What the Cold War did was provide a fairly clearly defined enemy and it's easy to organize around that.

There are real radical Muslim groups out there that really are pretty villainous. You don't have to make them up.

The Family in particular, but also other really **** conservatives come to call what is "Biblical Capitalism." The idea that capitalism is ordained in the Bible and that inasmuch as we interfere with the market, we're interfering with God's literal and visible hand.

Elite fundamentalism has always been on the corporate side of things.

Liberalism doesn't speak to ideals. Radicalism does.

You can recruit the populace conservatism for the interests of corporate conservatism that the two things can be married into one unholy union.

The politics of that year [2004] are old now, but the problem remains the same, the real culture clash of American life. It's between the essence of fundamentalism - paternalism, authority, and charity - and the messy imperatives of democracy, "the din of the vox populi" once derided by Abram Vereide. It's the difference between false unity, preached from above, and real solidarity, pledged between brothers and sisters - the kinds who are always bickering.