Cal Thomas

1 Pages 357 Words

Critical Review: Cal Thomas & Ed Dobson “Blinded by Night”


I found the article by Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson to be the most upfront and honest piece of work that I have read from the religious right in this class. When compared to the article written by Falwell I find this article to be better written with less political and religious spin.
I find the article so effective in part because of the way it was composed. They gave you the view of the Moral Majority in 1980. It was an organization bursting with excitement, enthusiasm, and expectations. With the election of President Reagan the sky was supposed to be the limit for the moral majority. It was supposed to be only a matter of time before the country under went massive changes for the better. Fast forward twenty years and you see that very little of what the moral majority intended to accomplish was ever achieved.
The authors hold the belief that top down activism cannot and will not work. This is a different point of view than most religious conservatives hold. In this respect I find that they are ahead of their counterparts such as Falwell in recognizing the mistakes that were made in the past. Instead they say that you must begin by fixing things from the bottom and working your way up.
This article held more weight with me because the authors acknowledged the inefficiencies that existed in the moral majority and continue to exist in organizations such as the Christian Coalition. For members of the moral majority it was a sad reality that when they said, “With a few pen strokes, Bill Clinton erased the little Moral Majority had been able to achieve during its brief existence.” I believe the overriding argument being made throughout the article is best summed up in the last line, “The tragedy was not the failure to succeed, but the waste of spiritual energy that would have been better spent on strategies and methods more likely to succeed than the ...