Dear Concerned Citizen,

Did you hear the dumb blonde joke about a girl who was so stupid she got half of America to buy her books and talk about what she thinks nonstop on network and cable TV, in most of the print media including the New York Times and the Washington Post, at countless cocktail parties and coffee klatches, and headlining just about every blog on the internet?

Pretty dumb, huh?!

Seems like everyone is talking about Ann Coulter and the outrageous things she says in Godless, the Church of Liberalism.

Coulter attacks the Jersey Girls as “the Witches of East Brunswick” and comments that “I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.” The Jersey Girls are four 9/11 widows who gained notoriety for shaming the government until it established the 9/11 commission. Ann won’t be winning Miss Congeniality any time soon.

This week on MSNBC’s The Big Idea with Donny Deutche, Tim Russert was on to pitch his newest book, Our Father’s Wisdom. Deutche is miffed that Russert’s book ranks below Coulter’s on the New York Time’s Bestseller List. As soon as Coulter’s name is mentioned Deutche flinched in revulsion and snarled, “Vile!” as Russert drawled out, “Wroooooooong!”

Russert and Deutche conclude that instead of Coulter, American politics needs someone “spontaneous” and “authentic”. Here’s the bad news, boys. Coulter is perhaps the most spontaneous and authentic person in American politics today. She understands that pundits, to be successful in the media, must also be comedians in dark blue suits (or leather mini-skirts) who say whatever is on their mind as soon as it crosses their mind regardless of how off –putting it might sound. In fact, they say it precisely because it is off- putting.

It’s survival of the most outrageous for comedians and pundits alike.

Come to think of it, pundits and comedians are often one and the same. Consider Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Jeaneane Garafolo, Al Franken, Jerry Springer and Dennis Miller. This is Coulter’s crowd. She is just more outrageous, funny and clever than they are, so she sells more books and gets more press.

But Coulter makes a bigger mistake in Godless than being nasty to the Jersey Girls.

The Jersey Girls have a history of saying some pretty nasty things as well. Group leader, Kristen Breitweiser, tells audiences that “Three thousand people were murdered on George Bush’s watch.” “President Bush and his workers were the individuals that failed my husband and the 3,000 people that day." Many 9/11 families are furious with the Jersey Girls’ grandstanding. Political pundits, even on the left, agree with Coulter that the Jersey Girls’ suffering should not immunize them from criticism.

Coulter’s mistake in Godless runs deeper than her “look at me” antics. The big idea is wrong.

Coulter’s premise in Godless, the Church of Liberalism, is pretty straight forward. She thinks that liberalism is America’s established religion, with its own doctrines, dogma, cosmology, gods and clergy. Liberals reject God but have they embraced atheism religiously. Coulter equates liberalism with religious atheism, much like Buddhism or Shintoism.

Coulter warns in Godless that liberals will deny this charge, fearing official recognition of liberalism as a “religion” will jeopardize tax payer funding of their religious institutions including public schools, the universities, and most of the judiciary. “The separation of church and state means separation of your church from the state” so that the Church of Liberalism can maintain its complete control over our governmental institutions.

Coulter is wrong to confuse liberalism, which is a political philosophy, with sectarian Secularism that is Godless by definition. There are many liberals who are devout Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

Coulter knows this. She twisted her premise to politicize it so she would sell more books and buttress up the Republican Christian base.

Classical liberalism holds that an individual’s liberty is the primary political value. This liberty must be protected from the tendency of power to accumulate around heads of state, hereditary status, and established religion. Liberalism’s patron saint is William of Ockham. A 13th century Franciscan monk and Oxford academic, Ockham based his notions of natural and inalienable rights on the perfect liberty of the gospels. He believed that institutional authority must be limited to in order to protect these rights.

Agree with him or not, it would be wrong to call Okham Godless. There have been millions of God fearing liberals who have worked tirelessly to build our common moral ground. There are many aspects of classical liberalism that are founded on biblical principles and are worth fighting for.

The American constitution was written using classical liberal ink on biblical parchment. To one degree or another, all Americans are liberals. Only a fraction of us, thank God, are Secularists.

Coulter's real target is Secularism whose advocates are a vocal minority within this liberal tradition. Their goal is to radicalize classical liberalism.

Secularism is liberalism’s prodigal son. It rejects its sacred roots for placing too many demands on the individual. Often they pit the individual’s desire for autonomy against these traditional sources of faith and family. tothesource has run many articles challenging the reasoning of these Secularists and the dangerous consequences of their beliefs.

Secularism claims to be anti-authoritarian. In reality, it’s tyrannical!

Secularism must not become the exclusive source of moral authority for our culture. As a sectarian belief, Secularism’s adherents should be free to express it, but the state should not establish it, either by actively excluding other religious beliefs from the public square or disproportionately financing it. (See articles below)

Coulter’s substitution of liberalism for Secularism is intentional. She shows her hand by using “secular” a handful of times in the book, including the second to the last sentence, when her commitment to truth outweighs her political ambition. Most of the book is a defense of her politics more than a reasoned defense of her faith.

Godless is pretty Godless. There are entire chapters with no reference to God whatsoever.

There is an edit feature in Microsoft’s Word. Coulter simply needed to click Find from the Edit drop menu. In the field next to Find she should have typed liberalism. In the field next to Replace she should have typed Secularism. Within seconds the fix would have been in.

Coulter knows if she would have replaced Secularism for liberalism she would have sold a fraction of the books she is selling now.

But the warning behind her rhetoric is worth heeding. The Democratic Party must curtail the influence of their sectarian Secularist wing. This is so obvious that even the libertarian magazine The Economist questioned the wisdom of the Democratic Party’s stance against traditional faith in “American Theocracy. Is God Ambidextrous?” The May 25th, 2006 article claims that the secular elite within the party are not only indifferent to religion; they remain “positively hostile to it.” “The last thing (the secular elite) want is a religious left to counterbalance the religious right.”

This is bad news not only for Jim Wallis, Michael Lerner and Jimmy Carter, it’s bad news for all of America. On this point, Coulter is right. The Democratic Party would be emboldened if they would listen to the people of faith within their own party regarding their party’s positions on cultural issues, from justice to abortion.

But Coulter is playing an even more dangerous game. Most of her book is concise, well written and a fearless defense of traditional Christian morality. Her chapter on abortion alone is worth the price of the book. However, the logic of her attack on liberalism leads the reader to conclude that only conservatism is theistic, and that God is a Republican. This outrageous assertion borders on blasphemy, and the people of American know it. No one owns God, least of all a political philosophy or party.