Chicken dinner was the plan on Pa Olsen's Colorado farm in 1945 and he sent his mother-in-law out to do the dirty work. She grabbed young chicken Mike, got him by the neck, the ax swung and she botched the job. Like unlucky chickens everywhere, Mike went careering madly around the farm without his head. If a chicken with its head cut off can be lucky - Mike was. He somehow survived the decapitation with his brain stem in tact. Accused of being a hoaxer, Pa Olsen had his chicken oddity verified at the University of Utah and by the Guinness Book of World Records. Olsen then went on a whirl wind, barnstorming tour of the United States (joined by a two headed sheep and a few other barnyard freaks). Mike was fed through a syringe and by all accounts roosted and strutted like any other full headed chicken. Chicken Mike ran around the country for eighteen months before luck caught up with him and he choked on a corn kernel and passed into lore.

John McCain is just wrapping up the eighteenth month of his Presidential Campaign. Eighteen months of surprising new directions and unpredictable behavior have him challenging Chicken Mike's record for running around the country without a head. All of the foxes and the hens and the sheep and wolves in Washington quieted down this week as it looked like the Wall Street barnyard was about to go up in flames. These situations call for a line of bipartisan water buckets and calm assurance - not a headless chicken looking to bask in the glow.

I don't follow baseball. So it should have come as no surprise that my last-minute decision to quickly check team colors before heading to Petco Park last Sunday revealed that I was - you guessed it - wearing the opposing team's colors. (To my credit, I was wearing Padres blue. But layering it with red resulted in what could easily be mistaken for Philly pride.)

But I should introduce myself as something other than an ignorant sporting event attendee. I am your new conservative KPBS (stop right there - did I just use "conservative" and "KPBS" together?) citizen blogger, and my attendance (sans red layering tee) at a Padres game brought politics, faith, and patriotism into focus. Perhaps there's just something about singing "God Bless America" with 30,000 strangers during the seventh inning stretch that triggers feelings of unity, pride, and yes - true thankfulness. This, combined with the Saddleback Church Civil Forum of the evening before, got me thinking about the place that religious beliefs - anyone's religious beliefs - hold in American politics.

It is important to recognize and practice the separation of church and state. We do not live in a theocracy, and this country was founded on the principle that every individual is free to practice his or her religion. Separating religion and government, however, does not render a candidate's faith irrelevant. Without morality, a government has no reason for existence - what need would there be for law? And as long as morality is an important feature of our nation, so too will the religious perspectives of presidential candidates be of interest. This much is made clear by the attention given to the recent conversations Pastor Rick Warren had with Barack Obama and John McCain

Warren was an excellent moderator, posing serious and thought-provoking questions that went beyond what one might expect during a faith forum. And before we rush to judge Warren's motives, it should be noted that he said in a CNN interview last month that he would not publicly support one candidate over the other. In reading Alma's most recent post, it occurred to me that had Obama and McCain been interviewed by a Muslim imam or a Jewish rabbi (interviews I would find newsworthy and interesting), very few would express suspicion at the motives of the interviewer. If Warren had an "all encompassing mission," as Alma puts it, I believe he made it quite clear: "I think I can set up an environment that people can actually say, oh, so that's what that guy's really like." Why must "Christian" be a code word for "Crusader"? I certainly don't believe that "Muslim" is a code word for "terrorist." But back to the forum...

One of the most annoying aspects of talking to self-proclaimed conservatives is their relentless propensity to retreat to jingoism.

Jingoism is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "extreme patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy." It refers to sections of the general public who advocate the use of threats of or actual force against other countries in order to safeguard what they perceive as their country's national interests, and to excessive bias in judging one's own country as superior to others. 

It is nearly impossible to have a meaningful debate with someone who reverts to somewhat subjective concepts like "liberty" and "freedom" as the justification for everything.  Whose liberty?  Whose freedom?  Who and what exactly are they referring to? How is sending our children to fight for control of Iraq’s oil serving our freedom or liberty?   How free are returning soldiers going to be without arms or legs or frontal lobes?  How exactly will the presence of Blackwater serve our freedom? (One of the first requirements of a totalitarian government is the creation of a private army.)  And finally, how is illegal wiretapping serving our freedom?

It has long been my experience that the biggest hawks are often those who have sacrificed the least.  Growing up, as I did, on Naval Air Stations, I learned first hand, on a daily basis, the enormous price the "warrior class" pays so the rest of the country can have their "freedom."  And there is no question that there is a need for military might, and it’s good to be the strongest fighting force in the world if you are part of the country that has it.  But having that force does not give us the right to abuse it to fulfill any agenda held by the Bush regime.  We, as human beings, must have moral boundaries.  When do we stand behind our government and when do we stand behind our humanity and say,  "Stop the insanity." How many slaughtered children are we willing to sacrifice?

 - Candace Suerstedt is a filmmaker and a mother of three who lives in Coronado.