May 29, 2007 By Charley Reese 4 min read

I was saddened by the death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Though I disagreed with him on several points, he was a good, honest man who made a significant contribution to American politics. The assassination of John F. Kennedy, followed by those of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert Kennedy, set the country on a downward spiral in the ’60s that spilled over into the ’70s. It was aggravated, of course, by the Vietnam War, race riots and Watergate.

It seemed at the time that the center had collapsed. Profanity, drug use and promiscuity, not to mention a decided decline in personal hygiene, seemed to dominate the culture. Life Magazine, very important at the time, featured on its cover a Harvard professor who was a big advocate of LSD – a hallucinogenic drug that caused the deaths of a number of people. Hippies, the New Left, anti-American rhetoric, drug use and promiscuity were all the rage in Hollywood and in much of the press.

Americans were stuck with Jimmy Carter as president. He was a droopy kind of guy who had been attacked by a giant rabbit in Georgia, collapsed during one of his jogging sessions and had pronounced us all stuck in a malaise. He stood by helplessly as Fidel Castro unlocked his prisons and insane asylums and dumped 100,000 Cubans on our shores. He stood by helplessly when the Ayatollah Khomeini ousted the Shah of Iran, seized our embassy and held our people hostage.

The Christian religion was under attack, too, as secular liberals were determined to drive it out of the public view. That, incidentally, was the tactic the communists used in the Soviet Union and in Cuba when they discovered they couldn’t uproot it despite their bloody brutality. Keep religion inside the church and never let it out. That is still the tactic of America’s secular folks today.

It was in these dark and turbulent times that a Baptist preacher in Lynchburg, Va., stepped forward with great courage and said the world reflected in the mainstream media, in Hollywood, on television and largely in politics is not America. There is a moral majority, he said, and it’s time that they be heard.

Falwell’s origin may have been humble, but he was a brilliant man, especially as an organizer. His Moral Majority roused evangelical Christians with a simple message: You are American citizens, and you have a right to vote for people who reflect your morality and your culture. Get out and do so.

By coincidence, it was timed with Ronald Reagan’s second run for the presidency, and I personally don’t think he would have made it (the liberal Republicans vehemently opposed him) but for Falwell’s movement. That would be difficult to prove, but I believe Falwell played a big role.

In recent years, he concentrated mostly on building Liberty University and his church, and both are great legacies to leave America. Falwell, despite the hatred and slander that came from his enemies on the secular left, was not like a lot of the television evangelists. He never siphoned off money for his personal use; he was humble, generous, kind and good-humored.

I was outraged that CNN’s mild-mannered Anderson Cooper invited Christopher Hitchens on to insult Falwell (Hitchens is currently pitching his book on the virtues of atheism). He’s a poster boy for the neocons – arrogant, sarcastic and vile. I hope to meet him one day in a dark bar.

Hitchens’ kind just don’t get it. When they insult Falwell, they insult millions of Americans who share his culture and most, if not all, of his values. He was a good and faithful servant, not only of the God he believed in, but of his country. Nobody will ever say that of the neocons.

Write to Charley Reese at P.O. Box 2446, Orlando, FL 32802