{"id":10373,"date":"2006-12-01T13:33:06","date_gmt":"2006-12-01T18:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2006\/12\/01\/10373.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:55:40","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:55:40","slug":"genuine-handcrafted-veneer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2006\/12\/01\/genuine-handcrafted-veneer\/","title":{"rendered":"Genuine hand-crafted veneer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Via d<\/I> over at Lawyers, Guns and Money<\/a>, the following quote from Victor David Hanson in a Wall Street Journal editorial called Losing the Enlightenment<\/a>, where he mention’s Wal-Mart’s “amazing ability to bring the veneer of real material prosperity to the poor.”\n

The veneer<\/I> of prosperity? Is that supposed to be good? And what the hell is the veneer of real<\/I> prosperity? The veneer of real material<\/I> prosperity? As opposed to the veneer of potential spiritual prosperity? The veneer of imaginary insubstantial prosperity?\n

That’s just thirteen out of 2,800 words in a speech Mr. Hanson gave to the Claremont Institute three weeks ago. It’s startlingly incoherent, but following the trail there led me to a startling thing at their site: Richard Samuelson, in their blog, chimes in on Islamic Citizenship<\/a>. Remember, by the way, as I start to froth at the mouth, that Claremont Institute, according to their Mission Statement<\/a>, “finds the answers to America's problems in the principles on which our nation was founded.” OK, ready?\n

No, not yet. First I have to rant—Oh, I promised myself I wouldn’t do this, but I cain’t he’p m’sef—about Dennis Prager. You see, Dennis Prager thinks that America, Not Keith Ellison, decides what book a congressman takes his oath on<\/a>. Yes, we will have a Muslim Congressman come January and Mr. Prager thinks that the Hon. Mr. Ellison “should not be allowed to” take his oath on a Quran, rather than a Bible. Of course, as every schoolboy knows, the Constitution expressly forbids a religious gateway to serving in office, as in the third paragraph of Article VI, which in full states:\n

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.<\/blockquote>\nOf course, Mr. Prager doesn’t see this as a religious test. No, he is perfectly happy for people to espouse whatever religion they like, or none, so long as they take their oaths on the Bible (by which I assume he means the Christian Scriptures). After all, Mr. Prager says, “... for all of American history, Jews elected to public office have taken their oath on the Bible, even though they do not believe in the New Testament.” This would be a telling point of some kind, I suppose, if it weren’t an outright lie. Congressmen do not take their oaths on a Bible of any kind. They affirm<\/a>. Always. As the Constitution requires. No Bible, no Tanakh, no Quran, no Book of Mormon, no controversy whatsoever. Just a lie.\n

Now, as shocked as I am to read that the enemies of America lie<\/I>, I was even more shocked to read Richard Samuelson on the subject. He admits that the constitution forbids any prohibition on adherents of a particular religion serving in Congress. “But what is the constitutional definition of religion? And does it apply to Islam? Might \"religion\" not be the best word to describe the kind of thing that Islam is?”\n

Er, yes. Yes, it would. But Mr. Samuelson is not finished:\n

To be a Muslim, as far as I understand it, is to belong to the Umma. The Umma is, in principle, a nation with a distinct set of laws, not a spiritual communion that appeals to ethics. So long as Islam is understood that way a tension, if not an outright contradiction, will exist between Islam and American citizenship.<\/blockquote>\nDo you recognize this, Gentle Readers? Yes, that’s correct, it’s the Jewish Question, with a simple global find-and-replace. The last place I read it was in G.K. Chesterton, talking about how Jews couldn’t be trusted to serve in Parliament. It’s back, and Mr. Samuelson doesn’t seem to have any shame about it. This isn’t the first time he’s said it, either: he asks outright Is Islam a Religion?<\/a> in a note where he says, I shit you not, “As far as I understand the intellectual history of religion, the idea of religion is of Christian origin.” He also writes about “a state within a state” in Imperium in Imperio<\/a>, a note which would be absolutely indistinguishable from a simple attempt to update Mr. Chesterton’s Anti-Semitism for this year. Note, please, that every single argument<\/I> about Islam works identically for Judaism, with the substitution of Mosaic law for Shariyah; if Moslems cannot be full citizens of the US, then neither can Jews. Of course, if Mr. Samuelson really believes that “religion” means nothing more or less than “Christianity”, then our Constitution only protects us against tests measuring whether a Christian office-holder is sufficiently Christian, which would allow Catholics to hold office, at least for now.\n

Perhaps, then, Mr. Hanson only asks us to appreciate the veneer of real material prosperity, as Mr. Samuelson does the veneer of democracy, liberty and equality. All the better with nothing behind it.\n

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via d over at Lawyers, Guns and Money, the following quote from Victor David Hanson in a Wall Street Journal editorial called Losing the Enlightenment, where he mention\u2019s Wal-Mart\u2019s \u201camazing ability to bring the veneer of real material prosperity to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17904,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10373\/revisions\/17904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}