Is this a part of American culture?
I think you might recognize this as part of the American culture, from the time of the Founding Fathers:
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania (1759)
I’m pretty sure, considering that it’s written into the Constitution in a couple of places, that they considered religious freedom an essential liberty, including freedom from religious tests for office.
Oh, come on, someone had to do it!
Haven’t you heard, Poly, that quaint bit of doggerel has been updated?
“Small sacrifices to gain more safety”?
What drugs are you on?
You’re not talking about making small sacrifices to improve the safety of Americans. You’re talking about repealing the FUCKING FIRST FUCKING AMENDMENT TO THE FUCKING CONSTITUTION, you Anti-American asshole.
And for what? To prevent Osama bin Laden from nuking New York City?
What fucking threat does fucking Keith Ellison pose? He’s a fucking Muslim. If you wanna deport the fucking Muslims, then fucking say so. Except you’re too fucking cowardly to fucking say that, instead you fucking mumble about fucking traditions and vague fucking generalities.
Except we’re not talking here about potentialities and slippery slopes, we’re talking about an actual human being, an American citizen named Keith Ellison who just happened to be elected to Congress by the citizens of Minnesota. And you think they made a mistake electing a Muslim, they should have been more vigilant, because for all they know he could be an Al Qaeda sleeper agent. You know nothing about his politics, for all you know he could be ready to impose Sharia law. So, because Al Qaeda is composed of Muslims, all Muslims should be excluded from public life in the United States of America. We must make these small sacrifices from time to time to gain more safety. Never mind that your so-called “vigilance” doesn’t extend to actually finding out the first fucking thing about Keith Ellison’s voting record. That would be ridiculous, to expect a vigilant guy like you, always on the alert to the damage Muslims could cause to our brave country, to actually learn about what an actual person actually believes.
Fuck you.
Keith Ellison is not an Al Qaeda sleeper agent. If I were an Al Qaeda sleeper agent who planned on getting elected to congress in order to subtly undermine America’s traditions from within, why wouldn’t I pretend to be a Christian? Don’t you think it would make said undermining a teensy bit easier? In fact, we’ve got all kinds of assholes in Congress subtly undermining America’s traditions RIGHT NOW, only you’re worried because Keith Ellison won’t swear an oath on the Bible. But a crook like Jefferson from Louisiana is fine, because he put his hand on a Bible and swore and oath on it and respected tradition, never mind the freezer full of bribe money in his office. No vigilance needed there.
When I think of the “worst violence and atrocities imaginable” what comes to mind first is the Nazi Concentration Camps. And those were done by an officially Christian nation. They even had Lutheran chaplains assigned to the camps.
Not so. In the Bill of Rights, the 6th Amendment to the Constitution has that part about the accused person being informed of the charges against them and having the right to confront the witnesses against them. This is generally interpreted by Judges as requiring that court proceedings be understandable to the accused, usually in his native language. Normally, this is done via an interpreter, with the trial being conducted in English, because that is the easiest way – the rest of the people, lawyers, witnesses, & jury probably all understand English. But there is no legal requirement that trials have to be held in English, and I expect people could come up with examples of trials held on other languages.
(When I was a child in rural Minnesota school, a classmate of mine was out of school one day to translate for her grandmother, who had to testify in Court – Grandmother spoke some English, but was really fluent only in Norwegian, and for something as important as a court trial she wasn’t going to try to testify in English.)
I’m certain that at least some trials in the US territory of Puerto Rico are held in Spanish.
And trials involving deaf plaintiffs or defendants are held at least partly in American Sign Language, I believe.
Yes, but it’s American Sign Language.
True. But if we follow that line of thinking, we must inevitably realize that English comes from England, which is not America. And therefore it’s bad.
Save for the nitpick that it’s a self-governing Commonwealth within the U.S., not a territory, a most salient point. We might add New Mexico, where Spanish has a more or less co-official status with Engish and where there have been Spanish-speaking pueblos for over 300 years; I’d suspect that at least some local court cases are conducted in Spanish where it’s the vernacular.
Likewise the territory of Guam, where I would venture to guess that Chamorro is quite acceptable in the court system. I’d add the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, but I’m not sure of the local vernaculars (Johanna! Wendell Wagner! Cleanup in aisle 5!) and to what extent they’re still the common language of interpersonal intercourse. (I know Chamorro is still quite common and in regular use.)
Back in September, I had to appear in Franklin County District Court here, and in the course of proceedings I had to swear to one statement (not testimony but a formal waiver of something unnecessary to the case I was involved in). I did so under oath, as did everyone else having to make the same waiver, with left hand raised and right hand on Bible. However, it was made clear that if anyone preferred to affirm rather than swear, this was totally acceptable. This being rural North Carolina, no one felt the need to do so, or to call for another book. But the judge was scrupulous about the rights of everyone who came before him – to the point that he refused a guilty plea on a traffic offense from an elderly man obviously suffering from deafness and Alzheimer’s, and substituted a P.J.C. (North Carolina’s variation on the “don’t get in trouble for a year and it’ll go away” disposition of a case) on the unsworn word of the man’s middle-aged daughter that she would keep him from driving.
There was one boy (young man, actually, but looked boyish) arraigned at that time who was clearly Rastafarian, but he did not need to take an oath. The judge’s demeanor did not change in the slightest when he heard that case.
Cultural diversity: it’s as American as shoofly pie. Or maybe hotdish casserole. Or carne asada tacos. Or pierogies.
But not, and this distinction is crucial, falafals.
Actually, 10 million out of a population of over a billion would be under 1%.
And those Louisianans and their damn French derived Law…Freedom Law…oh, whatever - it ain’t like us!
Hey, algebra is a Muslim invention, and I think we should very carefully consider the consequences before we start using it.
And think what we could do with the national debt if we got rid of all the zeroes we borrowed from Muslim scholars!
Which reminds me, isn’t it time we threw out all those Aray-bical names for stars and gave them good old-fashioned American names? Why are we teaching our impressionable children to study the heavens for some Muslimacious Aldebaran when they could be training their telescopes on stars with fine respectable names like George!
:mad:
It’s worse than you know. What we call “English” is really about half…
French. :eek:
Or…
We could start giving them names like the “Star Registry” does…
$54 and your name could last FOREVER, rather than the 25 years before it will expire in their copyrighted “list”…
Plus real people will use it, rather than the 3 people that read the brochure.
Ah yes, but English is traditional. If it was good enough for the Founding Fathers it should be good enough for you!
Juft don’t make me ufe thofe funky letters when I write.