So, I think Rich is right that the moral blowhards were annoying and when there are big economic problems now, people are going to take them less seriously.  This is true.  However, I think that Rich’s analysis ties too deeply into a well-disproven “secularization thesis” and, what’s more, continues to play to this ridiculous conflation of science and religion–ridiculous from both sides.  Here’s an example:

Another highly regarded poll, the General Social Survey, had an even more startling finding in its preliminary 2008 data released this month: Twice as many Americans have a “great deal” of confidence in the scientific community as do in organized religion. How the almighty has fallen: organized religion is in a dead heat with banks and financial institutions on the confidence scale.

Now, Americans have good reason not to trust organized religion, and equally good reasons to trust the scientific community. However, these both ought to be trusted (or not trusted) in their own capacities: science can tell us what works and how it works, but not what is right.  So to the extent that we trust science to tell us, say, what a stem cell can do, or what the historical or genetic components of homosexuality are, or the statistical likelihood of certain marriages having certain outcomes, that’s all well and good.  But it can’t tell us anything about “success” or “morality” not what it is nor how we ought to fall on it.