Also, there's an interesting writer with agreeable sentiments coming up on my radar after 30 seconds of googling. His name's Garret Keizer.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2005/03/left-right-wrong

"THE REAL PROBLEM OF OUR TIME," George Orwell wrote in 1944, "is to restore the sense of absolute right and wrong when the belief that it used to rest on -- that is, the belief in personal immortality -- has been destroyed. This demands faith, which is a different thing from credulity." It also demands conviction, which is a different thing from wanting to win at any price. The real problem of the left in our time is to restore those absolutes and to find that faith.

Of course, Orwell was not talking about religious faith. Nor am I. Ironically, one of the treasures bequeathed to us by the world's ethical religions is the self-effacing hint that the basis of morality does not have to be religious. "Whatever you would have others do to you, do to them." In other words, the most reliable sense of right and wrong comes from your own skin, your own belly, your own broken heart.

That said, religion can provide some useful insights, if only to debunk a few of the notions that are being foisted upon us in the name of religion. The Christian right preaches an extremely selective version of its own creed, long on Leviticus and short on Luke, with scant regard for the Prophets and no end of veneration for the profits. Its message goes largely unchallenged, partly through general ignorance of biblical tradition and partly because liberal believers and nonbelievers alike wish to maintain a respectable distance from the rhetoric of fundamentalism. This amounts to a regrettable abandonment of tactics. One of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" was "Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules" -- a tough act to pull off if one doesn't even know the rule book.

Shit, I'd better start reading this guy!