Dr. J.: Sen. McCain on Christian America, but it's really Jewish (satire)

It is not widely known that Senator Gentleman Johnny McCain, the maverick, the straight shooter, the straight-talker, has been outspoken on matters religious, concerning our country.

For example (courtesy of The National Jewish Democratic Council, January 8, 2008) he has said that: "a candidate's Christian faith is ‘an important characteristic for a President,' that he would prefer a Christian president, that the ‘Constitution established The United States of America as a Christian nation,' and that ‘America is a Christian nation, and it (sic) is hardly a controversial claim' (The New York Sun, October 1, 2007)." He has also declared that he did not regard non-Christians as qualified to govern in the United States (The Progress Report, "Blackout and Brownout," Oct. 1, 2007). If the party-less Sen. Joe Lieberman ever picks up on that one, one would suppose that it would come as a surprise to him, especially if he actually is angling for the Vice-Presidential nod on the McCain ticket. But hey, you never know.

Unfortunately for Senator McCain, as he has been so many times in the past (see "The Surge is working"), he is simply wrong on this one. For the United States is not a Christian Nation, a fact that is stated clearly in a document that, as a treaty signed and subsequently ratified by the Senate, is, under Article VI, part of the Constitution. As Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli, signed November 4, 1796, says: "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Musselmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext, arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

But does this mean that the United States, even though the words "God" and "religion," appear nowhere in the Constitution (nor does the word "Christian," for that matter), is not a religious nation? Indeed it does not. Indeed, according to evidence assembled by Craig Unger in his book The Fall of the House of Bush (New York: Scribner, 2007), the United States is clearly a Jewish nation.

As Unger tells us (pp. 21-25), from the earliest times, the New England colonies were settled by Christian Zionists, led in 1630 by John Winthrop who described their new homeland as the "New Jerusalem." He stated that like the Biblical Jews they had been driven from the Temple, but that they were God's Chosen People and were on their way to the Promised Land. We know how powerful the Puritan Ethic has been in our country, informing down to this very day views on matters such as human sexuality and other forms of "proper behavior," reflecting the Power of the Old Testament. The Jewish imprint is, for example, felt throughout the country in its place names. "Salem" was the Puritan form of "Jerusalem." There are about 25 Salems in the United States. There are also numerous Goshens (my Dad, the greatest Jew I have ever known, and a secular one indeed, was born and died in one of them, Goshen, NY), Canaans, New Canaans, Bethlehems, Zions, and Hebrons, Old Testament place names, clearly showing the Jewish nature of our country.

But this influence comes down to us not just from Puritan times. In September 1774, General George Washington attended an Episcopal Maas in which the priest declared that Americans, like the Jews before them, has earned the right to be called "God's Chosen People." The Americans were to be considered like the Jews in Exodus, and America was Zion, the New Jerusalem, the Promised Land. Obviously following this pathway of thinking, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin came up with an idea for a seal for the new nation that would at its center depict "The Children of Israel in the Wilderness." That seal was not eventually adopted, but the Great Seal of the United States was. Featuring the six-pointed Star of David, it adorns the $1.00 bill. And so the Jewishness of our country surrounds us every day, or at least will until the Bush-inflation that will be on us before we know it, claims the one dollar bill.

With this evidence, certainly as convincing as any offered, as incorrect as it is, by those advocates of the notion that the United States is a Christian nation, it is contrariwise, entirely clear, is it not, that the United States is a Jewish Nation.

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY), a weekly Contributing Author for the Web zine The Political Junkies.net; a Special Contributing Editor for Cyrano's Journal Online; and an invited contributor to the Web log The Daily Scare.

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