Great Salman Rushdie article

[onager]

I think I'll post this in R&T, too...heh...

In today's United States, it's possible for almost anyone - women, gays, African-Americans, Jews - to run for, and be elected to, high office. But a professed atheist wouldn't stand a popcorn's chance in hell.

Hence the increasingly sanctimonious quality of so much American political discourse: the current president, according to Bob Woodward, sees himself as a ``messenger'' doing ``the Lord's will,'' and ``moral values'' has become a code phrase for old-fashioned, anti-gay, anti-abortion bigotry. The defeated Democrats also seem to be scurrying toward this kind of low ground, perhaps despairing of ever winning an election any other way...

Many Europeans now view the American combination of religion and nationalism as frightening.

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2005/03/13/b1.ed.col.rushdie.0313.html