The world has moved one step closer to total censorship. For the fourth year running, on December 18 the United Nations General Assembly passed a defamation-of-religion resolution that threatens to undermine the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

(Editor's note: Steve Scheffler, president of the Iowa Christian Alliance and a Republican National Committee member, sent the following e-mail to Iowa Republicans in the wake of the November election. This, and two replies, are reprinted here with permission.)

Dear Fellow Republicans:

Election Year 2008 is now history. I am sure that you have had time to reflect on the results, what went right, what went wrong, and where do we go as a party from here. At a first glance, the results were discouraging. But let's put all the facts in perspective:

Millions of Americans have voted for Barack Obama to "fix" our economy and are breathlessly awaiting his inauguration so that he can implement his plans to "get America back to work." Are those voters ever in for a surprise.

  In a November 22 radio address, Obama stated that "we are facing an economic crisis of historical proportions" (true enough) and that "we must do more to put our people back to work and get our economy moving again."

 How does our new president-to-be intend to achieve this result? Obama declared that "I have already directed my economic team to come up with an Economic Recovery Plan that will mean 2.5 million more jobs by January of 2011," and that "we'll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms, solar panels, fuel-efficient cars, and alternative energy technologies ... "

 This, I submit, is the worst kind of economic claptrap, and is easily demonstrable as such.

As we survey the recently transformed political landscape, a few observations crop up:

(1) The Republicans, unable to or incapable of defending freedom and capitalism, have "me-tooed" themselves into political oblivion. Trounced and shellacked by the Democrats in both the presidential and congressional elections, they have been reduced to mumbling amongst themselves and wondering what happened. Well-deserved, all of it: Having abandoned their principles of limited government and individual autonomy, they stand for nothing to anyone; and who wants to vote for a watered-down "welfare" state when you can have the real thing straight?