This would seem to me to be a bigger deal than it has been made out to be in a political year in which people seem perfectly willing to believe that Donald Trump is going to knuckle hedge-fund managers in the name of economic justice. Bernie Sanders went down deep into Jeebusland on Monday and gave a speech at Liberty University where he dared the assembled—and their personal Lords and Saviors—to start pushing the gospel plow a little harder.

"I am far, far from a perfect human being, but I am motivated by a vision which exists in all of the great religions–Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and others–and which is so beautifully and clearly stated in Matthew 7:12. 'So in everything, do to others what you would have them to do to you, for this sums up the Law and the prophets.' The Golden Rule. Do to others what you would have them do to you. Not very complicated. Let me be very frank. I understand that issues such as abortion and gay marriage are very important to you and that we disagree on those issues. I get that. But let me respectfully suggest that there are other issues out there that are of enormous consequence to our country and the world and that maybe, just maybe, we don't disagree on them. And maybe, just maybe, we can work together in trying to resolve them…there is no justice when the top one-tenth of 1 percent own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. There is no justice when all over this country people are working longer hours for lower wages, while 58 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent. There is no justice when, in recent years, we have seen a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires while, at the same time, the United States has the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. Twenty percent of all children—and 40 percent of African-American children—now live in poverty."

This is being pitched as a dog-bites-man campaign story, which is unfortunate. Worse, it is also being pitched as an attempt by Sanders to reach "common ground," which is marginally accurate, but even more unfortunate. Like "centrism" and "bipartisanship," the idea of "common ground" has become pretty debased over the past couple of decades since it generally has come to mean agreeing to what once were outlandish conservative policies in order to avoid the adoption of utterly catastrophic conservative policies. (As Old Lodge Skins put it, sometimes the magic worked, and sometimes it didn't.) Sanders certainly didn't go to Liberty University looking for votes, at least not a lot of them, anyway. He went down and gave that speech as a kind of moral witness. He did something that liberal politicians—and, especially, liberal Christian clerics—have been unable or unwilling to do, which is to demonstrate to the audience in question that there is more to the gospel than merely the glandular. He made them look at him, an anomalous figure at best in their college careers, and that was how he made them listen. And why not? Bernie Sanders is Jewish and a public employee. So, as it happens, was St. Matthew.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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