The last email I sent to my liberal doppelganger in Chicagoland ended with the line:

One day even the most strident anti-Christian zealots will realize that a strong organized Christian movement able to coexist and thrive in secular society is a bulwark against creeping Islamo-facism. I hope by then it’s not too late.

Three days later I find an unlikely ally in Sam Harris, author of the anti-religion tome "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason". His editorial "Head-in-the-Sand Liberals" describes the natural alliance I wrote about. To get the ball rolling Harris spells out his liberal pedigree:

Perhaps I should establish my liberal bone fides at the outset. I'd like to see taxes raised on the wealthy, drugs decriminalized and homosexuals free to marry. I also think that the Bush administration deserves most of the criticism it has received in the last six years — especially with respect to its waging of the war in Iraq, its scuttling of science and its fiscal irresponsibility.

Not much for conservatives to cheer about so far. But the years since "Faith" have lead him to one difficult, inescapable truth:

But my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world — specifically with what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith.

On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.

This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that "liberals are soft on terrorism." It is, and they are.

Harris catalogs the left's decent into irrationality:

At its most extreme, liberal denial has found expression in a growing subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that the atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by our own government. A nationwide poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of Americans suspect that the federal government "assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East;" 16% believe that the twin towers collapsed not because fully-fueled passenger jets smashed into them but because agents of the Bush administration had secretly rigged them to explode.

He even notes the extent BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) has clouded the views of his fellow liberals:

Given the mendacity and shocking incompetence of the Bush administration — especially its mishandling of the war in Iraq — liberals can find much to lament in the conservative approach to fighting the war on terror. Unfortunately, liberals hate the current administration with such fury that they regularly fail to acknowledge just how dangerous and depraved our enemies in the Muslim world are.

Harris understates the effect of BDS on the irrational left. 9-11 denial is only the most recent, fully metastasized, form of the disease. The path of this madness is a linear progression. Stealing the 2000 election begat lying us into war, which begat stealing the 2004 election which came full circle to Bush knocking down those buildings. The "Loose Change" crowd has become so mainstream the Democrats are running a 9-11 denier for congress this fall. The left sees Bush as a paradoxical unholy trinity: malevolent despot, Machiavellian puppet master and incompetent boob all in one person. That’s why the following statements can simulatiously coesxits in the minds of most Democrats:

• Bush lied us into war over WMDs.
• Bush fooled the US Senate, Hans Blix, the CIA and the combined intelligence services of Britain, France, Egypt, Jordan and Russia into to believing in WMDs.
• Bush was too stupid to: A) comprehend political damage of not finding WMDs ... and ... B) plant the WMDs there when he had the chance.

I don't agree with all of Harris' observations, particularly when he concludes that the only people willing to do battle with Muslim extremist are Christian Extremist:

Increasingly, Americans will come to believe that the only people hard-headed enough to fight the religious lunatics of the Muslim world are the religious lunatics of the West. Indeed, it is telling that the people who speak with the greatest moral clarity about the current wars in the Middle East are members of the Christian right, whose infatuation with biblical prophecy is nearly as troubling as the ideology of our enemies. Religious dogmatism is now playing both sides of the board in a very dangerous game.

I know mainstream Christians, Jews, and athiest who are willing to acknowledge dangers we face and vote accordingly. You don't need to be a Christian extremist to fight religious lunatics. Christians and secular humanist are natural allies when it comes to apposing the common enemy of Islamic fundamentalism.

Do I hear and Amen?