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There is a disease that continues to plague American society and politics. This cancer bears the name "The Social Conservatives."

More specifically it is their actions, demands and absolute refusal to compromise on even the most innocuous issues that should be considered a betrayal of our founding ideology and the American people.

Make no mistake. They don't care one iota about what you or I think, feel or hold dear. They have no interest in finding common ground, or meeting in the middle. Compromise is a foreign term to them. They cannot argue otherwise, for the evidence of their social and political meddling bears this out to be the truth.

They live in a self-contained fantasy world where the end goal is to transform our society to reflect their religious and moral beliefs; anything short of this is unacceptable. If they don't agree with it, you shouldn't be allowed to do it.

For the past eight years they have been beside themselves with joy because they had a champion in President Bush, a born-again Christian. He has been an ardent defender of the faith and of policies that unduly support and elevate Christian organizations.

From our Constitution to the Treaty of Tripoli (a treaty unanimously ratified by Congress in 1797 that specifically stated in Article 11, "the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion"), and much more material by the individual founders, there is a wealth of evidence that supports the core belief held among them that religious freedom was a pillar of our founding ideology.

And while many of them were religious, they had the moral courage to put their personal beliefs to the side as they framed our doctrine, to ensure the nation they built would not be corrupted by religious convictions guiding domestic and foreign policy.

Among today's social conservatives, no such courage can be found. Their deepest desire is to see their brand of religious morality become policy and law.

The founding fathers realized that for America to be a home for all, a land truly of the free, religion could not be married to government, which is one of the reasons why early settlers left Europe and came here in the first place.

Today's social conservatives are not encumbered by such elevated concepts as placing society above their own religiosity. Nor are they burdened with a belief in the concept of inclusion.

To them, if a child doesn't want to say "under God" during the pledge of allegiance, well then, that child can wait in the hall. We'll just have to forget that it's a tax-dollar funded, public school and as such has no business whatsoever engaging in any conduct that would deny a group of people from being included.

However, the social conservatives are in a dilemma. Their champion is soon due to ride off into the sunset, and they simply can't stand the likely republican candidate, Sen. John McCain.

They dislike him so much that many conservatives have pledged to vote for Clinton before McCain. To them, a vote for McCain would be a vote to green-light an overhaul of the current core GOP values; to values that are more tolerant, inclusive and middle of the road. Values not based on Christian moral rigidity.

McCain does not long for a "puritan" America. He is willing to compromise, ready to reach out across the aisle and work with others of differing views.

It is this position that earned McCain the enmity of the religious right. They have no interest in any opinion or conviction that does not agree with their own. In fact, to the evangelicals, those who do not subscribe to their beliefs are morally corrupt, and beyond trust, doomed forever in hellfire.

If our nation is ever going to move forward, this tumor of divisiveness and inflexibility must be excised, and it starts by putting the nation before your own desires, or even those of your god.

Scalpel please.

Kulhanek is a senior studying paralegal studies and administration of justice.

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