til hvers?

Versions of this thought have been rattling around in my head for days, and then Thomas L. Friedman of the Times came out and said it:

But what troubled me yesterday was my feeling that this election was tipped because of an outpouring of support for George Bush by people who don't just favor different policies than I do - they favor a whole different kind of America. We don't just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America is. (NYT 5.ix.04)

I would even put a finer point on it. I would say that we are looking at a disagreement about what America is for. The United States began after all a social experiment born of the European Enlightenment. The huge support the newly elected executive enjoyed among evangelicals (to say nothing of the truly frightening presence of the Dominionists in the mix) suggests (vægast sagt) widespread confusion of what the state is for and what the church is for. Not only has the wall between Church and State been eroded, but the very notion that such a wall might be desirable or even imaginable is fallen on hard times.