This dude needs help.
The country has been getting progressively less Christian over the years. There has been a bit of a revival, but the trend is still toward hedonism.
Exactly how many Christians does he think were in the House and Senate 100 years ago? Five? Were there openly gay elected officials?
Did history start during the Carter years for this writer, or what?
Although you are correct, a specific religious political movement has never had so much power in American politics to legislate against the very things America is becoming.
Its a reactionary impulse to a changing world, but the warnings in the essay are very real.
The problem is in that America is changing under the weight of new advancements in communication and global cooperation, and a group of politically organized Christians expects to somehow roll back the clock and close the Pandora's box of late 20th century communications technology and international trade & media.
This religious view is also very predominate in the politics of Islamic societies. It could be argued that the Islamic world has never before been so open to hedonistic, secular temptations, and the modern world's "sins"; yet, their religious fundamentalists are more dangerous than ever.
It isn't contradictory - one begets the other.
Chris Hedges on Vietnam:
“The defeat in Vietnam made us a better nation and a better people. We were forced to step outside our own borders and see how other people saw us. We were forced to accept very unpleasant truths about ourselves -- our own capacity for evil. I think that that process, especially during the Reagan years, or at least that state, began to disintegrate. War once again became fun: Grenada; Panama, culminating in the Persian Gulf War.”
He was a correspondent during the 90s for the war in Sarajevo and the Balkans. Very interesting how that never came up.