Multiculturalist Education is an outgrowth of a strain of “tolerance”. The other’s beliefs have now come to be “tolerated ” in the sense of tirvialization. The other man’s beliefs are understood as food and strange customs, while ignoring the core of belief where there can be opposition over things that matter. Toleration in this contemporary multiculturalist manner is a false toleration born from a fear of offending, but with a deeper and more sinister purpose of destroying the significance of the beliefs it supposedly “tolerates”. That is the only possible way that the fear of offending could have given rise to the trivilization of everyone’s most important beliefs.
Witness the current controversy arising from Keith Ellison’s announcement that he will bring the Koran to his swearing in as a congressman. Dennis Praeger has rightly insisted that the Bible has and should be recognized as the primary text in American life. He says that it is the most important book in American history, essential to the formation of our values. Praeger calls upon Ellison to at least preserve the symbolic importnace of hte Bible in this ceremony by also having hte Bible present. What Ellison does in rejecting even bringing the Bible as well as the Torah, is a symbolic assault on our American values. We can not and should not tolerate Ellison’s symbolic supplanting of the Bible in favor of the Koran in the rites of our public life. {As at the Bar Mitzvah, we need the expert who tests the initiate’s chanting to see if it is right.} This is not a trivial difference that we should simply “live with”. It should not be “tolerated” and Praeger is to be commended.
But Americans have been taught by secularists to trivialize our important beliefs. To tirivialize, of course, is to undermine and destroy. Hence, many find it difficult to recognize why this [Ellison & the Bible] issue really matters. They know no history so they are not aware of the importance of the Bible in the formation of America.
This secular trivilization assaults our identity and destorys what we are. What Michael cites here in the Bar adn Bat Mitzvah is th eimprtance of the formation of a religious identity, “Today I am a Man”. Our American self-identity calls out for a similar training, test adn rtite of passage for every native as well as foreign born American.
In all of this, Self Identity as a Jew [or Chrisitian] and as an American should not be trivializeded as they are in the secular mutlticulturaliset Reduction. Even if we are not believers, we should learn our self-identity as Americans formed out of a Judaeo-Christian ethos. If this task is failed, then we lay purselves open to the exotic identities who seek to replace our foundation with their foreign essentials. It misses my point to suspect that I am saying that Muslims cannot become Americans. But to be a Muslim-American, one cannot ignore our Judaeo-Christian foundation. This is what Ellison’s symbolic act seeks to do. It is a rejection of the American foundation which seeks to simply replace it (the Bible as its symbol) with the Koran as he is inducted into our government. If Ellison continues to pointedy reject America by refusing to alsohave a Bible present, then he is very clearly revealing who and what he is. The real question is who and what are we.
