By Mary Jo Anderson

Rush Limbaugh had a caller Monday who asked, "Why are they doing this?"

The caller wondered why intelligent Americans willingly toss their freedom and prosperity aside for destructive politically correct boondoggles that block America's energy independence. "Do they hate America?" the caller asked.

Such boondoggles include declaring Anwar holy ground – or the rise of bio-fuels that have accomplished nothing other than to spike the price of grain as farmers turn wheat fields into corn fields to feed the bio-fuel frenzy. But we don't have cheaper gas or cleaner air. What we have are empty silos – grain reserves are at the lowest point in 60 years. (It is no better in Europe where French bakers wonder if housewives will soon pay 10 euros for their daily baguette.)

Limbaugh speculated on the reasons well-meaning Americans allow themselves to be duped by politicians and hucksters like Barack Obama who peddle lofty, but dangerous, ideas. "They are looking for meaning in their lives," the radio "info-hunk" opined.

Holy Global Warming, Radio Man! Perhaps Rush Limbaugh gave little thought to his comment – it was one reason among many he rattled off for the caller. But it is true: Millions of American do not think their lives have meaning.

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Millions of disoriented Americans wander about lost in an existential limbo. Because God is banished, they lack an anchor and cannot recognize the horizon, up is down and down is up. Progressive liberalism demands any vestige of the Judeo-Christian moral structure be swept out with the cat fur. What remains after the sweeping spree is a Post-Christian American Modernism, and that is ripe ground for a messianic phenomenon like "Obamania."

We are a culture taught to view ourselves as accidental protoplasmic blobs thrown up by an impersonal cosmos. If a new protoplasmic blob is conceived, it can be aborted – it has no more meaning than our own accidental arrival. Even our very nature, our gender, is a social construct and is "fluid" – thus we have no definitive function; we are meaningless. When the cultural void grows oppressive and we want to "feel good about ourselves" we tell 4-year-old girls about AIDS and hand out condoms to 12 year olds – like carbon credits for the Culture of Death footprint.

If a vague sense that we ought to improve seeps into our consciousness, we head to the gym, not the church. We can be confident when we do so, because, after all, Christopher Hitchens has proclaimed that "God is not Great."

But if God is not great, then who will be great for us?

Barack Obama, according to "Hard Ball's" Chris Matthews: "The feeling most people get when they hear a Barack Obama speech, I mean, I get, I felt this thrill go up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often." Earlier he gushed, " He [Obama] seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament."

The New Testament? All the answers? Yes, indeed. The New Testament of post-modern malaise. Obama panders to their vast left-wing void. He is the hope of the hopeless who wander throughout the land in search of meaning for their misplaced allegiances. In Obama's New Testament, universal health care is the Holy Grail, sacrificial offerings are made to the environment. Obama disciples sense a need for change, but never a change within their own lives in Polite Bohemia. The void-dwellers seek salvation without sweat. It is far simpler to control global warming than one's own overheated hedonism.

Barack Obama is a David Souter, a blank slate. After 13 years in politics there is no discernable shape to his vision, thus each swooning devotee sees Obama as their personal messianic agent of change – an agent of change that requires nothing of them. How stylish, how polite. How meaningless.

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Mary Jo Anderson is a contributing editor for Crisis Magazine and the co-author of "Male and Female He Made Them: Questions and Answers on Marriage and Same-Sex Unions."