What bugs me about people like General William Boykin --the deputy undersecretary of defense and Special Forces terrorist hunter who's attracted attention for making speeches in which he says that Bush's elevation to the White House is a miracle from God, that our real enemy is not Osama or Saddam but Satan, and that we're a Judeo-Christian nation, while the god of Muslims is an "idol" -- is that, like so many right-wing Christians, he literally doesn't think America would be America if its population weren't predominantly Christian and Jewish. That's as obnoxious an idea as the notion that my Catholic forbears and other non-Protestant immigrants were "polluting" this country a century ago. A century from now, Christians and Jews could in theory be a minority in America -- and if the non-Judeo-Christian majority embraces the American experiment, and works to preserve and strengthen it, it just doesn't matter what their religion is, or whether have any religion at all. America will still be America, whether the general likes it or not.

Oh well -- the prime minister of Malaysia thinks Jews run the world and one of our generals thinks that Judaism and Christianity should be privileged over all other religions in this country. Can we just get these two guys in an elevator together and cut the power for a while?