MAN OF THE YEAR: ROY MOORE

Uttering the standard liberal cliche a few years ago, Richard Reeves described "representatives of the new South" as "Republicans of old Puritan definition, righteous folk afraid that someone, somewhere, is having fun." (I'll skip the context of Reeves' insight, except to note that apparently aging liberals view sodomy with the chubby intern in the back office as "having fun.")

Like all beliefs universally held by liberals, Reeves's aphorism is the precise opposite of the truth.

It's the blue states that are constantly sending lawyers to the red states to bother everyone. Americans in the red states look at a place like New York City-where, this year, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade featured a gay transvestite as Mrs. Claus-and say, Well, I guess some people like it, but it's not for me.

Meanwhile, liberals in New York and Washington are consumed with what people are doing in Alabama and Nebraska. Nadine Strossen and Barry Lynn cannot sleep at night knowing that someone, somewhere, is gazing upon something that could be construed as a religious symbol.

Ten Commandments

It's never Jerry Falwell flying to Manhattan to review high school graduation speeches, or James Dobson making sure New York City schools give as much time to God as to Mother Earth, or Pat Robertson demanding a creche next to the schools' Kwanzaa displays. (Is it just me, or is Kwanzaa becoming way too commercialized?)

But when four schools in southern Ohio have Ten Commandments displays, sirens go off in Nadine Strossen's Upper West Side apartment. It will surprise no one to learn that the ACLU promptly sued and the schools are now Ten Commandments-free. From the Chelsea section of Manhattan, the gay executive director of the ACLU, Anthony Romero, tossed and turned all night thinking about the Ten Commandments display on the Elkhart, Ind., Municipal Building, which had been there, without incident, since 1958. The ACLU sued and the monument was hauled off.

In Ohio, Richland County Common Pleas Judge James DeWeese had a framed poster of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. The ACLU sued and the Ten Commandments came down. Compare that to the late New York judge Elliott Wilk, who famously displayed a portrait of Communist revolutionary Che Guevara on his office wall. (Che, Castro, Hussein-evidently the only bearded revolutionary these people don't like is Jesus Christ.) And yet, no one from Ohio ever sued Wilk.

The ACLU got word of a Ten Commandments monument in a public park in Plattsmouth, Neb. (pop. 7,000), and immediately swooped in to demand that the offensive symbol be removed. Not being from New York, the people of Plattsmouth didn't want to litigate. Soon cranes were in the park ripping out a monument that had sat there, not bothering anyone, for 40 years.

ACLU busybodies sued Johnson County, Iowa, demanding that it remove a Ten Commandments monument that had been in a public courtyard since 1964. Within a year, the 2,500-pound granite monument was gone.

Moore Didn't Fold

Barry Lynn's "Americans United For Separation of Church and State" sued little Chester County, Pa., demanding that it remove a Ten Commandments plaque that has hung on the courthouse wall since 1920.

The alleged legal basis for removing all of these Ten Commandments monuments is the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment. That clause provides: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." The vigilant observer will note instantly that none of the monuments cases involve Congress, a law, or an establishment of religion.

Monuments are not "laws," the Plattsmouth, Neb., courthouse is not "Congress," and the Ten Commandments are not a religion. To the contrary, all three major religions believe in Moses and the Ten Commandments. Liberals might as well say the Establishment Clause prohibits Republicans from breathing as that it prohibits a Ten Commandments display. But over the past few years, courts have ordered the removal of dozens of Ten Commandments displays.

Only the attack on Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore's Ten Commandments got national attention. And it was a news-worthy event: When liberals attacked, Moore didn't fold.

The ACLU began its onslaught against then-Etowah County Circuit Court Judge Moore in 1995, when an ACLU lawyer, apparently depressed that he was not chosen to play Mrs. Claus in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade that year, wrote a letter to all the state judges in Alabama protesting their practice of having a prayer in the courtroom every few weeks. (Obviously you can't have prayer in court: It might distract all the people holding their hand over a Bible and swearing before God Almighty to tell the truth.)

Everything had been going just fine in Alabama-no defendant had ever complained about the practice-but upon receiving a testy letter from the ACLU, all the other Alabama judges immediately ceased and desisted from the foul practice of allowing prayer in court. Judge Moore did not.

ACLU Bullying

For resisting the ACLU's bullying, Moore became High Value Target No. 1. Soon the ACLU and their ilk were filing lawsuits and anonymous ethics complaints against Moore. The ACLU, along with the Southern Poverty Law Center, sued Moore for having a Ten Commandments plaque in his courtroom. (Poverty had been nearly eliminated in the South until a poor person happened to gaze upon Moore's Ten Commandments-and then it was back to square one.)