Trying to Change His Spots

We won’t shed any tears, or do any gloating, over the demise of the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s organization, Moral Majority. Moral Majority has been reborn as the Liberty Federation, and its scope broadened to include such humanistic activities as defense and foreign affairs.

One reason he has reorganized, the Virginia-based evangelist said, was that the media had “bloodied and beaten” the name of Moral Majority. That’s nonsense, of course. By thrusting himself into the national political arena, Falwell gave as well as he got.

At the behest of Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina and others, Falwell’s moralistic agenda has received a fair hearing in Congress. In one sense such debates have been healthy for the national political psyche. They have illustrated the folly of mixing religion too much with government, and have demonstrated the hypocrisy of moralists who plead for less government on the one hand and then seek to impose government’s will--their version of it--on the other.

Falwell can be an entertaining, articulate and sometimes good-humored spokesman for his causes. He at least is willing at times to stand up with his political opponents--Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), for instance--and debate such issues.

But if Moral Majority has suffered in the past six years, it is because the true majority of American people has discovered that there is nothing inherently superior in its ideas. Through Falwell’s considerable communication skills and his right-wing political alliances, his ideas have gotten a fair test in the American tradition and been rejected.