With the rise of socialist and neo-communist ideals in the White House and emboldened atheism in our state houses, along with federal mandates that violate religious freedoms and a Democratic party that denies God and compromises Israel, we can hardly recognize traditional Judeo-Christian principles of liberty and justice, and civility, in America today. Indeed, we might wonder if they are tattered beyond repair.

Politicians and citizens who hold these traditions dear take a special beating. Consider former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat and a man of God.

Presenting party platform amendments for a voice vote at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, Strickland professed, “As an ordained United Methodist minister, I am here to attest and affirm that our faith and belief in God is central to the American story and informs the values we’ve expressed in our party’s platform.” That sounds great, and may have held true in Strickland’s time; but on Sept. 5, 2012, the party base did not back him up. A large constituency loudly shouted “NO” to proposals to reinsert the name of God, and to proclaim Jerusalem the capital of Israel.

Convention chair Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Strickland looked baffled and abandoned before bright lights, the nation staring.

The scene, viewable on YouTube, is comical, and pathetic, as Villaraigosa searches for someone to guide him. He calls for the vote a second time, and then a third. Finally, he rules that the ayes are a two-thirds majority. Anyone watching knows the vote was a draw, at best.

In hindsight, we might wonder: Were Strickland and Villaraigosa truly naive about their party’s sentiments? Or did they know, but figure that the base would go along with the president, who requested the hasty platform changes in response to public pressure? Or could Strickland have been sincere? As an ordained minister, despite his party’s current bent, might he still view the world through Judeo-Christian lenses?

Smeared by feminists, homosexuals and atheists in an Obama-influenced culture war, Judeo-Christian traditions, and anyone who holds to them, get pushed to the sidelines, or under the bus, in the progressive political fray.

Not structured to “evolve” with the times, Judeo-Christian values reflect nature’s and God’s truths, eternal and unchanging points of reference that our founders firmly fixed into the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, to anchor our government and civil society in inherent freedoms, and to provide us the courage to defend them – on our soil, and around the globe.

“Judeo-Christian values have a foundational role in America,” writes Ronald R. Cherry in a Sept. 15, 2007 American Thinker column.

Cherry quotes from the Declaration of Independence those self-evident truths “endowed by their Creator” that he calls “the seed of American Social Justice.”

Cherry figures that happiness is equivalent to creativity, and that the founders expanded their vision of freedom in the Constitution “through reason and common sense, unencumbered by the dysfunctional religious and secular traditions and laws of Old Europe.” Well today, what’s old is new again. Dysfunctional religious and secular ideas – the Marxist “social justice” agenda of liberation theology that stirs class warfare; the neo-communist “separation of church and state” agenda of atheism that shuns God; and the administration’s despotic laws that require the faithful to commit deadly sin — characterize Obama’s rule.

History shows that creativity becomes diabolical under the destructive specter of spite and godlessness. Reason and common sense are not driving forces in totalitarian ideologies. Without God as its guide, government is a tyrant, and the governed are fools.

The founders had been there and known that. Must we learn it for ourselves?

Nancy E. Thoerig

Mount Savage