There is, to be sure, a time and a place for talking about America's failures and weaknesses. But that occasion is not when America is under direct attack by terrorists.

There is also a time and place to talk about the weaknesses and failures of traditional marriage. But that occasion is not when marriage itself is being assaulted by moral terrorists.

You can be pretty sure of this: In neither case are those folks who speak so humbly and self-effacingly really interested in improving and rebuilding the institutions they are criticizing. What they really want is to replace them with something altogether different.

The war on terror is not a figure of speech, it is an inescapable calling of our generation. We know that this way of life is worth defending, there's no neutral ground. There can be no separate peace with a terrorist enemy. Any sign of weakness or retreat simply validates terrorist violence and invites more violence on all nations. The only certain way to protect our people is by united and decisive action.

Before the war started, I repeatedly called on the President to build a genuine coalition to reduce the military and financial burden on the United States, to go to war only as a last resort, and to have a plan to win the peace. I voted to give him the authority to go to war only when he promised me and other members in Congress that he would do these things. He broke those promises.

So long as the terrorist attacks that shocked Spain were thought to be the work of homegrown Basque extremists -- the notorious ETA -- terrorism was to be given no quarter. Spaniards understand there can be no compromise with those killers.

But when the clues pointed to al-Qaida, Spain's reaction was different. It was the government, not the terrorists, that was blamed for the horror. The Mideast is so far away. Why get involved?

"Our prime minister has gotten us into a terrible, completely wrong war," said one young teacher. "And because of it, I spent yesterday and today going to funerals...."

And now that the terrorists seem to have succeeded in Spain, who'll be next to falter - Italy, Poland, Britain, Australia? Whose spirit can be sapped by a few strategically placed explosives? It is not just skyscrapers or train stations that terrorists seek to destroy, but a nation's will.

When confronting an existential enemy -- an enemy that wants to terminate your very existence -- there are only two choices: appeasement or war.

In the 1930s Europe chose appeasement. Today Spain has done so again. Europe may follow....

Today there is no doubting the intentions of Arab-Islamic radicalism. It is not this grievance or that (U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia). It is not this territory or that (Palestine, Andalusia). The intention, endlessly repeated, is the establishment of a primitive, messianic caliphate -- redeeming Islam and dominating the world. They have seen the future: Taliban Afghanistan, writ large.

After a terrorist attack by al-Qaida that left hundreds of their fellow countrymen dead, Spanish voters immediately voted to give the terrorists what they want -- a socialist government that opposes America's war on terrorism. Al-Qaida has changed a government.

The devil as a person has staged a comeback in Madrid, European and American theologians ruminated Friday, the day after terrorist attacks on trains killed at least 198 and injured more than 1,400 in the Spanish capital....

A personal devil does not fit in with the postmodern religion worshiping a cuddly God. This God, one assumes, would be too weak to defeat the personal Satan, who has mutated from The Evil One (he) in the original teachings of the Church to The Evil (it) in contemporary homiletics.

About an hour into the tour, our group was standing around our leader outside of the gems and minerals display room. Before we went in, he took out his Bible and read from Revelation 21 so we could identify the gems that are in heaven.

After reading a few verses, a Smithsonian guard came up to him, pulled him aside, and told him he was not allowed to read Scripture. After pursuing it further, the group leader was told by the lieutenant of the Smithsonian police that "some people don’t agree with what you're doing." He was told that he can lead tours and talk about minerals and human evolution, but if the group wanted to read the Bible or pray, we needed to go outside on the Mall and do it, because we were not allowed to do that in the building.

The Smithsonian Institution is funded in part by the government. I find it troubling that a group of citizens was told they could not read the Scriptures or even pray inside this public building. Is this the country that was founded on religious freedom over 225 years ago? Is this the land of the free? Is this my America?

A cadre of revisionists now seeks to redefine evangelical theology through a theological "megashift" that looks remarkably like the liberal theology evangelicals once rejected. Central doctrines such as Christ's substitutionary atonement, verbal inspiration, the exclusivity of the Gospel, the reality of hell, and justification by faith alone are rejected in favor of a new evangelical paradigm.

The Reformation foundations of the evangelical tradition are to be replaced with a new doctrinal platform complete with a wrathless deity and an unnecessary cross. This is no minor alteration.

Advocates of this "megashift" declare that the revolution is inevitable as younger evangelicals reject the old doctrines. The shift may be hidden by the continued use of traditional language, but the older words have been redefined. As one leading proponent of this new evangelical theology bragged, younger evangelicals already think this way, so the resistors will simply be replaced with the revisionists.

In a nutshell, that's the major reason for the great divide within America and between America and much of Europe. The majority of people use their heart -- stirred by their eyes -- to determine what is right and wrong. A minority uses their mind and/or the Bible to make that determination.

The eyes and the heart form an extraordinarily powerful force. They can only be overcome when formulating policies by a mind and a value system that are stronger than the heart-eye duo.

With the decline of Judeo-Christian religions, the heart, shaped by what the eye sees (hence the power of television), has become the source of people's moral decisions.

You see, unlike many, I'm willing to believe that certain foreign leaders have told Kerry "we need to get Bush out of there." I don't think he's lying about that because appeasers everywhere, foreign and domestic, support Kerry.

When it comes to the War on Terror, among other related things, there are essentially two different perspectives. One is held by those who believe that international aggressors, whether they be communists or al-Qaida, can be reasoned with, coddled, humored or appeased. Or they aren't that great of a threat in the first place. The other perspective is held by those who have the common sense to know better.

Senator Orrin Hatch may soon propose a constitutional amendment that would permit a state-by-state patchwork definition of marriage. Some see this proposal as an embodiment of federalist principles; it is not. The notion that federalism permits or demands a hodgepodge definition of marriage fundamentally misunderstands the family's place in the structure of American democracy. This nation must have -- and will have -- a uniform definition of marriage.

It is true that, in our federal system, the states have a responsibility to regulate marriage. In accordance with the principles of federalism, the states can and should be permitted to regulate such matters as degree of consanguinity, age of consent, and the rules of divorce. Yet it is a categorical error to subject the essential definition of marriage to state regulation. The Founders did not understand either federalism or the family in this way. The Founders took the fundamental meaning of marriage for granted.