Christine O'Donnell Loses Cliff's Notes

Well, Christine O'Donnell shows her remarkably slick grasp on prefabbed talking points.  "Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?" she posed to her debate opponent, expecting to sound witty and magisterial.  The spontaneous laughs from the audience should enough to teach her not to return to the point, but she plows on gamely, "Let me just clarify, you're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment."  Coons cites a slightly mangled version of the amendment to her and she, as if hearing it for the first time, responds "That's in the first amendment?"

O'Donnell represents a peculiarly American failure in education.  Our intellectual blandness, the tribalism of our religious cults and a seemingly bottomless well of patience for the lunatic fringe guarantee that the peculiar and laughable will ultimately take center stage.  Yet Christine O'Donnell surfs all rugged terrain with the confidence of the proudly ignorant.  Does the Constitution say 'Separation of Church and State'?  She points out that she doesn't see those words.  But law is made by written doctrine and judges' interpretation of facts.  Even strict constructionist judges must concede (since they are in fact 'judges') that texts alone are dead, that it requires a human head and hand to define the point where letter and fact meet.

The facts are clear in this case, and the letter of the Constitution most amply supports, that if the government throws its weight behind the cart of any creed, it puts all others at a disadvantage.  Is O'Donnell suggesting that the government should discriminate against certain citizens?  Maybe this is an uncharitable view of her positions.  It is certainly true that Ms. O'Donnell is able to make the most incongruent notions coexist in her head.  She told New York Times writer Mark Leibovitch that she 'embraced' both Protestantism and Catholicism.  What is the key ingredient that allows her to both believe that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ on Earth, and that he isn't?  Or to believe that one must confess to a priest and receive absolution from him, and that one doesn't?

Looking back on what I've written, it seems to me that I may have been too harsh in holding her to any line of doctrines.  She is quite young and has room to grow politically and intellectually.  Perhaps after this election season, in which she seems poised to lose by an enormous margin, she will manage to find common ground in what so many other bright politicians have so far failed to do.  Perhaps in 2012, O'Donnell will 'embrace' both Democratic and Republican policies to find the happy middle ground of the proudly ignorant.

Adam Deen On Why We Should Ignore Adam Deen

If you haven't heard the big news, here is a link to the most unlikely of events.  You heard it right.  A mosque is actually going to open its doors to the outside world and, we hope, allow a real debate on the God question without someone being threatened with death.  Although I am not familiar with either presenter, I popped by Adam Deen's, the Muslim debater's, website to see what to expect.  Well, I wasn't educated on any new arguments for God's existence, probably because there aren't any, but I did get a taste of his ability to make Sharia law seem to be right in line with British law.

No matter, here is what Deen gets right, and why we should reject his position because of it.  

Britain doesn't need additional law or separate law but fairer law, as does every country.  The reason that Western democracies are generally the envy of the world is that they have hit upon an admittedly messy but effective means of creating that law: reasoned debate, open process and, especially, insisting on a certain flexibility to adapt.  It is this last component that Deen most envies in his analisis of Sharia law, yet his institution is inherently unsuited to the task.  If God is unchanging, why would His followers permit changes to his perfect model of jurisprudence?  I think Deen is being coy about what Islam's adherents truly think about their system-it is beyond reproach, and beyond improvement.

Deen attempts to make the case that Sharia is equal to British law.  I already suspect that these Sharia courts are an excuse to railroad socially vulnerable people.  Where are the protections of open, due process and the guarantees of civil government?  Even giving Deen the benefit of the truth, that Sharia is equal to British law, it is still a wasteful exercise in multiplying redundant institutions.  Would we also be better off having two front doors to our houses and two ignitions to start our cars?

If it weren't objectionable enough on the grounds I've outlined, Sharia should still, after leaving the ham hands of its inept public defender, be sent to the bin as a bad apple.  From a Deen essay on why Sakine Ashtiani ought not to be stoned for adultery:

[Ashtiani's] stoning must be condemned, since it is not in accordance with the Sharia. This case lacks the necessary four witnesses, who have to literally see intercourse.

Deen cleverly discerns that the problem with stonings is, yes you just read it, that in Iran they're just not doing them right!  The rest of his reasoning is a thoroughly repulsive and ahistorical assumption about the Prophet's intentions in proclaiming the law.  I won't claim that the law is unique to the Islamic faith, but they certainly didn't improve on it from its tribal origins.

One has to remember that the Hudud (capital punishment) at the time of Prophet Mohammed was meant to function as a symbolic deterrent signifying the severity of the act. This reasoning is supported by the near impossible standard of evidence needed for such punishments to be enforced. In reality, Hudud would never actualize, unless the party involved pleaded guilty in order to take the punishment in this world rather than the after life.

Please remember that this 'symbolic deterrent' has actually been carried out thousands of times.  And just think for a moment on the supposed severity of the act, so grave and inexcusable.  I can't help wondering if it would be difficult for a scorned man to find three friends who would lie for him?  And I also can't help imagining how slow and painful a death it must be to be pummeled with blunt objects until one of them manages to damage a vital organ.

Finally, here is a warning shot across the bow of any self-righteous Christian who should should feel the temptation to spout John 8.  Since the story of the woman taken in adultery does not appear in any of the oldest and best manuscripts of the New Testament, it probably did not happen.  It took some scribe a thousand years to see the obvious: death is not just payment for loving the 'wrong' person.