Not your father's Democrats
Not your father's Democrats

Is the Bible still the Bible?

Michigan’s Rep. Rashida Tlaib is the first “Palestinian-American Woman” to be elected to the House….as of last Thursday

Diversity, as a step toward total political correctness, means that everything we hold dear is to be trashed, and that anything we cherish as tradition is to be scrapped.
She is also the first to say it out loud, about President Trump, like this -- “We’re going to impeach the [insert vulgarity].”

Quite a mouthful from an upstart, and indeed, she was speaking for herself, for her voters, and for Congressional Democrats in general – and in those terms.

The Israelis are familiar with such bullying swagger from the Palestinian Arab side of things. Diplomacy spiced with terrorism. Now we in America get a taste.

Republicans and decent Americans all over were horrified at such language, and so were the Democrats, but for a different reason.

She was saying what they are all thinking. She gave it away…and too soon. There’d be plenty of that, first obstruct, and then destruct, but systematically.

She said nothing wrong – except that she said it too loud and too fast.

In fact, she said it moments after taking the oath on the Koran…and that became another story.

Why the Koran, asked the millions who are not Democrats? Aren’t we a Judeo/Christian nation? Well yes we are, or yes we were. More than 80 percent in the House and Senate identify themselves as Christians, then come Jews, and then “otherwise,” and now comes “diversity,” which seems the way to go throughout the world, and now, here, too.

Diversity, as a step toward total political correctness, means that everything we hold dear is to be trashed, and that anything we cherish as tradition is to be scrapped.

Hence the Koran…and people like Tlaib, plus Ilhan Omar, feel it’s their right to declare, not “so help me G-d,” but “so help me Allah.” Or perhaps, Allahu Akbar.

Not everyone feels comfortable with this….as we suggested in this posting. Plus, if Rep. Adam Schiff thinks he has a friend in Tlaib, just because they both hate Trump equally, and are crazed about it to the same degree, he should think again and remember that he is still Jewish and she is not. The book she reads from is not entirely flattering to the Jews.  

True enough. Nothing says that the Bible must be used for the oath of office – despite what people think. No, any book will do.

On Presidents, for example. John Quincy Adams and Franklin Pierce swore on the Constitution.

Those (and a few more) are the exceptions. The Bible has been the rule for all oaths taken in our nation’s capital, from White House to Congress.

So while not the law, it has been our legacy, our tradition, and our sense of comfort to know that we are in familiar hands.

We feel comfortable knowing that for 242 years we all trusted in the same G-d, and his name was never Allah. For some, now, it is.

That makes some of us uncomfortable…and we do not know which passages of the Koran are most meaningful to, say, Tlaib and Omar.

Visions, perhaps, of an Islamic paradise for the United States?

Back to our Presidents, virtually all, when taking their oaths, chose a verse from the Hebrew Bible most special to them, specifically from King David’s Book of Psalms. William H. Taft chose the Book of Kings, as follows: “Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?…”

That was the famous blessing from, and for, King Solomon, who, some 3,000 years ago, reigned from Jerusalem, as Moses in marble towers over the US Supreme Court.

Our Liberty Bell is inscribed from the words in Leviticus, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”

The Pilgrims and the Puritans carried with them the Hebrew Scriptures, yes, the Torah, as a source of prayer, comfort, consolation and inspiration.

The Judeo/Christian concept has sustained us from start to--- well now, suddenly, we do not know how this is to be finished, do we?

Years ago in the book, “The Bathsheba Deadline,” we wrote this daring passage: “The Koran has arrived and it has come to devour the Bible.”

Was I wrong?

New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva.

He is the author of the international book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal,” the classic Inside Journalism thriller, “The Bathsheba Deadline,” and most recently “News Anchor Sweetheart.” Contemporaries have hailed him “The last Hemingway, a writer without peer, and the conscience of us all.” Engelhard is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com