I recently introduced two NCOTW’s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One was Donald E Wildmon<\/a>, founder and head of the American Family Association, the other one was Dennis Prager<\/a>, a radio talk show host.<\/p>\n

These two people now seem to have found eachother!<\/p>\n

Dennis got my NCOTW price for his column in which he rails against a Muslim congressman’s intention to swear his oath on the Koran when he takes office.<\/p>\n

Donald’s American Family Association now chips in on the issue\u00c2\u00a0by publishing Dennis’ column and urging its three and half million members to take action.<\/p>\n

See their webpage here<\/a> (just ignore their spelling errors).<\/p>\n

Donald urges his followers to: “Send an email asking your U.S. Representative and Senators to pass a law making the Bible the book used in the swearing-in ceremony of Representatives and Senators.”<\/p>\n

Apart from the fact that such a law would be extremely unconstitutional (See article VI<\/a>: “.. no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office ..”), it would also be extremely stupid.<\/p>\n

Let me try to explain this:<\/p>\n

“Senators and Representatives are bound by Oath or Affirmation…”, that is, they can choose between simply promising to uphold the constitution, or they can swear to do so.<\/p>\n

Swearing is, by many, considered a stronger version of just promising, and done by invoking something that is sacred to the person swearing (a holy book, a beloved person) (see footnote 1).<\/p>\n

The\u00c2\u00a0main<\/strong> point is, that they perceive swearing to be much\u00c2\u00a0stronger<\/strong> by invoking something that’s sacred to them<\/strong>! Presumably in the sense that if they break their oath, they would be betraying this something or someone sacred!<\/p>\n

So, what makes the oath so strong is that something sacred\u00c2\u00a0to the person who swears<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0is involved. That<\/strong>‘s the crux of the matter.<\/p>\n

For instance, suppose I promise something, but you think it should be stronger than that and ask me to swear on the bible. Since I’m an atheist, the bible doesn’t mean a thing to me (well, at least not a positive thing), so if you really insist, sure, if that makes you happy I’ll do that. The point is that it\u00c2\u00a0shouldn’t<\/strong> make you happy, because it’s\u00c2\u00a0me<\/strong> who has to keep the promise and I don’t get any<\/strong> extra incentives for keeping my promise from puting my hand on your holy book, the Koran, or last month’s Playboy, to me it would still be a promise.<\/p>\n

So .. it comes down to simply this: if you really want someone to swear<\/strong>, that is, promise something in a way that this person feels he can’t break it, then you\u00c2\u00a0want<\/strong> him to invoke something that is sacred to him<\/strong>! NOT YOU<\/strong>!<\/p>\n

By forcing him to swear on something that’s only sacred to\u00c2\u00a0you<\/strong> and not to\u00c2\u00a0him<\/strong> you take away the meaning of this little ‘extra’ that an oath has over a promise.<\/p>\n

If you want your senators and representatives to swear<\/strong>, you want to make sure that breaking their promise desecrates what\u00c2\u00a0they<\/strong> hold holy, not something\u00c2\u00a0you<\/strong> consider sacred. By forcing him to swear on your<\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0holy books, you actually give him an incentive to break his promise, especially if he finds your holy book offensive!<\/p>\n

So, from a pure logical point of view it’s absolute insanity to even consider a law that requires people to swear on a specific holy book.<\/p>\n

But then, logic usually involves some thinking, and thinking is exactly what the religious right seeks to ban from society, so I have little hope, that people like Dennis and Donald will ever understand the mindboggling stupidity of their misguided activism.<\/p>\n

It’s precisely this fear of thinking and logic that makes\u00c2\u00a0people like Dennis come up with drivel like<\/p>\n

“America, Not Keith Ellison, decides what book a congressman takes his oath on”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and has Donald\u00c2\u00a0blindly repeat\u00c2\u00a0the idiocy on his website.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Note 1) In all practicallity, to me personally, there is no difference. If someone doesn’t think my promise is good enough, then I don’t see how my swearing on my late mother would make a difference. The only way it could make a difference is if my promise wasn’t fully “meant”, but that’s not how I personally ‘promise’! But apparently, for other people, swearing on, for example, what they perceive as a holy book,\u00c2\u00a0does<\/strong> make a difference (makes me wonder how I should rate such a person’s simple promise, but that’s a different discussion).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently introduced two NCOTW’s. One was Donald E Wildmon, founder and head of the American Family Association, the other one was Dennis Prager, a radio talk show host. These two people now seem to have found eachother! Dennis got my NCOTW price for his column in which he rails against a Muslim congressman’s intention […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,16,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ncotw","category-politics","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}