On Tuesday night my son and his friend were walking toward the polling place at New Brighton on Staten Island when two young men in hip-hop gear wearing do-rags on their heads approached them. “Yo, vote for Bush,” they said in unison.

My son thought they were kidding, but as they passed by, one of the youth said in a defiant tone, “We got to finish the job. Make sure we win the war.”

That evening, my son ran into three other minority-group youths voicing similar sentiments. The liberal elite of New York might find that attitude difficult to understand, because it is completely and totally disconnected from the “heart and soul” of America.

Apparently, many of those New Yorkers misread the 2002 election results, or else they wouldn’t have been so stunned by the results of last Tuesday’s election. The truth was out there staring them in the face, but it was on the talk radio waves and on the Internet Web-logs. They chose instead to believe what they read in the mainstream publications, or what was filtered through the liberal hosts on network television.

If they’d tuned in to the national talk radio shows they would have found out that the exit polls were not reflecting reality. Callers to talk radio were telling the listeners that the exit pollsters were ignoring them if they were wearing American flags, or red, white, and blue clothing. They claimed that only Kerry voters were filling out the exit poll data sheets. Many callers said they refused to tell the pollster whom they voted for. For those who think that only morons listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, last Tuesday was a rude awakening.

The Kerry campaign brought out the entertainment industry to attract the youth vote. I covered the March for Life in January and reported that the young people in the huge crowds were solid Bush supporters – and those marchers didn’t need rock stars to drag them to rallies. These were “broken glass” Bush supporters. That particular term emerged from the Internet bloggers who promised to drag their bodies over broken glass to vote for the president.

What went wrong, the Kerry supporters are asking. One caller to the John Gambling show was in tears asking how so many people could vote over moral issues when there are more important issues at stake. Young lady, to many Americans, including the nearly 3 million New Yorkers who voted to reelect President Bush, there is nothing more important than the moral issues.

A man regarded by many people as America’s finest living writer, Tom Wolfe, was interviewed by Guardian Unlimited in the United Kingdom. He referred to a column that Tina Brown wrote about being at a dinner for press and television heavyweights discussing how they were going to get rid of Mr. Bush when their waiter, who was from the suburbs, declared he would be voting for Mr. Bush. Ms. Brown writes about pondering how she can go about changing his mind.

Mr. Wolfe told the Guardian reporter, “Tina and her circle in the media do not have a clue about the rest of the United States.” Mr. Wolfe also said, “I cannot stand the lock-step among everyone in my particular world. They all do the same thing, without variation. It gets so boring.”

The New York liberal elite is self-isolating. It does not invite challenging debate. It continues to believe that people with moral values are all religious fanatics. These self-described intellectuals consider us as bad as the Taliban. That is absurd.

We may have the values of a traditional America, but many of us are also children of the 1960s who fought for civil rights and sponsored rock ‘n’ roll with our hard-earned money. We have gay friends and relatives. Many of us have experienced the pain of abortion and unwanted pregnancies and sympathize with the difficult choices women face every day. Our choice is to offer them the help they need without killing innocent life.

We see our respected values, which this country was built on, shredded by a small percentage of well-connected ideologues who have corrupted our judicial system to bypass the will of the people. We are parents who do not believe that pornography belongs in schools or libraries with our children. We enjoy a spirited debate with those who disagree with us. We do not behead them.

Most important, we can recognize evil in a foreign enemy but still recognize humanity in all our neighbors. If the minority youth of New Brighton get it, why can’t the intelligentsia of New York?