When I called a friend in Massachusetts to discuss the defeat of her junior senator, the conversation quickly turned to the future of the Democrats.

Not surprisingly, Katherine quickly cited poll results showing that moral values and shared faith had trumped the economy and the war in Iraq in the minds of most voters. Until the Democrats can begin framing ‘pocketbook issues’ as moral concerns, she maintained, they were doomed to permanent minority status.

Katherine has some standing on matters like this. Years ago, she converted to Judaism when she married the son of a rabbi, and she practices her new religion devoutly.

“In many respects, I have a lot more in common with the evangelical Christians supporting Bush than I do with my colleagues in the media,” she told me. “For one thing, I pray every day!”

Her post-election prescription, of course, is not novel. In the last few days, we’ve seen it splayed everywhere — in the newspapers, on the Net, and on television — in the rash of 20/20 hindsight that inevitably follows such events.

As CBS News put it, “The GOP recaptured the White House and strengthened its hold on Congress with powerful support from churchgoers. Now some in the party are saying that the Democrats need to reach out to these voters with a faith-based appeal.”

And the Washington Post quoted Senator Blanche Lincoln, (D-Ark.,) saying, “I don’t hesitate to stand up in a crowd and express how important faith is in my life. It is important to be able to express that in a way that is believable, and Democrats have to get comfortable doing that.”

For its part, the New York Times had (lest we forget!) former presidential candidate Congressman Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) telling fellow Democrats they had failed "to speak to our faith, and to relate to people that we share their faith."

Other Democratic politicians and officials echoed those views.

Well, as a former altar boy (yes, like John Kerry) and current Buddhist practitioner, let me only add to the above …to hell with that!

My sentiments found their own echo, thankfully, in a remarkable piece by another devout person, Garry Wills, in that same New York Times.

Entitled “The Day the Enlightenment Went Out,” the piece noted — as Karl Rove certainly had long before — that “many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin’s theory of evolution.”

Wills called this odd but undeniable fact “Bryan’s revenge,“ harkening back to the famed Scopes trial of 1925, “in which William Jennings Bryan’s fundamentalist assault on the concept of evolution was discredited.”

As a result of that court decision –which today would be decried as the result of “activist judges” — many evangelicals withdrew from engagement in politics, Wills argued.

Now, however, scarier than a wide-eyed Jack Nicholson in ‘The Shining,’ they’re ba-a-a-a-a-ack!

Back, as Wills notes, “into the arena out of anger at other court decisions - on prayer in school, abortion, protection of the flag and, now, gay marriage.”

But does that mean the only solution to the Democrats’ plight is for them to give the voters that old-time religion?

Hell no, I say again. Wills is right — “America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values - critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences.”

These values — not the phony, cynical “Gods, gays and guns” values of the Rove Republic — are at the bedrock of the United States. Back when the Fathers were founding the nation, those values represented modernity.

That was more than two hundred years ago. Here’s what passes for modernity today — 75 percent of Bush’s supporters believe Iraq either worked closely with Al Qaeda or was directly involved in the attacks of 9/11. As Wills writes, “Respect for evidence seems not to pertain any more.”

When you believe God is speaking directly to you, it’s easy to saw “Screw the evidence.”

Just ask Osama bin Laden.

Or the mullahs running Iran.

Or the ‘settlers’ occupying Palestinian land in “Judea and Samaria.” And the list goes on…

The fundamentalism of the majority of the American electorate is no argument for dispensing with the core moral values of our democratic system. In fact, it’s a recipe for dismantling it. Homegrown fundamentalists, who believe against all evidence that God created the world in seven days, evolution is a liberal plot, and homosexuals (other than Mary Cheney) are evil, sound astonishingly like the enemies America is now fighting.

They share the same zeal and fear, the same rage at secularity, intolerance, and hatred of the modern. They see the world, as the nuns once taught me, in Manichean terms. Black and white, good and evil-doers. They embrace jihad, although they call it a ‘crusade.”

“It is often observed that enemies come to resemble each other,” Wills wrote. “We torture the torturers, we call our God better than theirs - as one American general put it, in words that the president has not repudiated.”

Jihads are scary things,” he concluded. “It is not too early to start yearning back toward the Enlightenment.

"We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us,” our president told us this week. “To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it."

Yet his recent campaign belies his words. Strategists and organizers like Karl Rove defined Bush as the candidate of character and values, and spent more than one hundred million dollars attacking Kerry as a "flip-flopper" lacking those traits. When he ran in 2000, Bush consistently attacked Al Gore ’s honesty by labeling him a "man who will say anything to get elected."; Even Republican Senator John McCain was eviscerated as a man "who says one thing and does another."

How will the Democrats react in the coming months? Will they compromise their positions on abortion, stem cell research gay rights, and other ‘morals’ issues in an attempt try to give voters that old-time religion?

Or will they be braver and embark on the beginning of a long journey of reflection, as the GOP did way back in 1964, after Goldwater’s defeat, when it too was a minority in an ideological wilderness? The Republicans didn’t didn’t sell out then, but instead found ways to present their core ideas and values more effectively.

Will the Democrats engage in similar soul searching? Or will they try to ape (pun intended) Bush’s antiquated, and unenlightened faith-and-values-based appeal, reaching out to tself-professed rue believers who think they receive the word of God in direct transmissions?

Like my friend Katherine, I’ll be praying every day — for my soul, and the soul of our country.