Thank You Moses

The double-edged sword of reading Leon Wieseltier: I feel my soul is enlightened, but OTOH, I question what business I have wanting to be a writer in the first place:

Still, troubling things were said. A number of the justices declared--dispositively, as they like to say--that "we are a religious nation." The implication was that there is a quantitative answer to a philosophical question. But what does the prevalence of a belief have to do with its veracity, or with its legitimacy? If every American but one were religious, we would still have to construct our moral and political order upon respect for that one. In its form, the proposition that "we are a religious nation" is like the proposition that "we are a white nation" or that "we are a Christian nation" or that "we are a heterosexual nation," which is to say, it is a prescription for the tyranny of a majority. And if the opposite generalization were the case, if we were not "a religious nation," if we were a multitude of heretics and voluptuaries, would the case for tolerating a public display of the Mosaic creed be less powerful? The joke here is on the believers. They hold their faith not because it is popular, but because it is true. If they resort to the argument from numbers, however, they will rob their beliefs of philosophical prestige, and abandon them to the netherworld of popular nonsense. There is strength in numbers, but there is not truth. In this regard, the moral sensibilities of minorities are more refined than the moral sensibilities of majorities. They are never flattered by empiricism, never tempted by triumphalism.

It only gets better. This is reason enough to subscribe to TNR, if you haven't yet done so.