular press has now pretty much elevated the term Evangelical to cover all Protests.

[x]

Editor's note: Michael Wolraich is a founder of the political blog dagblog.com and the author of "Blowing Smoke: Why the Right Keeps Serving Up Whack-Job Fantasies about the Plot to Euthanize Grandma, Outlaw Christmas, and Turn Junior into a Raging Homosexual."

I don't get this guy. He could write an article that gave the facts and subtly influenced readers to believe what he wants them to. But he has to show his hand with that "imaginary enemy" comment.

I guess the point isn't to give the facts, or even to influence readers, but to put down his enemies, even at the cost of revealing his agenda and losing his influence.

It's like that with a lot of bloggers: what motivates them is the emotional release of expressing their hostile feelings. But why any news agency would give them space and a paycheck is harder to figure out.

[Sherman Logan]

Priests were banished and sometimes executed.

I would be interested if anyone has documentation on priests being executed in colonial America. AFAIK, the only executions for religious reasons were of Quakers by Massachusetts.

A priest might have been executed for a capital crime, other than that of being a priest, of course.

[RobbyS]

How many people who voted in 1960 are still alive and voting?