A recent cover of The Economist shows a cartoon depicting the Statue of Liberty, not standing high on her Ellis Island podium, but sitting on it, looking away from the viewer, a little like “The Thinker,” but more melancholy.  The story is about “Unhappy America” and how it got that way and what to do about it.  The short version of the story is: the housing market, the credit crisis, the war on terror, the price of gas, the rise of Asia, and so on and so forth.  But it’s not a pessimistic article.

America has got into funks before now. In the 1950s it went into a Sputnik-driven spin about Soviet power; in the 1970s there was Watergate, Vietnam and the oil shocks; in the late 1980s Japan seemed to be buying up America. Each time, the United States rebounded, because the country is good at fixing itself.

The main problem, so says The Economist, is how America looks at the rise of Asia.  They say not to worry.  First, China won’t be catching up to America any time soon.  And second, in a free market world, economic prosperity for one fair player means economic prosperity for all fair players.  This is what liberals don’t understand and what conservatives (at least when speaking of Asia) seem to have forgotten.

Economic growth, like trade, is not a zero-sum game. The faster China and India grow, the more American goods they buy. And they are booming largely because they have adopted America’s ideas. America should regard their success as a tribute, not a threat, and celebrate in it.  Many Americans, unfortunately, are unwilling to do so. Politicians seeking a scapegoat for America’s self-made problems too often point the finger at the growing power of once-poor countries, accusing them of stealing American jobs and objecting when they try to buy American companies.

Sure, American jobs may be moving overseas, but that’s because those folks can do them more efficiently than we can (for lots of reasons), which means when we buy those very same products, they’ll be more affordable than they were before.  And that just frees up Americans to make new things, to sell new products, to be even more innovative than before.  Economics is not zero-sum.  Those with economic myopia believe that if John makes money, he must be stealing it from Sue.  Those with a healthy view of economics realize that if John makes money, then he’s got more money to buy Sue’s widgets.  And that’s better for everybody.  Including America.

In this Times article, Ted Widmer, in a mode typical of liberals who realize they need to court Evangelicals to win the White House, seems to have found a historical connection between liberalism and Evangelicalism.

For most of American history, evangelicals were Democrats or their equivalents, profoundly uncomfortable near the temple of the moneychangers. Jefferson attracted huge numbers of voters simply because his running mate, Aaron Burr, was the grandson of the great evangelist Jonathan Edwards. In the 1920s, William Jennings Bryan was lampooned by H. L. Mencken as an ignoramus catching flies in a sweaty courthouse during the Scopes trial, but that snide dismissal overlooked Bryan’s long career as an advocate for progressive causes.

Wait, I’ve heard this before, right?  It goes something like this: Evangelicals used to be liberal and progressive, like when they marched with Dr. King and were for the abolition of slavery and women’s voting rights, but their ignorant (or is it cunning?) leaders duped them into voting Republican for the last thirty years. 

The problem, of course, is that “progressive” can mean many different things (it can men new, different, or simply the quality of things that I want to happen in the future).  Another problem is that many “liberals” during the last 300 years of American history believed very different things than “liberals” today.  Take the abortion issue.  At present, the established law looks at this as an issue of women’s rights.  And so, it seems “progressive” to be pro-choice, pro-abortion.  And it seems counter-progressive to be pro-life, pro-fetus.  But in 100 or 500 or 1,000 years, historians might (I say might) look back and see that it was really an issue of children’s rights.  And so it would seem much more “progressive,” historically, to be pro-life.

All that to say, these Democrats trying to find a kinship with Evangelicals by saying, “Hey, we love the same things!” is only half-true, just as half-true as it is when Republicans say it.  It may be true that a lot of Evangelicals may desire to be co-belligerents with Democrats, given certain ideas about global warming, poverty, etc.  Just like it’s true that, for the last three decades, Evangelicals have been co-belligerents with Republicans on issues of taxation, the family, and the like.  I suppose that when you’re co-belligerents for long enough, you start to adopt the philosophies of your comrades, for better or worse.  Usually for worse.

In the end, I think it’d be probably be best for believers to consider ourselves no more than co-belligerents with whomever we align ourselves, Republican or Democrat.  Once we start calling ourselves one or the other, we’ve ceased to be discerning about what’s most important, which is that our political decisions be based on God’s word, not man’s.

Greg Beato says, despite bad press from mothers and the government, fireworks are an American birthright.  He even quotes John Adams in their defense, who suggested to his wife in a letter that “the anniversary of America’s independence ‘ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.’”  Amen, hallelujah. 

Revolutions and firework have a lot in common.  Both are dangerous, even when done well.  Both are also are exhilarating, but generally only when done well.  Both involve, in their best moments, hurting other people.  I’m referring to bottle rocket wars, which is the closest I’ve even come to real combat.  That, and dove hunting in a small field with a lot of drunken men.  So: Go, America.  Blow up something, in celebration of how we’re willing blow something up if need be.  I couldn’t think of a line of reasoning more American than that.

During Saturday’s Miss America show, which probably had higher ratings than in a while, and which was as its most transparently ridiculous, one of the final questions asked of the contestants was something like, “How can America improve its reputation in the world?” [The question itself belies a lot. Our reputation is important, sure, but it’s more important to recall the virtues of our nation and live them more fully. Do that, and the reputation will follow.]

But it’s a question that the left has kept asking, and that’s what this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine is all about. Parag Khanna asks us to imagine what it will be like in eight years:

It is 2016, and the Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Barack Obama administration is nearing the end of its second term. America has pulled out of Iraq but has about 20,000 troops in the independent state of Kurdistan, as well as warships anchored at Bahrain and an Air Force presence in Qatar. Afghanistan is stable; Iran is nuclear. China has absorbed Taiwan and is steadily increasing its naval presence around the Pacific Rim and, from the Pakistani port of Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea. The European Union has expanded to well over 30 members and has secure oil and gas flows from North Africa, Russia and the Caspian Sea, as well as substantial nuclear energy. America’s standing in the world remains in steady decline.

That paragraph right there made me want to stop reading, but I kept on. Khanna offers five ways for the next president to solve the problem. Here they are in summa:

1. Be a diplomat. Stop talking about “American interests” and “American values” and talk of global interests and values. We know you like America. You live here. You’re the president. Be nice to your global audience. [This is a giant rule of good persuasion.]

2. Reorganize the State Department to look like the Pentagon. Better communication.

3. Send citizen diplomats around to the world, “spreading values and winning loyalty.” This includes Foreign Service officers. Missionaries of a kind. “We need a Peace Corps 10 times its present size, plus student exchanges, English-teaching programs and hands-on job training overseas - with corporate sponsorship.”

4. “[M]ake the global economy work for us.” Bring Asian money here.

5. “[C]onvene a G-3 of the Big Three. But don’t set the agenda; suggest it. These are the key issues among which to make compromises and trade-offs: climate change, energy security, weapons proliferation and rogue states […] A Western change of tone could make China sweat. Superpowers have to learn to behave, too.”

I had to smile at the two news magazines sitting on my kitchen table this morning. One was Christian (World ) and the other was secular (Newsweek), but for a minute you would have thought they were both out of the Bible belt.

It’s not that Mike Huckabee’s face fills the cover of Newsweek, or the words “Holy!” or “God” — which, of course, are always used with sophisticated irony in this self-consciously post-religious world. But one can’t help getting the feeling about America that “she protesteth overmuch” in her flamboyant divorce from God.

You will know what I mean if you have traveled in Europe — where, by the way, they think we are all Christians here, the lot of us. The Europeans have by and large made a clean break from God. Nietzsche’s “God is dead” rings true across that pond.

But America always seems to me like a kid who flamboyantly runs away from his Daddy, but can’t stop talking about him. The feature article on Huckabee is a little too sympathetic; it belies a twinge of nostalgia for home. I am reminded of ancient Israel’s similar episodic attempts to break free of the God who loves her and to curry favor with all the other kids on the Middle Eastern block:

“You say, ‘We want to be like the nations, like the people of the world, who serve wood and stone. But what you have in mind will never happen.” (Ezekiel 20:32).

America, have a tantrum and plug your ears and scream, “I can’t hear you, God!” But you know it isn’t so.

A new documentary about faith and politics should be out by the early New Year.  The film, called Article VI, is about how much, and how little, consideration voters give to the religion of presidential candidates.  I predict it will be full of equivocation on all sides, playing to the prejudices of all sides, and will add to the screen of chatter that shields Americans from sensible considerations of such matters.  I gather as much from “the more provocative moments” of the documentary:

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The medieval church was such a part of its community that it was hard to tell them apart.  The church and its steeples and cupolas were the identifying landmarks of European and early American towns (and still are in some), they were the centers of town.  Hospitals and schools were a part of the church.  Everything was a part of the church.  Sometime between then and now, that’s changed.  The most identifiable landmarks in town are the high-rises and skyscrapers.  The government is more tied into hospitals and schools than the church.  But these are not the kinds of things I was thinking when I came across this article about the business ventures of mega-churches in America:

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While we’re celebrating the so-called culture wars that get all fizzy and foamy during the holiday season, let’s appreciate a new book by Kevin Seamus Hasson, The Right to Be Wrong: Ending the Culture War Over Religion in America.  Hasson says the war is “Pilgrims” versus “Park Rangers.” 

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The War on Terror might not necessarily be moving to Iran, but the War on Christmas has definitely spread to Thanksgiving.  The Pilgrims went to church, we know that much.  They believed America was pretty much the New Israel, even though it isn’t.  And they thanked God at the first Thanksgiving.  But that might not necessarily mean that Thanksgiving, as we know it, is a Christian holiday.

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There’s a terrific series of essays over at Cato Unbound about religion and politics. Pick your side and enjoy the reading…

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