Faith And Politics: The New Crusader

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For starters, the keynoter was Alabama's George C. Wallace, who enthusiastically endorsed "the work of the Christian Crusade against subversive elements." Retired Major General Edwin A. Walker, a Crusader since 1963, took the rostrum to assert that President Nixon had "appointed revolutionists to Cabinet posts," and was "soft-soaping and even financing revolution" at home while he went "tripping around like a fairy in Asia." Another nontheological speaker, retired Army Brigadier General Clyde Watts, charged that "more than 100 professors in Cal Berkeley [the University of California at Berkeley] are hard-core working members of the Communist Party, U.S.A." Peace in Viet Nam, Watts informed the assembly, was "too precious to entrust to those striped-pants pansies in the State Department."

So whom could the crusaders trust? Hargis turned once again to the Holy Land to pick a surprising hero—one of the leaders of Israel's socialist Labor Party. "I wish we had Moshe Dayan leading us in Viet Nam," he said. "We could finish the war in a few days."