Wrong doxology

When big government becomes a false god it puts true worship out of tune | Joel Belz

For a pretty long time, it's been a pretty good fit. Three significant groups of U.S. citizens—with a lot of important issues in common, but by no means everything—have formed a political alliance that even in recent times has sometimes seemed unstoppable.

The three groups are fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, and those who believe in a strong national defense. If you want to oversimplify, you can point to (1) limited government; (2) pro-life and pro-family; and (3) muscular military.

It's hard to say, within that often unwieldy family, which of the three groups is dominant. There's so much overlapping of boundaries, and so many within the larger group who hold to at least two of the three distinctives—and very often to all three. My sense is that in times of war and terrorism, the national defense crowd has the most clout. When such threats subside, fiscal conservatism tends to take over; big government, imposing heavy taxes and regulations on its people, becomes the bad guy. Issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, while critically important to many, probably rank third in this three-part coalition.