The New Yorker | Beneath the Veil

"Q: [...]as you say in your piece, American reactions were strange [to the French law against overt religious symbols in schools].

Q: Two weeks after the law was passed, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a dissent in a Supreme Court decision that upheld the rights of states to refuse public money to Bible students. His dissent said, basically, that the decision of the court to refuse this money was no less benign than the French way of thinking. He and Clarence Thomas were the only dissenters. About a month later, John Ashcroft filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of a veiled Muslim schoolgirl who had been suspended from elementary school in Oklahoma, citing very specifically the godless example of the French. So there are two ends of the seesaw, clearly, in terms of what the obligations of a republic are to the religious beliefs of its citizens."

And there you have it, folks. Instead of the Attorney General defending the US Constituation, instead of the Supreme Court interpreting the US Constitution, we have these men arguing against the US Consitution. And how do they argue this? By decrying French.

Which goes to say that France is exemplary in its upholding of democratic principles and separation of church and state. France is the bad example -- France must be hated!