I was all set to write something light and upbeat this month but those relentless crusaders on the religious right have gone and done it again. This time, they've publicly proclaimed their paranoia by running a telecast last Sunday accusing us liberals of being against "people of faith."

All of this comes about because the right is mad at the nation's courts for rendering judgments that some conservatives of a particular religious stripe don't like. So they've launched a campaign designed to depict judges as too liberal, as hostile to the religious-minded and unwilling to trim their decisions so that they conform to popular opinion -- at least that on the religious right. The campaign is a poorly concealed, opening salvo in the battle to appoint a string of right-wing judges to the federal courts and, when the opportunity arises, to the U.S. Supreme Court.

What these religious zealots are demonstrating is how little they understand either their religion or the democracy we so highly prize in this nation. If they are unhappy with judges, they should try reading the Bible that was such a prominent feature of their telecast.

It devotes an entire book to the story of judges (and is so titled) who were continually telling the people of ancient Israel things that they didn't want to hear. The Israelites didn't enjoy the privilege of telling their judges they were "out of control" or threatening to impeach them when judicial pronouncements went against them.

These are people equally mistaken in their view of how democracy works in America. Much of their recent cavil against the courts was fanned by the Terri Schiavo tragedy; religious conservatives thought the courts should have been persuaded by the public sentiment that wanted to continue feeding a woman in a persistent vegetative state through a feeding tube in her stomach. The courts ruled otherwise -- and not just one judge in one courtroom but judges in state and federal courts, and at all appellate levels.

This has brought about the mass condemnation of the courts that we are now witnessing. Led by the likes of Tom DeLay, that paragon of self-righteousness in the House of Representatives, the notion of punishing judges who don't have the good sense to follow the will of the people is being actively promoted -- primarily in that very sector of the country renowned for its stubborn and, at times, hysterical resistance to the courts several generations ago.

Then, too, it was regional wrath over decisions that ran counter to popular sentiment -- decisions that said one segment of the populace couldn't keep another segment that didn't look like them in a state of semi-servitude. Then, too, there were cries of outrage and calls for the impeachment of judges and complaints that the courts were defying the will of the people.

It's unfortunate -- and in one sense, dangerous -- that a sentiment persists in this country that democracy means majority opinion ought to be the rule of the day. Since the conservatives have prevailed in the latest national election, their ideas and convictions, it is believed, ought to be the law of the land.

Those who hold such views either have never heard about or they choose to ignore the system of checks and balances built into the way our government operates. The nation's founders feared precisely what today's crowd of zealots think ought to happen. It's exactly for this reason that judges are a rein on popular sentiment -- not a judicial endorsement of it. If it ever becomes otherwise, we will have stepped back from the arena of a democracy and crossed the threshold of a totalitarian state.

It's disturbing enough that a section of the nation's populace, clustered primarily below the Mason-Dixon line, doesn't get this. It is truly dangerous when the majority leader of the U.S. Senate, Bill Frist, who is featured in the telecast, doesn't get it as well.

Hubert G. Locke, Seattle, is a retired professor and former dean of the Daniel J. Evans Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington.

© 2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer