What is happening to us?

Sometimes, if I take the news seriously, I wonder if we will bomb ourselves back to the 12^th century or just elect a president from the 12^th century. I take the news seriously

I have no particular light to shed on the escalating saber rattling by all sides over Iran, except to think that a proxy attack by Israel does not seem like the lesson we should have taken from Iraq and Afghanistan – and that a political campaign already filled with vitriol is not a good venue for conducting foreign policy.

The Crusades mentality has penetrated to the core of the presidential debate, as religion has become its latest – and perhaps most dangerous – flashpoint.  In the last few days, Newt Gingrich has blasted the Obama administration’s “war against religion;” Rick Santorum has railed against Obama’s “phony theology” (although he said he was talking about the president’s environmental policies, not his personal faith); and Mitt Romney has accused the president’s team of having “fought against religion.”

Some of you wrote to compare Martin Luther King’s praise of extremism in the last post with the extremism we are witnessing today. It is worth noting that King went on to write: “Will we be extremists for hate or for love . . . for the preservation of injustice or the extension of justice?” And then he invoked the same god that has been turned into a political battering ram: “Jesus Christ,” he wrote, “was an extremist for love, truth, and goodness.”