Jerry Falwell is still dead.

Lest we all start dancing on his grave, let us not forget that pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays and lesbians could not have better allies than idiots like the late fat fuck Falwell. When he began his on-air ministry in 1956, abortion was illegal in most states, children were required to pray in school, women and racial minorities were discriminated against by law, and homosexuality was still considered a committable mental illness by the mainstream medical community. By any measure, the crusade that he and others led to impose religious law on the populace by use of government force has completely failed.

So why did they fail? They are far better organized and funded than their opponents and are able to consistently draw out voters in numbers that make leftists green with envy. They even have an existing American population that, while not as extreme in their dogma, largely shares their religious beliefs. It doesn't add up. I see two possible explanations: First, even when they did help get out the vote for conservative politicians on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, they were forgotten on Wednesday. Politicians only need the voters one day every two years, they need corporate donors the other 729 days, and while corporate interests are quite willing to exploit religion to keep the proletariat in its place, they also understand that us heathens have money to spend too. Often we have more of it.

Secondly, and I believe more importantly, while these demagogues can rally the base, they are preaching to the choir, so to speak. They can get their followers to the polls, but they can't change the attitudes of those who aren't already in the flock. In fact, I'd argue that they have effectively pushed the remainder of the mainstream population farther to the left with their fiery rhetoric.

When they crank up the venom on a political topic to energize the movement they often produce an even larger backlash. In addition, when they turn their attention to gay Teletubbies, even their own supporters start to back slowly away.

The ones who should truly be breathing a sigh of relief at his passing, and possibly praying for God to smite the whole southeastern seaboard where these televangelists seem to congregate, are the small-government type conservatives who've been equally abused by their party. Not only did their party simply ignore their pleas for fiscal restraint and head straight for the special interest pork buffet at first chance, but they have to share a platform with a group who demands that the Feds expand faith-based social programs and interfere in states' rights issues whenever those states choose to do something that they consider immoral.

There is a lesson to be learned for wannabe social engineers. You can't change society through politics, you can only change politics through society. As the old hippie saying goes "when the people lead, the leaders will follow." To look at another famous late preacher, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did not have to convince politicians that Jim Crow was wrong. All the laws in the wouldn't have ended blatant bigotry. He and the thousands of other civil rights activists had to win the hearts and change the minds of the majority white population before overt racism became socially unacceptable. Of course, there's probably a lot to be said for Nichelle Nichols in breaking down attitudes about segregation too. Yeah baby, you can drink from my water fountain anytime, Lieutenant Uhura.