To too many Catholics, piety went out of fashion with Vatican II and the Lay Pontificate took off - fat ugly nuns in polyester Orwellian duds beating tom-tom drums, or doing the Isadora Duncan through the pews in a whirling Liturgical dance & etc!
Piety is rooted in human understanding of a greater good - God. The etymology of piety can be traced through Latin and Greek to the Indo-Aryan languages of Persia and India.
In America, the neo-Romantic grifters Emerson, Thoreau, the Brooke Farm crowd later Jane Addams and the Baby Reds of John Dewey's Age, stomped all over Piety.
Sinclair Lewis laughed at piety in Main Street, Babbitt, and Elmer Gantry.
The Secular Hegalians looted popular culture of piety - well almost.
I can not watch Glenn Beck, but I admire the work he is doing. He gets first rate thinkers like Peter Hitchens, Jonah Goldberg and others to form a context for his feelings. He's a Mormon and seems to be pious man.
As with Beck, I admire Sarah Palin. She is happy in her own skin and as tough as a cob. She strikes me as a genuinely pious woman.
I admire piety. I do not admire smarm or snotty Cliffs Notes Readers who tuck the New York Times under their armpits and slowly shake their heads in sad, sad disbelief that people could ever have voted for George Bush or not believe that Abortion is great.
Here is a snotty example - Ross Douthat of the New York Times damning Beck and Americans with very faint praise.
There was piety — endless piety, as speaker after speaker demanded that Americans rededicate themselves to God. There was patriotism: fund- raising for children of slain Special Forces vets, paeans to military heroism (delivered by Sarah Palin, among others), encomiums to the founding fathers. There was an awards ceremony on the theme of “Faith, Hope and Charity,” in which community-service prizes were handed out to a black minister, a Mormon businessman and the St. Louis Cardinals’ Albert Pujols. And since this was (as you may have heard) the anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech, there was a long tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. . . . Now more than ever, Americans love leaders who seem to validate their way of life. This spirit of self-affirmation was at work in evangelicals’ enduring support for Bush, in the enthusiasm for the Dean campaign among the young, secular and tech-savvy, and now in the devotion that Palin inspires among socially conservative women. The Obama campaign raised it to an art form, convincing voters that by merely supporting his candidacy, they were proving themselves cosmopolitan and young-at-heart, multicultural and hip.( Emphasis my own)
"Americans love leaders who seem to validate their way of life." validate? Like a parking chit? Stop into a Veterans Hospital or a VFW and ask one of these heroes to validate your way of life. Progressives can not admire any virtue - by nature Virtue is manly.
It is time that Americans laughed at these pompous twerps and got themselves pious once again.
