There are jewels and then there are diamonds. The conservative movement has its stars and its beauties, but I liked best the comment a Free Republic user made to describe Janet Folger: "She's our new flagship blonde."

The Values Voter Presidential Debate, held Monday night and moderated by WND's Joseph Farah, was organized by Folger, and what a credit to the movement it was. This is just a public thanks to Janet and all those who sacrificed to put the event together – well done.

It is noteworthy that the candidates who pretend and say that they most wish to court the social conservative voters could not be persuaded to attend, despite an all-star cast of pro-life, pro-family conservative leaders sitting on the panel.

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Fred Thompson cannot show up to take questions from the American Family Association? John McCain does not want to be grilled by Phyllis Schlafly? By their silence, speak they volumes.

Cutting and poignant was the choice of questioners with their questions. Border Patrol Agent Ignacio Ramos was well represented by his wife, Monica, and an entire world was made to wonder why America punishes its civilian border agents for using small arms fire on criminals crossing its undefended border. Bobby Schindler spoke up for his sister Terri Schindler Schiavo, and the defenseless innocent, for a moment, had the loudest of voices. Folger put the three-dimensional ultrasound on international TV so that the entire world could see who it was that would be cut to pieces in an abortion. Here stark and real truths, the ones the entire media and nation avoid with layered complexity (by being busy and important), were the only topic our future leaders could focus on. Several cable channels broadcast the event worldwide.

What a credit to us all; what a relief; how completely needed.

Stultified in pig-ignorance and meaningless drivel, the previous presidential debates have droned along in ineptitude, blathering questions that did not matter and half-articulating responses that were worse. But this debate is crystalline both for its cognitive directness and for its participation. Those who love to think and be incisive had their day to ask questions; those who wanted to hear those kind of questions did, too.

Mitt Romney's absence was deafening and laughable. But the eloquent Keyes, the indefatigueable Tancredo and Hunter, the capable and adept Huckabee – they gave the true conservatives something to cheer about as the choir thundered to the preachers and the preachers shouted out from the housetops. So let us be clear to a Christian America that would otherwise be cynical and standoffish: You bet there is a country worth saving. Get off your high-fructose corn syrup and work with the remnant to save it.

Distressed at a dinner earlier in the week, I heard a stalwart man of God whom I respect sound off that he had no confidence in America's Christians to do anything. I was angered and intense at this maudlin laziness because it was a way to justify inactivity while simultaneously being holier than the invisible thous. But the thous abound. Do you really suppose there are so few devoted and God-fearing people in these United States that there is no country worth fighting for? No Christendom left to display to the watching world?

The Values Voter Debate should have shut one's trap if that was the prior attitude. There are officers, there are battalions, and there is an army that is righteous and who desire together that our country be saved from both moral destruction inside, and violent destruction from invaders.

We do not have to be inspired that everyone in America is good or righteous for the movement to take heart. We need only be aware that there are significant and active numbers of the decent. God promised to spare Sodom for 10 and sent in the special forces to preserve eight, of whom even fewer agreed to be rescued. And so my heartfelt thanks to Janet Folger, Paul Weyrich, Phyllis Schlafly, Don Wildmon and all the others who crafted the Values Voter Debate where the world could see that righteous America still exists. The debate folks understood God's heart:

And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city,
wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons
that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand;
and also much cattle?

And after understanding, they acted upon it. Let the rest of us now go and do likewise.

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Andrew Longman is a Christian and an applied scientist.