CREEPING PAGANISM
JR., JOHN J. DIIULIO
CREEPING PAGANISM JOHN J. DIIULIO JR. BILL CLINTON FIRST REACTED BRAZENLY when caught red-handed in a series of bald-faced, lip-biting, finger-waving lies. But he rightly intuited that nowadays...
...America's Judeo-Christian polity requires that citizens be socialized—with or without organized religion—to harbor an unyielding regard for the well-being of others, from family members to faceless fellow citizens to even foes...
...I am using "pagan" to describe people who behave as if they believe that individuals own their own bodies outright, that there is no objective moral truth, that no human community need aspire to be more than the sum of its living members' worldly desires, or that it need respect all persons regardless of their physical, financial, and political might...
...But nose-counting only distracts us from the profound reality reflected in Monicagate—namely, the creeping paganization of American politics and culture...
...But creeping paganism empties all such words and the sacred trusts they entail...
...a bipartisan eagerness to improvise and reluctance to constitutionalize a historic impeachment proceed-ing—these are but a few fingerprints of paganism at the helm...
...By "We the People" they intended a transcendent civic community of "ourselves and our posterity...
...The one-third of the general public that favored Clinton's removal from office, meanwhile, was bigger than the plurality of voters that reelected him in 1996...
...it was left to Lincoln to wield their worthy Constitution against the ancient pagan practice of domestic slave-holding...
...In politics and in culture, we should lovingly but steadfastly resist...
...I believe he meant it, and i believe the president was moved by the words...
...But citizens who are not troubled by it in the least, and who are oblivious to the grave challenges facing our economically prosperous but morally at risk republic, are neo-pagans, whether conscious or unwitting...
...Citizens who are troubled by our president's wrongdoing are not all right-wing religious prudes...
...Legalized partial-birth abortions...
...Contested, that is, by conservatives, but sanitized by legions of liberal historians, the radical-feminist faithful, the nonjudgmental clergy, the Hollywood crowd, and the abortion-on-demand minions...
...misogynistic rap lyrics sung with feeling by tattooed and body-pierced kids from all zip codes—these are but a few signs of paganism on the march...
...elected representatives who defer to polls on questions of morality...
...the refusal of many religious leaders to declare absolutely wrong any form of consensual sex between adults (adults only, for now...
...But he rightly intuited that nowadays even unrebuttable evidence of prurient sexuality, perjury, obstruction of justice, and multiple moral offenses against sacred institutions—marriage, the rule of law, and our democracy's highest elected office—would excite only enough elite notice and mass displeasure to somewhat disturb his final years of governing and leave his place in history contested...
...This new birth of freedom deepened America's Judeo-Christian political culture, which in this century routed the international pagan movements of fascism and communism...
...As recently as 1991, they had demanded a Senate inquiry into allegations that a Supreme Court nominee years before had talked dirty to a female attorney...
...Republican representative and religious conservative Steve Largent, who voted to impeach Clinton, told the president at a recent public prayer breakfast, "I love you...
...The growing currency of seductive ethical doctrines that consult only our convenience and invite us to abandon or kill the unborn and the infirm elderly...
...What should we do...
...They asked God's help as they constitutionalized political power so as to transform "the mischiefs of faction" into "the permanent and aggregate interests of the community...
...But Clinton knew their hearts...
...a corporate foreign-policy establishment that loves profit more than it hates persecution...
...middle-class neglect of disadvantaged children...
...By creeping paganiza-tion, i mean the slow but steady increase in the numbers and influence of such people in politics and culture...
...Contributing editor John J. DiIulio Jr...
...In 1998, they denounced as "McCarthyism" the Senate's consideration of evidence that a sitting president had phone-sex-plus with a female intern not half his age...
...The Founders rejected paganism...
...is a professor of public policy at Princeton University...
Vol. 4 • February 1999 • No. 22
