Under His Own Vine and Fig Tree

Don't miss Hendrik Hertzberg's excellent account of the GZ community center uproar. It's the kind of reasoning that should put the "controversy" to bed once and for all, but that smug Philistines like Newt Gingrich will declaim as elitist liberalism, mainly because its inescapable logic punctures a hole in their demagoguery. Hertzberg artfully turns John McCain's own words against him, destroys the rationale of bigots like Abraham Foxman, and disarms the wild myths propagated about Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (author of What's Right About Islam Is What's Right About America).

Hertzberg concludes by quoting the one American who remains, one assumes, unassailable. As George Washington put it in a letter to the Jews of Newport, RI, the United States

gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens...May the children of the stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants, while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.

The children of Abraham, as Hertzberg points out and as Washington surely knew, include Muslims as well as Jews.