I'm doing some research for a book I'm writing and came across Eric Alterman's "Why We're Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America." Alterman is a liberal apologist and by that I don't mean that he apologizes for liberal belief. I mean he defends liberal belief.

Chapter sixteen is titled "Why do Liberals Hate Religion?" which agrees with the whole book whose chapters are tailored to answer questions that are asked of liberals.The very fact he has to answer a question like this is testament to the fact the question must have been answered. So let's see how he answers it.

Alterman early in the chapter cites Franklin Roosevelt as saying "Almighty God has . . . given our people stout hearts and strong arms with which to strike mighty blows for freedom and truth." During World War II, FDR's war department gave armed forces Bibles with messages to them from him suggesting they read the Bible. FDR's successor Harry Truman said "We believe that all men are created equal because they are created in the image of God." There are other quotations from around that time given by him, but what is interesting is there are no contemporary ones. Where are the religious invocations from Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, and so forth to match those of Roosevelt? The only conclusion we can glean from Alterman is that none are to be found because if they were, they would be found in plenty in his book.

Instead, Alterman writes as if desperately looking for a liberal to step up to the plate to show some moral backbone where none exists. Where, for instance (he asks) is the moral outrage when the media exploits overly-sexualized teens who gain further stardom for their noxious behavior? Apparently there's not enough of this either.

Alterman does probably give away the store when admitting the advantage conservatives have over liberals is a "tradition" which generally implies a body of truths inherent in the Judeo-Christian tradition which tend to rule the social sphere. This tradition is exactly what liberals, as a whole, rebel against and there is really no way to bridge the gap between this rebellion and the tradition that conservatives appeal to. They may try as Obama has done recently when appealing to the Biblical truth of requiring much to be offered by those to whom much has been given, but in general they are against such tradition.

For supplement, I cite David Barash, author of "The L Word" which is a defense of liberalism. Barash says “liberals . . . believe that government should protect rights, not promote private virtue. They are not at all sure that they received the one revealed truth, like Moses returning from the mountain . . . moralists and religious fundamentalists have no such doubts: They are right and everyone else is wrong. Where liberals fear to tread, they rush in with the certainty of the True Believer.” so this leaves liberals as a political class that is constantly in rebellion against this tradition.

One of the places where liberals can use their own "moral vocabulary" is in economic issues. It is objectionable, he says, to give tax cuts to the rich while cutting social programs for the poor and concerns about universal health care can be cast in the form of moral arguments. That it is immoral to reduce social programs in lieu of enhancing the rich I agree, but there are numerous other truths in the Judeo-Christian tradition than just economic ones. The Bible, for instance, is a story of mankind's salvation through God's interaction with members of the Jewish state over thousands of years. If liberals want to appear beholden to "tradition" and not hateful of religion - as the title of this chapter suggests - they must do more than mouth a few words about the morality of economic injustices. They must actually embrace some of the more prominent religious tenets.

The problem is that once you divorce yourself from the religion that undergirds the moral vocabulary, the moral vocabulary is bound to go out the window as well. If it is true, as Harry Truman suggests, that all men are created equal, then it is probably necessary for us treat others that way. If we no longer believe God created all men equally, then we might start to treat others differently.

If you wanted to summarize Alterman's chapter, you could say that liberals, today, are incapable of appealing to religious tradition or showing moral outrage over things they should. However, if there is one thing they can get behind is the morality of taking money from one group of people to give to the other to enhance their own power.