TomPaine.com: The Right's Siege Mentality

Paul Waldman
April 25, 2005

Paul Waldman is a senior fellow with Media Matters for America and a senior contributor to The Gadflyer.

Many progressives watched in puzzlement at the end of last year as religious conservatives declared that a war was being waged across America, a campaign of untold savagery whose sole victim was a holiday celebrated by approximately four out of every five Americans. Forced to endure the horror of department store signs reading “Happy Holidays,” conservatives beat their breasts and gnashed their teeth over the War on Christmas.

No doubt we’ll be hearing about that war again, round about Thanksgiving. But in the interim we have the Judicial War On Faith, a conflagration written from the same script: Liberals drunk on their overwhelming power smash mighty fists down on the tender heads of righteous yet weak conservatives, who absorb blow after debilitating blow until they can stand no more, and rise up to restore all that is right and good with America.