Colleges pick up where the public schools leave off, inculcating students in the religion of hating America and hating God. While college professors like the University of Colorado’s Ward Churchill act like on-the-edge radicals for calling American bond traders “little Eichmanns,” professors are the most cosseted, pussified, subsidized group of people in the U.S. workforce. They have concocted a system to preemptively protect themselves for not doing their jobs, known as “tenure.” They make a lot of money, have health plans that would make New York City municipal workers’ jaws drop, and work—at most—fifteen hours a week.

In theory, the only job requirement of a college professor is to be intelligent, provocative, and open-minded, but their reigning attribute is that they are ignorant, boring, and narrow-minded. These zealous pagans teach the official state religion of liberalism as axiomatic truth.

The stupidest of their students become journalists, churning out illiterate attacks on dissidents from the liberal religion. Within a few weeks of each other in early 2006, both Rolling Stone and Newsweek magazines displayed their ignorance of Biblical passages cited during interviews. In a Rolling Stone interview, Republican senator Sam Brownback criticized countries like Sweden that had legalized gay marriage, quoting the line from Matthew “you shall know them by their fruits.”

The interviewer, Jeff Sharlet, interpreted Brownback’s scriptural quotation as a homophobic slur. Soon gay groups were demanding an apology from the senator. (All I can say to that is: how niggardly of them.)

Meanwhile, Newsweek ran an article about the looming danger of evangelicals learning to debate, noting that Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University had the number-one debate club in the country. The reporter quoted Falwell saying, “We are training debaters who can perform assault ministry.” These evangelicals are scary! Newsweek later ran a correction stating: “Newsweek misquoted Falwell as referring to ‘assault ministry.’

In fact, Falwell was referring to ‘a salt ministry’—a reference to Matthew 5:13, where Jesus says, ‘Ye are the salt of the earth.’ We regret the error.”

When Al Gore tried to suck up to Christians during the second presidential debate in the 2000 campaign, he utterly mangled Scripture— and not one mainstream media reporter noticed. By way of explaining his nutty environmental beliefs, Gore said, “In my faith tradition, it is written in the book of Matthew, ‘Where your heart is, there’s your treasure also.’ And I believe that we ought to recognize the value to our children and grandchildren of taking steps that preserve the environment in a way that’s good for them.”

Gore had not merely transformed a core Christian belief into a Confucian fortune cookie, he had reversed Christian doctrine. The actual Bible—Matthew 6:21—says precisely the opposite of what Gore said, admonishing us to make heaven our only treasure—“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Not only were Bible illiterates in the media unaware of Gore’s faux pas, they actually praised Gore for his brilliant use of Scripture to appeal to the God voters. Writing in Slate, William Saletan said Gore scored points in the second debate when he “answered a question about the environment by quoting from the scripture of my ‘faith tradition.’ The quote—‘Where your heart is, there is your treasure also’— had nothing to do with the environment but everything to do with projecting heart and faith.”

It also had nothing to do with Scripture.

Father Richard John Neuhaus describes being interviewed by a reporter about the pope and referring to the pope by one of his formal titles, “the Bishop of Rome.” The reporter responded, “That raises an interesting point. Is it unusual that this pope is also the bishop of Rome?” In another interview, Neuhaus told a reporter that political corruption had “been around ever since that unfortunate afternoon in the garden.” This time, the reporter mulled it over before asking, “What garden was that?”

In defense of the American educational system, every single one of these reporters knew how to put on a condom.

In 2003, reporters hounded British prime minister Tony Blair about whether he had prayed with George Bush—as if they were asking whether the world leaders had shot heroin together or shared a hooker. There was so much negative publicity over Blair praying with Bush that Blair’s handlers forbade him to attend church with Bush later that year. It’s hard to imagine an activity Bush and Blair could have shared that would have been more scandalous, short of taking an SUV to an all-men’s club that allowed cigar smoking.

In the book Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, Jon Krakauer writes of the Bush administration, “This, after all, is a country led by a born-again Christian . . . who characterizes international relations as a biblical clash between forces of good and evil. The highest law officer in the land, Attorney General John Ashcroft, is a dyed-inthe- wool follower of a fundamentalist Christian sect—the Pentecostal Assemblies of God of America . . . and subscribes to a vividly apocalyptic worldview that has much in common with key millenarian beliefs held by the Lafferty brothers and the residents of Colorado City.”

Yes, it’s really those devout Christians we have to keep our eyes on. Who can ever forget all the rioting and bloodshed around the world after hip-hop impresario Kanye West appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine as the crucified Jesus?

Krakauer—my guess, not a Christian—is worried about a theocracy based on one born-again Christian in the cabinet of a Christian president and compares Ashcroft to psychopath murderer Dan Lafferty, a member of a radical Mormon sect who brutally murdered a twenty four-year-old woman and her child. Comparing the attorney general to Lafferty is roughly the equivalent of saying, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who belongs to the same religious sect as the Son of Sam . . .”

If liberals are on Red Alert with one born-again Christian in the cabinet of a Christian president, imagine how they would react if there were five. Between 25 and 45 percent of the population calls itself “born-again” or “evangelical” Christian. Jews make up less than 2 percent of the nation’s population, and yet Clinton had five in his cabinet. He appointed two to the Supreme Court. Now guess which administration is called a neoconservative conspiracy?

Whether Jews or Christians, liberals are always on a witch hunt against people who appear to believe in God.

Incidentally, the country was also allegedly led by an evangelical Christian when Jimmy Carter was president—you know, the kind of evangelical Christian who appears prominently in pornographic magazines while running for president. I guess that 1976 interview with Playboy was enough to do penance with liberals for believing in God.

Liberals are constantly accusing Christians of being intolerant and self-righteous, but the most earnest Christian has never approached the preachy intolerance of a liberal who has just discovered a lit cigarette in a nonsmoking section. (Or who has just discovered two born again Christians in a Republican administration.)

Howard Dean calls the Republican Party “evil.” (Somebody better keep an eye on that guy Dean. One of these days he’s liable to say something crazy.) In 2005, Representative Nancy Pelosi told Democrats they should vote against the Republican budget “as an act of worship,” which at least is preferable to liberals’ usual devotional of offering to perform oral sex on Democrat presidents who keep abortion legal. (Former Time magazine White House correspondent Nina Burleigh told the Washington Post in 1998, “I’d be happy to give [Clinton oral sex] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal.”)

Democrats get on their high horses about evil corporations making obscene profits, but try pointing out to them that trial lawyers also make enormous profits suing corporations owned by people who make less than trial lawyers. They think you’re just being obtuse for not understanding that trial lawyers are doing God’s work.

Halliburton helps produce the oil and gasoline that keep us warm, feed us, allow us to travel, power our world, and so on. What do trial lawyers produce again?

The moment self-righteousness takes over, you are dealing with dangerous psychopaths. Liberals are constantly accusing Christians of monumental self-righteousness for daring to engage in free speech or for voting in accordance with their religious beliefs. Compare that with the behavior of practitioners of the liberal religion. Liberals felt entitled to excuse Stalin’s murderous regime on the grounds that he was simply trying to build a Communist paradise. Because they passionately believed in Marxism, liberals thought they had a right to lie about being Soviet spies. Yeah, well, some people passionately believe in white supremacy. How about George Clooney making a sympathetic movie about true-believing white supremacists and the evil prosecutors who forced them to name names?

If liberals could cut Stalin slack, there is no behavior they cannot excuse as justified by their passion. A president who was credibly accused of rape and displayed a pervasive pattern of what used to be known as “sexual harassment” was above reproach in liberal eyes. He had saved partial birth abortion! (Thus the charming tributes.)

Liberals consider it self-evident that they are being persecuted simply for wanting to do the right thing and always believe their critics’ motives are vile and corrupt—which may be why Liberty University routinely kicks their butts in debate.

The people who call Republicans “evil” subscribe to a political platform that essentially consists of breaking the Ten Commandments one by one. They are for adultery, lying about adultery, covetousness, killing the unborn, and stealing from the middle class (the “rich”) and giving to teachers and trial lawyers (the “poor”). They create new myths and a new priesthood all to justify a worldview that is the rejection of the Judeo-Christian vision of man’s role in the universe. They have more shibboleths than the Old Testament tribe of Gileadites— Halliburton; global warming; antichoice; “Bush lied, kids died!” And they are full of towering, smug, intolerant, self-righteous rage.

If Democrats ever dared speak coherently about what they believe, the American people would lynch them. So they claim to believe in God, much as Paul Begala claims to go “duck hunting” (liberal code for “antiquing”). At the beginning of the 2004 presidential campaign, the Democratic Leadership Council held briefings to teach Democratic candidates how to simulate a belief in God. To ease the Druids into it, the DLC recommended using phrases like “God’s green earth.” (The DLC also suggested avoiding the use of phrases such as “goddamned, motherf—ing Republicans!”)

During the primaries, Howard Dean began goading the press to talk about religion but, after claiming the Book of Job was his favorite book in the Bible, was unable to place it in the correct Testament. Regular Talmudic scholars, these Democrats.

Throughout the 2004 campaign, the Democrats were looking for a Democrat who believed in God—a pursuit similar to a woman searching for a boyfriend in a room full of choreographers. The religious outreach coordinator hired by the Democratic National Committee was Brenda Bartella Peterson, who had signed a brief to the Supreme Court advocating the removal of “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. Apparently, Madalyn Murray O’Hair was unavailable.

The religion adviser to John Kerry’s presidential campaign was Mara Vanderslice. She had previously been the religious outreach coordinator for Howard Dean—an assignment that would have required the patience of Job, whoever the hell he was.

Vanderslice had spoken at rallies cosponsored by the radical gay group ACT UP, famous for a protest at St. Patrick’s Cathedral at which its members spat the Eucharist on the floor. She had been an organizer of violent protests in Seattle and Washington, D.C., when liberals reacted as any normal person would by smashing Starbucks windows and torching police cars because some bankers had come to town for a meeting.

Vanderslice majored in “peace studies” at Earlham College. There she was a member of the Marxist-Leninist group that supported convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. That’s devoutly religious for a Democrat. In fact, by Democratic standards Vanderslice was a veritable C. S. Lewis.

According to The Nation magazine, Vanderslice “cornered” Kate Michelman of NARAL Pro-Choice America at the 2004 Democratic convention (in the proverbial “back alley,” one can only hope) to ask Michelman for help “in convincing Catholics that Kerry was really against abortion.” (“NARAL” is an acronym for something with “abortion” in the title, but we don’t know what because the NARAL webpage won’t use the word abortion.) Inasmuch as NARAL’s raison d’être is to keep abortion legal until the baby is around age thirteen, either Kerry’s religion adviser was casually enlisting NARAL to help lie to the American people or she is even dumber than the average Democrat.

At a church service at the Democratic National Convention held for People of Faith for Kerry (not to be confused with Muslims for Kerry), the church displayed a cloth sign proclaiming: “Lesbians, Gays & Friends at Old South Church” are “Open and Affirming.” James Forbes of the Riverside Church in Manhattan delivered the sermon, in which he called for “full employment,” “a true livable wage,” “universal access to pre-kindergarten and childcare programs,” a “progressive tax policy,” and various other items specifically mentioned during the Sermon on the Mount.

And Democrats remain genuinely mystified as to why they didn’t win the 2004 election. After the Democrats failed to get a majority of Americans to vote for them in the seventh straight presidential election—since Jimmy Carter won with 50.1 percent of the vote in 1976—liberal minister Jim Wallis leapt into the breach. He proposed to teach the Democrats how to “reframe” their language to make people think they believe in God. We don’t believe this crazy God crap, but let’s fake out the American people so we can enact gay marriage and partial birth abortion, and ban God from the Pledge of Allegiance. His big idea is to redefine Jesus’ genuine, personal, volitional love for the poor as the same as their impersonal, coercive, compassionless welfare machinery. (Wallis’s favorite part of the Gospel begins, “Blessed are the economically disadvantaged in spirit . . .”)

The Democrats got off to a good start after the 2004 election when the new head of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, denounced Republicans as “pretty much a white Christian party.” (Even when sneering at Christians—Christians!—Democrats use blacks for cover.) To be sure, 80 percent of the Republican Party is white and Christian, slightly higher than the nation as a whole, which is 70 percent white and Christian. Democrats cannot conceive of “hate speech” toward Christians because, in their eyes, Christians always deserve it.

After lashing out at Christians for no reason, Dean went on to say the Democrats are “more welcoming to different folks, because that’s the kind of people we are.” In addition to Christians, whom liberals hate, the Democrats are not particularly welcoming of “folks” who do not believe it is a Constitutional right to stick a fork in a baby’s head. They are not welcoming to people who think a human life is more important than a bird’s life. They don’t welcome judges who display the Ten Commandments in their courtrooms. They are not welcoming to people who believe marriage really is a sacred institution and not just an opportunity to sneak a right to contraception into the Constitution. They are not welcoming to people who think a multiple murderer gang leader like Tookie Williams should be given the death penalty. They are extremely unwelcoming to blacks who stray from the liberal orthodoxy and become Republicans. And David Geffen is distinctly unwelcoming to people who try to walk on the public beach that abuts his house in Malibu.

Democrats revile religion but insist on faking a belief in God in front of the voters claiming to be “spiritual.” They can’t forthrightly admit they are Druids, so they “reframe” their constant, relentless opposition to every Biblical precept as respect for “science” or the “Constitution”—both of which they hate. Their rage against us is their rage against the Judeo-Christian tradition. I don’t particularly care if liberals believe in God. In fact, I would be crestfallen to discover any liberals in heaven. So fine, rage against God, but how about being honest about it? Liberals can believe what they want to believe, but let us not flinch from identifying liberalism as the opposition party to God.

The preceding is an exclusive look at chapter one of Ann Coulter new book, Godless. Ann Coulter skewers the Left, and Townhall.com has the first look.