"The people of faith I know don't 'cling' to religion because they're bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich."
— Sen. Hillary Clinton, responding to Sen. Barack Obama's comment that "bitter" small-town people "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
While I don't believe Hillary bears more respect for small-town America's churchgoers than does her opponent, I give her credit for having an excellent speechwriter and for realizing—in her words if not in her policies—that, as Chesterton said, America was conceived as "a nation with the soul of a church."
