James Carville, Bill Clinton's
consigliere of 1992, kept the
words "It's the economy, stupid!" pinned to his office
wall. Substitute "culture" for "economy", and the basis
of US President George W Bush's re-election victory
becomes obvious. Evangelical Christians compose 40% of
the American population, and three-quarters of them
probably voted for the incumbent. Voter participation
for
traditional
Democratic constituencies changed little, but the number
of evangelical voters surged, just as Bush political
adviser Karl Rove predicted. From available data it
appears plausible that the increase in evangelical voter
participation accounted for all of the president's
3.5-million-vote victory margin.
What brought 4
million more evangelical voters to the polling stations
than in the previous presidential election? The US
evangelical movement is not by nature political.
Families join evangelical churches as a refuge against
the septic tide of popular culture that threatens to
carry away their children. Evangelical concerns center
on family issues, child-rearing and personal values
rather than national or global politics.
Liberal
commentators blame the evangelical turnout on bigotry,
noting that 11 states carried ballot referenda against
same-sex marriage. The truth in that observation is
misleading.
It is true that the Republicans have
made evangelical issues into politics, but it is just as
true, and far more important, that the evangelicals have
made political issues into religious issues. That is
especially true of the Bush administration's response to
terrorism. It was the feminists of the 1960s who first
stated that the personal was political, although they
could not have imagined how this idea would evolve.
The world mis-estimated how Americans would
respond to September 11, 2001. In the past, the United
States came under attack for what it did; Japan's Pearl
Harbor raid responded to a US trade boycott that cut off
access to energy and raw materials. On September 11, the
US came under attack for what it was. Osama bin Laden's
dispute with the US was cultural rather than material.
In last week's videotape he cast the airplane attacks as
a retaliation for America's support of the Israeli
invasion of Lebanon 20 years ago. In a lampoon published
on November 2 (What Osama might have told
America), I attempted to portray his
underlying motives. The US barely can live with the
freedom of the modern world without destroying itself;
the same forces would utterly devastate the Arab world,
which lacks the resistance the US has developed over the
centuries.
Although Americans have difficulty
articulating their response, few are so dim as to
misunderstand the message. America's culture is in the
judgment seat. Do they deserve the contempt, and even
the violence, that the Islamists inflict on them? As
they seethe with self-righteous anger against their
attackers, do Americans take stock of themselves? The
answer evident on November 2 is that many of them did.
After September 11, a number of evangelical leaders,
including the Reverend Jerry Falwell, claimed that the
attacks constituted a divine punishment for America's
sins. Silly as it sounded, Falwell's statement concealed
an underlying truth. The US provokes the hatred of the
Islamic world because the "freedoms" associated with the
nether reaches of its entertainment industry are its
most visible face to the rest of the world. The US, to
most of the world, represents global mobility, but also
the breakdown of the family, the collapse of hoary
conventions of respect, the trampling of tradition.
First of all, America's tragic encounter with
Islam is a confrontation between a modern and a
traditional society, in which the traditional society
only can lose. That it also is a confrontation between
Christianity and Islam, two religions that respond in
radically different ways to the fragility of traditional
society, makes the confrontation all the more ferocious.
Islam looks outward to defend the community, the
ummah, against its enemies by conquering and
transforming them in its own image. By its nature it is
militant rather than self-critical. Christianity demands
that the believer look inward to his own sin.
Soul-searching after September 11 is what made the
personal so political in the US.
The US is in
danger of social decay - not as much danger as my
Halloween apparition of bin Laden portrayed, but in
danger nonetheless. When two-fifths of female university
students suffer from anorexia or bulimia, and one-sixth
suffer from depression, it is clear that the Witches'
Sabbath of sexual experimentation that began during the
1960s has led to widespread misery. Parents cannot raise
their children in isolation from violent pornography;
young people cannot build their lives in a fraternity
party.
It is the hard, grinding reality of
American life in the liberal dystopia that makes the
"moral issues" so important to voters. Partial-birth
abortion and same-sex marriage became critical issues
not because evangelical voters are bigots. On the
contrary, parents become evangelicals precisely in order
to draw a line between their families and the adversary
culture. This far, and no more, a majority of Americans
said on November 2 on the subject of social
experimentation.
Unlike the Europeans, whose
demoralization has led to depopulation, Americans still
are fighting against the forces of decay that threaten -
but do not yet ensure - the ultimate fall of American
power. That is the message of November 2.
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traditional
Democratic constituencies changed little, but the number
of evangelical voters surged, just as Bush political
adviser Karl Rove predicted. From available data it
appears plausible that the increase in evangelical voter
participation accounted for all of the president's
3.5-million-vote victory margin. 
