I'll just let Roger L. Simon speak for himself.
... we are in dire need of leadership, not of the policy wonk kind — God knows we’ve had a lot of that — but of the moral and inspirational kind. We need someone to call forth the best in America the way Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s. We need someone unafraid to speak for the democratic values of Western civilization and to fight for them economically and politically as well as militarily, if that is necessary.
The incumbent president has proven to be none of those things. He is at best ambivalent about our values and at worst an enemy of them. Rick Perry is the reverse. I had the pleasure of having dinner with him in Austin well over a year ago and could see it almost immediately.
Call him a cowboy, call him a Christer, but this man is a passionate American and a passionate American is exactly what we need right now. And that kind of person, I am sad to admit, is unlikely to come from the ranks of the agnostic and the secular. It will come from the ranks of the religious, those who have faith. That’s just the way it is now.
But I will try to reassure my fellow agnostics with this. We are not nearly as far from religious people as we think. Though we may brood on the timing and veracity of the Big Bang, speculate on Einstein’s unified field theory (if we can understand it), debate St. Anselm in our heads or just throw up our hands and say the whole question is above our job description, when it comes to the way we actually live, our values, most of us do just as our religious brothers and sisters do. Like them we are products of the Judeo-Christian tradition and we live by the Ten Commandments — or try to.
So ease off on the PDS [Perry Derangement Syndrome] and don’t be scared of Rick Perry. If someone’s wearing their faith on their sleeve, maybe that’s a good thing.
I thought this was awfully nice of Roger. And it reminded me of something our friend Tom Glennon wrote yesterday:
... I have Muslim friends, although I do not support the activities and agenda of the fundamentalist or extreme elements. I have gay friends, although I do not support the more radical gay agenda. I have liberal friends, although I do not subscribe to the liberal or progressive agenda....
I appreciate both of these two, very different men for their not-so-disparate reminders -- that there's an awful lot of common sense and generosity of spirit in America. Obama may bow his head to the Saudi king rather than his Creator, he may have his boot on the neck of our economy, his hand outstretched to our enemies and his back turned on our allies, but he cannot extinguish the innate character of the American people.
It makes me very proud, and dare I say it? Hopeful.
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