@JoeNierman Not Sure if you will read this but i will post it anyways.

Hinduism's the only ancient faith still going, and its many forms, Ganesha's elephant head, Hanuman the monkey, aren't separate gods. They're forms drawn from the stories, faces of one underlying reality. The texts record what people believed, not what can be proven. That's exactly why calling another faith evil from inside your own is shaky ground.

I take great offense from coming from both of you who are both religious. One Jewish and one Christian to call another religion backwards and evil. Not everyone agrees with everything.

To me, a Jewish person and a Muslim person are the same thing. I know that's not accurate, but that's how it felt before Joe explained the difference. To a layman like me, born into a Hindu and Christian family, the newer religions feel like simpler versions of the ancient ones. One god, one book, one set of rules beats juggling a whole pantheon.

The discussion was about Americans holding American positions, Senate seats, judgeships, any seat of power. I'm fine with that if it means Americans who follow American laws and culture. What bothers me is when someone comes in and lives by their religion and their culture instead of assimilating or adopting the new one.

Joe is American-born from an immigrant family and Orthodox, everything he does runs through his faith. Branca is American-born from an Italian immigrant family and Christian. Joe, you said you're American first, yet on a Friday you broke every traffic law racing to your daughter's before Shabbat sundown. Is that American? Their argument was that Vivek, a Hindu who married a Hindu and named his kids Hindu names, isn't following American ways. But if Orthodox practice disqualifies Vivek, it disqualifies Joe. Same standard cuts both ways.

Faith itself is fine, private, personal, no problem. The line is when faith overrides the country's laws and culture in public office. A House seat, a Senate seat, the presidency, a judgeship, those require following the country's laws and culture above everything else. If someone's religion makes them willing to set aside those laws and that culture, they shouldn't hold those seats. I believe judges should follow the laws and culture of the country. If someone's faith leads them to set aside those laws and that culture, that tells you something about where their loyalty sits, and that matters for anyone holding judicial power.

You named your kids Jewish names first, English second, that's faith shaping choices, not just following American culture. I named mine Japanese first, English second, because I'm following Japanese culture.

Being born in a country isn't the same as belonging to it. What matters is assimilation, absorbing the culture, living by its values. A child born in Tokyo to foreign parents who grows up speaking only Japanese is more culturally Japanese than someone who's lived there twenty years but never let go of home. Same with America. An American-born person who follows American laws and culture has assimilated. One who lets faith override those laws and that culture hasn't, no matter where they were born. So the test isn't birthplace. It's behavior. Does the country's laws and culture come first, or does religion?