[livius]

All of your points are excellent and very true. And this is true, too:

I don't doubt that the Left, or even secular intellectuals of any stripe, will condemn this speech.

Curiously enough, I don't think they have any idea what they are condemning. I think the speech went right over their heads.

[Kolokotronis]

" Curiously enough, I don't think they have any idea what they are condemning. I think the speech went right over their heads."

You know, you may be wrong here. Of course there will be those who heard what they wanted to hear, the mouthings of an evangelical simpleton. But I suspect that most of the educated Left and secularists will almost instantly recognize what he said. It won't give them that smug sense of superiority the former might have, but it will anger and terrify them.