Another member ( whose handle escapes me ) noted elsewhere, "Wouldn't it be ironic if we thought we'd won in 2000 and 2004 but had in fact lost the battle about 10 years ago, without knowing it?"
I fear he was right.
Yes. Something funademntal has changed and it wasn't recently. It's not so much the issues Bush and other politicians DO speak up about, it's the ones in which they do not; abortion, the removal of God from our institutions, the harrassment of the Boy Scouts over their stand against homosexuality, etc. But, something basic, moral and fundamental has been lost when no firm stand is taken over an issue like this which is about right against wrong, life over death and good versus evil. Something like that did not disappear overnight.