Just look at India and China for evidence of increasing wealth and education. Millions of people in Asia are buying cars and things they never could even ten years ago. Those economies are getting richer and richer.

I'm pretty convinced that the problem here in America is that people are sheep - the fundamentalists are a minority who play the margins to win elections, and people just repeat Fox News because it's all they're hearing. The problem is that the Democrats don't know how to herd sheep as well as the Christian Fundies, who've had lots of practice with it.