Want to share this oped published in the Greenville, South Carolina News just a few days before Christmas.
Looks like John McCain is staging to play the Karl Rove card used so ignominiously against him in the SC Primary 2000, exposed by Beaufort Mayor Bill Rauch, among others in his book Politikin.
The network of this site should bring to the attention of the secular press, Baxter Wynn, brother of former STate GOP chair Barry Wynn.
Baxter is a chaplain of sorts to the Greenville County Chamber of Commerce, a progressive in the Baptist Community in Upstate SC with an audience monthly as a columnist for the Greenville Chamber glossy regional magazine.
He has a higher ethic than Mike Fair in these matters.
Not news to this site Randall Balmer and Tom Edsall are on to how Baptist values vote is pivotal in the Rovian scheme of things.
McCain should not be allowed to play the same game in 08 Dubya played in 00 in SC

The Honorable Mike Fair, Ladies and Gentlemen:
War has two fronts: terrorism and American culture

Published: Saturday, December 23, 2006 - 6:00 am

By Mike Fair

Every Christmas season seems to introduce into the culture a new designer pathogen to weaken our spiritual heritage and debase traditional values that have blessed our country.

This year it was unleashed on officials at Seattle's airport, which, in a matter of a few days, put up 14 Christmas trees in the passenger terminal, took them down and put them up again. The airport officials unwittingly demonstrated what otherwise sane people look like when infected with political correctness.

A rabbi demanded that the airport construct an 8-foot tall menorah right in the middle of the trees. Fearing a lawsuit, the officials ordered the trees taken down, producing shock and anger throughout the country.

Even the rabbi expressed shock over the overreaction.
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Back up went the trees, with the rabbi promising not to sue, and with airport officials promising to develop a plan next year that honors diversity of religious expression, whatever that means.

This is a ridiculous example of what happens when a culture starts to lose a consensus on what constitutes right and wrong. If right and wrong do not exist, if society loses its grasp on fundamental principles, then we become confused. And out of confusion springs chaos.

Which brings me to the 2008 presidential campaign, which will be jump-started next month as the candidates make their intentions official. Because of its importance, particularly in the Republican Party, South Carolina will quickly become the national focus of the primary season.

I hope we can all agree on one fact: We will be electing a wartime president in this country.

There are two wars being fought simultaneously. One is the war on terror; the other is the culture war. We must win both, and we must have a president who is steadfast on both wars.

If he runs, I will work actively to elect Sen. John McCain because he is the only conservative who can beat what will be a strong Democrat candidate. Right now polls show Hillary Rodham Clinton as the front-runner.

Sen. McCain has been an ally of President Bush in his valiant efforts to bring America back to traditional values, including putting justices on the Supreme Court who will not legislate from the bench.

Another GOP candidate, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, has made trips to South Carolina trying to appeal to conservatives. But his record in Massachusetts, the most liberal state in the nation, suggests he espouses one set of values in South Carolina, but governs in Massachusetts with a decidedly different value system.

The man who now claims to be the anchorman for family values was anchored in a different mooring in 1994, when he declared, "I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country ... I believe that since Roe vs. Wade has been the law for 20 years, we should sustain and support it." That was when he ran against Sen. Ted Kennedy.

According to the Boston Globe, Gov. Romney filled out a Planned Parenthood questionnaire in 2002 when he ran for governor. He answered "yes" to the question of "Do you support the substance of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade?"

That same year Gov. Romney restated his support of abortion in a survey from the National Abortion Rights Action League, while refusing to answer the survey sent by the Massachusetts Center for Life.

In a Dec. 9 article this year, The New York Times reported that Gov. Romney "is drawing sharply increased criticism from conservative activists for his advocacy of gay rights" because of a letter he wrote to a pro-gay group while running against Sen. Kennedy.

The letter, addressed to the Log Cabin Club of Massachusetts, promised that he would be a stronger advocate for gay rights than Kennedy. "For some voters it might be enough for me to simply match my opponent's (Kennedy's) record in this area," Romney wrote. "But I believe we can and must do better. If we are to achieve the goals we share, we must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern."

Those values may be what the people of Massachusetts consider mainstream, but in South Carolina we call such values liberal.

The next president will be challenged with perhaps more vexing problems than any president in history. A major focus of the campaigns will be -- rightfully so -- on Iraq and the broader war on terror. We must win this war.

But we cannot neglect traditional American values that stem from the Judeo-Christian ethic. The Supreme Court is one vote away from swinging left or right; the next president will have the opportunity to affect the balance.

America will need a commander-in-chief willing to do what is necessary to fight the war on terror, and the culture war at home. That's why I plan to be on the McCain team.

Here is Scott Henderson, a member of the faculty at the historically Baptist related Furman University in Greenville; my alma mater. Here is Henderson's oped reply to Fair

Supporting religious freedom is a traditional value
The real threat to American principles is not diversity but a refusal to embrace that diversity

Published: Saturday, December 30, 2006 - 6:00 am

By A. Scott Henderson

In a recent guest column, state Sen. Mike Fair argued that a war is being waged on American culture. As a prime example, he cited this year's request by a rabbi to place a menorah among eight Christmas trees in the Seattle international airport.

Sen. Fair noted that airport officials have pledged to devise a plan next year that, in Fair's words, "honors diversity of religious expression," to which he added, "whatever that means."

Whether or not Sen. Fair was being rhetorical, his flippant comment about religious freedom is troubling for several reasons.

Some people, including Christians, view Christmas trees as part of the crass commercialization of Jesus' birth. Others invest a lot of religious significance in decorating a real or an artificial tree. That is their right. After all, the use of symbols is an important component of religious freedom. On the other hand, we cannot privilege some symbols while ignoring others, at least in publicly controlled spaces such as airports.
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Religious freedom, however, encompasses a great deal more than preventing the state from endorsing (or appearing to endorse) a particular religion. It ultimately involves our willingness to honor and celebrate those whose beliefs differ from our own. Unfortunately, current trends seem to be in the opposite direction. For example, Mark Taylor, a religion professor at Williams College, notes that today's young adults are often dogmatic about their own faith and closed-minded about the spiritual views of others. Even exposure to other religions seems to threaten some of them.

My own upbringing led me to a very different view of religion. I was raised as a Methodist in cosmopolitan South Florida. My Jewish barber taught me how to play the shofar (a ceremonial instrument made from an animal's horn), and my Jewish friends invited me to participate in their religious and cultural customs. My Hispanic friends, having fled from religiously intolerant Cuba, educated me about Catholicism. These experiences did not weaken my spiritual heritage; they strengthened and enriched it.

South Carolina is becoming more, not less, like South Florida. Newcomers are moving to our communities from other parts of the country and the world. In turn, dramatic population growth is increasing South Carolina's religious diversity. Honoring this diversity is not a threat to our traditional values. It is one of them.

Instead of turning his guest column into a political endorsement for U.S. Sen. John McCain, Sen. Fair might have served us better by highlighting a genuine threat to our culture: bigotry. In a recent letter to his constituents, Republican Rep. John Goode questioned the character and loyalty of incoming Rep. Keith Ellison. The reason? Ellison, a Democrat from Minnesota, has indicated that he would like to use a copy of the Quran in his private swearing-in ceremony. Goode believes this symbolic gesture will undermine traditional American values.

It should not surprise us that at least one of our U.S. representatives is a practicing Muslim. But we should be shocked that another representative has publicly vilified him because of that. Free societies contain people with an array of spiritual beliefs (or none at all). To honor expressions of this diversity is not a "culture war," much less a war we ought to win, as Sen. Fair believes. And what would winning look like anyway?

In 1801, the Baptist Association of Danbury, Conn., wrote a letter to President Thomas Jefferson. At the time, Baptists were a religious minority and wanted the separation between church and state strengthened. With great eloquence, they noted: "Our sentiments are uniformly on the side of religious liberty -- that religion is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals -- that no man ought to suffer in name, person, or effects on account of his religious opinions."

We would do well to remember this wise counsel whenever we are tempted to speak of war and religion in the same breath.

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William I. Griffith I enjoyed Scott Henderson's piece, and generally agreed with it. One should note that many, if not most, of our current symbols of Christmas are historically pagan, and the Christmas trees that caused the stir in the airport are but one example. The evergreen tree is a symbol of Christmas in that we have renamed it the "Christmas Tree". Someone please correct me if this is wrong.

An area where I am not sure what Scott means is in the line, "Honoring this diversity is not a threat to our traditional values. It is one of them." where I believe he is speaking in the SC viewpoint. In my view, honoring diversity of religion in S.C. is not a value, as there are many who are intoloerant of this diversity. Mike Fair probably being one.

William I. Griffith Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 9:29 am

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sabo954 The only way you can ever be 100% free is to be 100% self-sufficient and live away from society. But very few people want to live like a hermit, so for the good of everyone and themselves, people must learn to live together peaceably. This means abiding by common laws.

sabo954 Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 11:53 pm

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the Writer "free people are not submissive people"

In order to be free, a free people must SUBMIT to the rule of the land.

the Writer Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 10:29 pm

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Truthsmack The way people of different faiths and cultures come together and live successfully in America is that we share and mutually uphold the values contained in our Constitution. Mike Fair and other theocrats like him who don't believe in the Constitution are trying to ruin America--their desire for America to be a homogenous, Christian theocracy is all about them gaining worldly power for themselves, and nothing else.

You are simply mistaken in your apparent belief that the Founding Fathers (I'm talking about the writers of the Constitution, not the Puritans) intended the US to be a "Christian" nation. The Constitution works if you are willing to set aside your personal preferences (i.e., the desire to force your own way of life on someone else) and support others' freedom as well as your own. I think there are limits to freedom, but that those limits are much broader than the Mike Fairs of this world care to believe. Fundamentalists of all stripes are a threat to the US because they hate the Constitution and they hate people being free--free people are not submissive people. Because fundamentalists fear and despise freedom themselves, they think other people shouldn't have it, either. For shame!

Truthsmack Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 9:40 pm

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j_richard Freedom of religion is one of our strengths but it only underminds
our foundation when the ideas of another religion or culture
comes to America and trys to change our ideals that have served
us well. That were established in the forming years of our nation
and must be included in life, liberty, and property for it was the
way life of those of the time that created our nation. If people
come to America for what we are then there should be no need to
fix us!!! Or our foundations that have never been broken and the
many fixes, except for Admendments to stop racial injustice and
give the vote regardless of gender, are causing the many
problems we have today. People should change enough to be
apart our country not change our country to be apart of them
and not change us. Our need is to protect ourselfs from those
elected or appointed destroying America, our greatest problem.
If they will help us with that all the better.

j_richard Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 12:47 pm

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