AND BY SEPARATION THEY MEAN STATISM:

Of God and Men: Unlike America's, Europe's political establishment is hostile to Christianity. (ROCCO BUTTIGLIONE, November 10, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

George W. Bush concluded his election victory speech with "God bless America." It's likely that in the European Parliament, the U.S. president would be considered unfit for his job on account of his religious beliefs. Even worse, for Europe's legislators, would be that he's not ashamed to express those beliefs so clearly and so publicly.

If you consider that Mr. Bush won re-election in part because of his firm stand on family values and other moral issues, it becomes apparent that Europe and United States are drifting apart not only on foreign policy but also on their vision of a democratic society and of the proper relationship between politics and ethics.

One of America's founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, was convinced that politics needed values it could not produce itself and had to rely on other agencies (mainly the churches) to nurture the virtues civil life needs. The state could therefore not privilege any church in particular but had to maintain a positive attitude to religion in general.

Jean Jacques Rousseau thought, on the contrary, that the state needed a kind of civil religion of its own and the existing churches had to bow to this civil religion by incorporating its commandments in their theology. Many scholars see in this idea of Rousseau's the seminal principle of totalitarianism. The tradition of Rousseau and of the Jacobins has survived in Europe in less virulent forms than in the not too distant past, but it's still part of the European political and ideological landscape.

An amusing moment today, if you'll excuse the self-reference, at the weekly Elementary School Sing-along, in a town that probably voted 8-1 for Senator Kerry, they started with God Bless America. A simple illustration of how Red even most of our Blues are here in America.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 10, 2004 7:41 PM