By reference, “Don’t-Give-a-Damns” is the name Bernie Chumm gave to the irreligious, in most communities, no more than 10%-20%, (from the 1950s) until the Left grabbed them and turned them into the anti-religious, and the most oppressed class in America, and grew them to near majority status.)

CNS News reports that if it weren’t for the lost, Obama would be losing.

Well, it would be unfair to say it the way I just said it, not to mention un-Christian, but they do quote a Gallup Poll that says that 57% of those polled who never or rarely went to church gave President Obama favorable ratings, while only 43% of regular church attendees did.

(The better poll would have simply asked if they were religious, or had religious convictions, as many very religious people now home-church just as they home-school since so many churches now no longer meet their spiritual needs. A Moral people, a religious people (Environmentalism and socialism are both religions) and a “church-going” people do not always square.)

With that caveat in mind, I was surprised that support among “Don’t-Give-a-Damn’s for Obama was so low, or that it was so high among regular church attendees. We simply aren’t doing our jobs if there are still 43%-47% professing religious folks who look at him favorably…unless of course Gallup polled as many covens as they did Baptists (which sometimes they seem to do.)

Forget the positive spin of the title. This is a grim reminder of the battle that lies ahead, in our culture and in our institutions, long after the political battles have faded from memory or importance. (That’s if we win.) You must look at this in “Hundred Years War” terms, a fight that will go on long after you’re gone, even if you’re only in your 30’s. When I was kid they kept telling us stories about Johnny Appleseed, planting trees you’d never live to see to come to full bloom. This is why they taught us that. For it squares up nicely  against the tactics they have been using in creating the “don’t-give-a-damn’s”, namely the desire for instant gratification. You find it in advertising (in Europe oral sex has long been an advertising staple, everything from mouthwash to beer to new glasses) , film, television, and public schools…all with grave consequences, which the God of my faith at least can’t but take notice.

Again, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to glean from the Obama poll that we are (nearly) outnumbered by the “don’t-give-a-damns”, even if you compare the two groups purely on moral vs amoral grounds. When you move back from a rigid standard of right and wrong, which can only be imposed by an absolute, external Authority (which all the world’s great religions accept and understand, except for the Church of England and the Katy Creek Separate Baptist Church in Bucksnort, Tennessee), to a floating standard of not-getting-caught (cheating, theft, crime in general, politics in particular) or taking-no-responsibility (easy sex). In our Right-and-Wrong view, the moment you do it you’ve been caught (to Catholics, when you first think of it. Remember George Carlin?… there were seven distinct sins in going to feel up Carla.). In the don’t-give-a-damn view, you aren’t caught til John Law gets you, and even then, maybe not until they strap you into old Sparky. There’s good lawyers, appeals, time off for good behavior, and the state will always take care of the kids or victims you left dangling along the way.

Again it doesn’t take rocket science. When that kind of person outnumbers us, we’re in trouble, just as we know we’re in trouble when there are more people working for the state, who produce nothing and are paid by the people who do produce things, and who join up with all the people who are on the public dole, justified or not. The math isn’t hard. At some point, though never known to those is power, but still as rigid a law as the sunrise, all the hard currency (from production) disappears leaving only the funny-money that government pass between themselves like so much Army script in an occupied zone, which it in fact is. Greece. Europe. Our betters, socialists.

Only, like all our other sins enumerated above, we have to pay a tally to the Creator for allowing our system of governance to get out of balance. I don’t think God runs around with an abacus doing the kind of math I’ve just laid out, but at some point He may just say “To hell with ’em”…and actually be able to carry out the sentence.

Still, as with all our other problems, where we gonna run? There isn’t another America just past the barbed wire and a leaky boat’s ride away. America was always the Fair Havens for the rest of the world. We don’t have one. There is no other America. So we have to stay and at least prove to our Maker we’re worthy of a second (or is it the fifth, or last?) chance.

But since we also hold to the Constitution, much of this we have to do without compulsion. People have to choose Good. We already have one or two public conservative moralists who are tip-toeing the line of theocracy. I won’t go there. We have to become a moral nation through the strength of our communities and our institutions, not the rigidity of our laws. But that is not to say we cannot take back ground that we never should have lost. School-prayer, Sunday Blue laws, would be the last, not the first issues I’d tackle. But I’d have no problem with hanging up the Ten Commandments, and even teaching them. But first, I’d take back the schools and make religion, not one chosen one, but its corpus, to be a key component to public life again, from the public square to the classroom. I’d reinstate American exceptionalism (and religion’s place in it) as a part of the core curricula, K through 12, and an acceptable number of credit hours in the subject required for a bachelor’s degree. I’d fire (unceremoniously) 95%  of all the school and public librarians, and place God, George Washington, heroes and the aforementioned exceptionalism back on the bookshelves. And I’d throw a bunch of those books already on the shelves out, then sweep out with a broom…not a pat on the ass and a severance check…but the bum’s rush…all the teachers who teach that junk sociology and science, and the administrators who encourage them and provide them shelter.

As a variation on a theme I’ve raised before, this is where the real battlefield of saving and restoring America is to be found. This is where we need to direct our money, and our efforts and our minds. Like politics, it’s all local.

By doing so, you don’t have to confront the federal government or capital city. You can simply by-pass them, ignore them, and eventually turn off their spigot.