Who Remembers This Erstwhile Convention?

There was once an almost-universal American "civic religion" that rode alongside people's actual faith traditions like a sidecar to a motorcycle. Citizens generally respected other citizens' religions; or, if not their faiths themselves, at least their right to practice them unmolested. Church/state separation was a given; intrusions into highly personal bioethical matters of conscience were largely -- and rightly -- considered in poor taste.

Thanks to the pernicious rise of the religious right, all those pro-social civic conventions were infected, compromised. Hitchens was absolutely correct in observing that the evil Falwell and his criminal associates did would live on long after them.

We need to keep encouraging the widespread outbreak of secularism that's sweeping the country right now. It's fed largely by demographic and generational change; still, our best, unwitting allies in this effort are the ever-more-extreme, morally bankrupt, and politically-engaged right-wing Xtians themselves. Their inhumanity and empathy deficits are doing more to drive Americans into a wholesale embrace of humanist values than the best-coordinated anti-theist campaigns could possibly accomplish on their own.