Observation 1.....“Only in America,” as “Carolina Israelite” Harry Golden used to say. In our country more than anywhere else on earth or in human history, one’s background may not be one’s foreground. We're tolerant of jumping one ship for another. Nobody gets killed because of converting to another religion. This is my first observation on this week’s “On Faith” question:
“GOP presidential candidate John McCain said recently that he ‘admired’ Islam but would prefer a president with ‘a solid grounding’ in the Christian faith. Would you consider a candidate’s religious background in deciding for whom to vote? If so, under what circumstances?"

Observation 2....Religion is one of the story-strands in the rope of a person’s reality, and knowing this background-foreground strand is essential to knowing the person and guessing her/his performance in political office.

Observation 3.....It’s unfair to the candidates, and irresponsible as a citizen, to vote for a candidate on any single story-strand of the candidate’s reality, or any single political issue.

Observation 4.....In addition to having more differences of background than any other people in history, all of us Americans have the same background (namely, the American heritage) and the same foreground (namely, the American present).

Observation 5.....In voting today for the America we want, we Americans vote “American"--whatever that severally means to us.

Observation 6.....For John McCain and me, voting American means voting for candidates with “a solid grounding” in America’s founding religion, Christianity. The earliest Americans in the continuity of our customs and laws were English Puritan and Separatist Christians, who before landing in 1620 drafted our first founding document, the Mayflower Compact. In our documentary history, they were followed by the English Enlightenment Christians who wrote the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Constitution (in effect, 1789), and the Bill of Rights (1791).

Observation 7.....The taproot in the formation of the American mind was the American religion, a dynamic mix of English Christianity and a rationalist spin-off therefrom, namely, the English-Scottish-French Enlightenment.

Observation 8.....Since America’s Founding Fathers were scattered all along the Chrisian spectrum from conservatism to deism, we Americans today can choose our favorites among the Founding Fathers according to our own predilections, our own way of seeing and living in the world today.

Observation 9.....When I say “Vote American!” I am expressing my concern for honoring and promoting the American mind of private and public dialog between our Founders' Biblical faith and their Enlightenment reason. Only in this light, and within this very specific sense, do I view as un-American all other minds. This does not mean that those of other minds cannot be good Americans. It does mean, as historians of culture will agree, that only by the promotion of the American mind can the American heritage survive and thrive. Negatively put, America could not survive the death or even the radical re-definition of the American mind. Analytically put, ideological multiculturalism in America's public schools now threatens the American heritage/religion/mind with death by amnesia.