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« Wednesday Morning | Main | Writing For Business »

Taking Oaths

I see where the Volokh-Prager debate over the propriety of taking an oath of office on a Koran has migrated to TV. Ellison seems to be a pretty despicable character, and it's a damn shame the voters in his district couldn't find someone else to give that sinecure to, but that said, I think Prager's wrong on this one.

First of all, let's dispense with the "religious test" stuff that Reynolds brings up. This isn't a legal argument, it's a political-symbolic one, and no one's suggesting that Ellison not be allowed to take office because he's a Muslim. In any event, the Islamist apologists are always talking about how the Bible is holy to them, too.

That said, as a couple of Orthodox Jews who called into his show Tuesday said, the book you take the oath on isn't for the benefit of the country, it's for your own. You put your hand on a book you believe in, and Prager's straw-man argument that you have to believe every word is the literal truth is off the mark. Reform Jews believe the Hebrew Bible is holy, they just believe it was written by men, not God.

But I think it's possible to win this argument even on Prager's terms. Washington, Madison, Monroe, Franklin, and other Framers were Freemasons. I'm a Freemason. The rule is that the oath of membership in the society is taken on whatever book is deemed holy to the person taking the oath. To claim that this understanding of what an oath means is incorrect is to invalidate the understanding that the Framers had of oaths, the very Framers that Prager is seeking to venerate by insisting that Ellison use a Bible.



  booklist

Power, Faith, and Fantasy


Six Days of War


An Army of Davids


Learning to Read Midrash


Size Matters


Deals From Hell


A War Like No Other


Winning


A Civil War


Supreme Command


The (Mis)Behavior of Markets


The Wisdom of Crowds


Inventing Money


When Genius Failed


Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking


Back in Action : An American Soldier's Story of Courage, Faith and Fortitude


How Would You Move Mt. Fuji?


Good to Great


Built to Last


Financial Fine Print


The Day the Universe Changed


Blog


The Multiple Identities of the Middle-East


The Case for Democracy


A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam


The Italians


Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory


Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures


Reading Levinas/Reading Talmud