What a stupid question.

I may have been reading the wrong political blogs the last day or two, because I only learn today -- via Kevin Drum, who is apparently behind the curve himself -- that some journalist posed this question to John Kerry at the most recent Democratic debate: "Is God on America's side?" James Lileks thinks this is just incredibly clever, although it doesn't seem all that brilliant to me, since there are several obvious replies.

Kerry's was "Most of the time", to which Lileks thinks he gets the great trump card, "So, when wasn't he?" Oh, I dunno -- slavery? The resistance to the civil rights struggle? Vietnam? (No, James, to say that God would not have approved of Vietnam does not imply that God therefore supported Communism -- but that's the common rhetoric these days, when "Against this" must necessarily be equivalent to "For that". But James Lileks, whenever I read him, seems utterly incapable of nuanced thinking whenever he goes into political mode. His every politics-centered Bleat is based on the idea that every issue admits only two possible positions, one right, and one Liberal or Democratic.) You just list a couple such instances, and then you say something like "But God is on our side when we learn from our mistakes, because that's what he created us to do," and there you go, question over. Lileks's idea that this question pins Kerry into discomfort is ludicrous.

But an even better response would be something along the lines of, "I can't presume to speak for God, but it seems to me we should wonder if America is on God's side." Short, direct, and it deflects the questioner's attempt at moral superiority.