We need to Abandon Secularism to make Osama Bin Ladin happy

Dinesh D'Souza's latest column calls for an end to secularism. For those unfamiliar with the term, Secularism is "the view that religious considerations should be excluded from civil affairs or public education." I would distinguish it a bit more, by putting the word specifically right before religious, but this is enough for my purposes. Secularism means that the Government doesn't rest it's decisions on the edicts of any particular religion. The spirit of Secularism is contained in the first amendment and the generally accepted and regularly derided "separation of Church and State."

Secularism has apparently inspired Osama bin Ladin and his buddies to kill Americans. It's American Secularists they hate, not American Christians.

Thus the doctrine that the war against terrorism is a battle of two opposed forms of religious fundamentalism is false. This is not why the Islamic radicals are fighting against America. From the perspective of Bin Laden and his allies, the war is between the Muslim-led forces of monotheism and morality against the America-led forces of atheism and immorality. Secularism, not Christian fundamentalism, is responsible for producing a blowback of Muslim rage.

Bear in mind that D'Souza largely agrees with bin Ladin's assessment. America really should reject secularism and should turn the government over to decent Conservative Christians. Bin Ladin could get along with Conservative Christians - it's us liberals and secularists he can't stand.

My opinion on Secularism should be familiar to longterm readers of this site, but for those who would like to know more, check out this review I did of Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore's "The Godless Constitution."

It's humorous to remember the many times Conservatives have accused Democrats of wanting to surrender to Osama bin Ladin and then read D'Souza basically advocating that we, well, surrender to bin Ladin in principle if not in fact. But then again D'Souza basically feels that bin Ladin has the right idea (in this particular area).