Beltway bigot.(American Theocracy)(Book review)

When I moved to Atlanta in 1985, I thought I was going into exile. I was a dedicated bicoastal, secular intellectual who'd moved to a giant suburb full of people who prayed before meals and drawled while doing so. How could I survive without the urban sophistication to which I'd grown accustomed?

I never hesitated to regale friends and colleagues with my opinions about Atlanta's shortcomings. The native Atlantan who later became my wife shut me up with an old advertising slogan: "Delta is ready when you are."

I confess this, sheepishly, to establish that I know all about dissing the South. I've been there, done that, gotten the T-shirt, worn it out, and thrown it away. But D.C. pundit Kevin Phillips still wears the anti-Southern shirt with pride in his new rant American Theocracy. For Phillips, the South's distinctive contribution to America is fundamentalist, anti-rational, anti-modern, ultimately theocratic religion.

You see, there's an American "Disenlightenment" going on, and its epicenter is somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line. While the North has its symphonies and universities, not to mention a higher IQ (yes, he really says that), ...