Skip the Jesus, Leave the Bread and Wine

Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania) says people in western Europe "have nothing to live for."

In an address to the conservative Pennsylvania Leadership Conference last night, Santorum spoke in broad and general terms about the role Christian faith plays in U.S. culture. He feels we're in much better spiritual condition than those irreligious and decadent societies on the other side of the pond, despite the fact that their currency is beating our currency all around the town, the way the lion did the unicorn.

But Santorum had nothing to say about currency exchange rates. "Those cultures are dying," the Senator claimed. "People are dying. They're being overrun from overseas...and they have no response. They have nothing to fight for. They have nothing to live for."

On the other hand, the spiritual superiority of God's favored people is shown by the purported fact that "More people go to church on Sunday in America than go to all of the sporting events in America held in a year combined."

A year combined with what? I'd like to know.

American piety notwithstanding, it seems to me Europeans have not despaired of the future. They're having economic problems, just as we are, but are laying out considerably less in military expenditures than us, both as a percentage of GDP and in total dollars. All the countries of western Europe together spend slightly more than $200 billion yearly on their armed forces. We spend between 300 and 400 billion a year, and have been doing so (in 2002 dollars) since 1950.

Right now we're spending over 400 billion annually, and that's not even counting the costs of the Iraq War.

The Vietnam War wiped out our gold reserves, causing Nixon to take the country off the gold standard. The Iraq war, along with the balance of trade defecit and our skyrocketing national debt, is going to bankrupt us.

So I have to disagree with Senator Santorum. Those decadent Europeans may not have Jeeziz, but they've got something we don't -- a future. They were in business before we were, and they're planning to be around after we're gone.

Plus, even though California is producing a lot of good wine now, French, Italian, and German wines are still unbeatable. On top of that, outside of San Francisco and New York, you can't get a decent piece of bread in this country. You have to go to France or Italy for that.

Christianity has shown itself to be a decidedly mixed blessing for the world, but there's no doubt about the redeeming and life-sustaining qualities of good bread and wine. So give us this day our daily bread. And some cheese to put on it.