A revitalized Christianity needed to meet Islamic challenge

Dallas Blog | Tom Pauken:

“How are we to respond to the challenge of a resurgent Islam? Through military might alone? By persuading the Islamic community of the economic benefits of our materialist society? ... Or, perhaps, instead we should recognize the need to combat the fervor of a resurgent Islam by re-establishing the Christian roots of Western Civilization and seeking to achieve greater Christian unity on matters of culture.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

The United States Constitution is a shining achievement of 18th century liberalism. That Constitution created a secular nation with what Jefferson praised as a "wall of separation between church and state". That secular nation has endured for over two centuries and will continue to endure against external enemies. Whether it can withstand internal efforts to turn America into a Christian theocracy remains to be seen.

Mr Pauken gives primary credit to Ronald Reagan, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Pope John Paul II for defeating Communism. This insults the contributions of statesmen like Dean Acheson, George Marshall and Dean Truman, who, after World War II, crafted a containment strategy against global communism. That grand strategy was adhered to by Democratic and Republican administrations alike, including Reagan's, for forty years, until the Soviet Union collapsed from within due to its own rot.

Trying to primarily credit the Roman Catholic Pope is even more a distortion of history. It was the United States, a secular liberal nation, that won the Cold War. As Stalin himself once dismissively asked, "How many divisions does the pope have?"