A Rant 6,000 Years In the Making

Sometimes, Nick Kristof turns in some damn fine work.

No, really. Read these three short grafs, then get ready for something special:

The old religious right led by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, trying to battle Satan with school prayers and right-to-life amendments, is on the ropes. It is being succeeded by evangelicals who are using their growing clout to skewer China and North Korea, to support Israel, to fight sexual trafficking in Eastern Europe and slavery in Sudan, and, increasingly, to battle AIDS in Africa.

Evangelicals are usually regarded by snooty, college-educated bicoastal elitists (not that any read this newspaper) as dangerous Neanderthals. But while the old religious right was destructive when it launched the cultural wars, the new internationalists are saving lives in some of the most forgotten parts of the world.

“The American electorate was split right down the middle on these cultural wars, and nobody was going to win them,” said Richard Cizik, Washington director of the National Association of Evangelicals, explaining the shift to international issues. The new international efforts, he says, are “going gangbusters.”

That