Every Knee Shall Bow
Julian Sanchez writes about the latest bedwetter hissyfit, the pending swearing-in of newly elected congressman Keith Ellison:
The main reasons [Dennis] Prager’s wrong have been rehearsed at enough length, but what struck me was that a Christian would even want to insist on as farcical a public ritual as having Ellison swear on a Bible he doesn’t believe in. Imagine that I (an atheist) threw on a priest’s cassock, somehow insinuated myself into a church, and went through the motions of performing a mass. I expect believers would find this profoundly offensive, a debasing mockery of something that’s supposed to be sacred. And rightly so. It’s genuinely befuddling that any believer would want to demean both the oath of office and sincere faith with this kind of hollow sham. Prager’s position is, in effect, that what’s in the individual’s mind and heart doesn’t matter; it’s the outward trappings of religion that are important. Could anything be more utterly an inversion of the position Jesus himself was supposed to have preached?
Julian is so smart I have to believe his befuddlement is for effect. Prager isn’t interested in requiring Ellison take an oath in “sincere faith” – he’s interested in domination. Making Ellison to swear an oath on a Bible would be almost as good as forcing him to kiss the Cross. Sincere faith is all well and good, but failing that, our nation’s Dennis Pragers want submission. At one time I knew the Arabic word for that but it escapes me just now.
Comment by Brett —
December 1, 2006 @ 11:03 pm
That last sentence is a masterpiece. It’s hard keeping up with someone who knows iatrogenic.
Bravo!
Comment by Leonard —
December 1, 2006 @ 11:58 pm
I’ve always been impressed by the idolatry inherent in the Pledge of Allegiance, too, for much the same reason. But there it is.
As for the whole swearing-in thing, I think it’s only partially about making Ellison a Christian-dhimmi. It’s also cultural narcissism. After all, when Jesus ascended to Heaven and was sworn in at the right hand of God, they used a King James Bible.
Comment by Eric —
December 2, 2006 @ 2:24 am
Apparently, the swearing-in ceremony for the House of Representatives doesn’t normally include any religious book, Bible or otherwise, which makes this whole controversy even more ridiculous.
Comment by jam hamster jay —
December 2, 2006 @ 9:15 am
Prager’s Jewish.
I would say that adds an extra dimension to this, but that would assume that being a total dickwad counts as a dimension.
Comment by Gsnorgathon —
December 2, 2006 @ 12:30 pm
Ooooh. I like it when you do stuff like that, Jim. You’re good.
Comment by matthew hogan —
December 2, 2006 @ 3:46 pm
At one time I knew the Arabic word for that but it escapes me just now.
I think it is “iatrogenic.”
Comment by matthew hogan —
December 2, 2006 @ 3:47 pm
“At one time I knew the Arabic word for that but it escapes me just now.”
I think it is “iatrogenic”.
Comment by chuckles —
December 2, 2006 @ 10:55 pm
I have a more innocent explanation for the Prager move than domination, viz., Prager’s a moron.
Now maybe I’m just being charitable here, but this is my theory. I think Prager is one of these guys who’s basically good-hearted but criminally intellectually lazy. So, first, he equates moral decency with religious piety. (Goddammit man, read a history book or, alternately, open your fool eyes.) Then, he thinks that Keith Ellison is doing some special pleading to get out of swearing on a bible. (The video of Eugene Volokh patiently explaining to Prager that has never been required; that it has often been unobserved; and that its requirement is forbidden in the Constitution is priceless.) Finally, Prager has some stupid affinity to “national unity” that makes him think that this would be a better country if we all just said the Pledge of Allegiance every day.
As near as I can figure, Dennis Prager is a contemptable moron. Let’s not assign him more IQ points than he deserves.
Comment by Lawrence Krubner —
December 3, 2006 @ 1:07 pm
I think Henley is right. This is about submission, pure and simple. The authoritarian faction of the Republican party (a growing part of the party) takes dominance/submission displays as the central metric of their politics. Examples of this kind of thinking are abundant, and such thinking is not restricted to politics. These are the same people who don’t mind when married men go to strip clubs, but they are outraged when a sex radical suggests free love is a good thing. That might be a harmless example. The place where these folks do the greatest damage to America is in business. When one of these folks gain power in a corporation, they reward displays of submission (ass-kissing) over actual performance. If you get enough of these people as executives in any one industry, then that industry goes into a permanent death spiral and we consumers must figure out which foreign brand we like most (cars, cammeras, etc). The real damage these people do in business would be more obvious if America hadn’t embraced increasingly open free trade policies over the last 50 years.
Comment by Brian C.B. —
December 3, 2006 @ 3:56 pm
Really? I couldn’t disagree more. I think that the place where these folk do the most damage is, currently, the White House. Which is, I realize, under putative sway of a Harvard MBA right now. It’s Pets.com, only you get a Presidential Medal of Freedom when Security escorts you and your cardboard box full of personal effects to the front gate.
Comment by neil —
December 4, 2006 @ 10:34 am
At one time I knew the Arabic word for that but it escapes me just now.
I had to look it up. I suppose that if I read the warblogs, I would have been constantly reminded of it for the last several years.