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# Posted 8:11 AM by Patrick Belton

WAITING FOR NEWDOW: Along with Amanda from Crescat, Leon Wieseltier from TNR also was in the gallery during the oral arguments for Newdow. His observations are worth noting - what came to his mind, in the midst of the jarring of counsels making the worse argument the better, was rather

a shrewd and highly un-American observation that was included among the aphorisms in Either/Or: "The melancholy have the best sense of the comic, the opulent often the best sense of the rustic, the dissolute often the best sense of the moral, and the doubter often the best sense of the religious." The discussion that morning fully vindicated the majesty of the chamber, as legal themes gave way to metaphysical themes and philosophy bewitched the assembly. But something strange happened. Almost as soon as philosophy was invited, it was disinvited. It seemed to make everybody anxious, except the respondent. I had come to witness a disputation between religion's enemies and religion's friends. What I saw instead, with the exception of a single comment by Justice Souter, was a disputation between religion's enemies, liberal and conservative. And this confirmed me in my conviction that the surest way to steal the meaning, and therefore the power, from religion is to deliver it to politics, to enslave it to public life.

His ensuing reflections on the relationship of belief, unbelief, and the search for truth within a polity are worth reading.

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