Is Reza Aslan considering a run for political office?  This recent TEDx talk sure sounds like it.

Aslan wrote the best-selling ‘No God But God,‘ by far the most readable introduction to the history of Islam, and his recent anthology of 20th-century Middle East literature, ‘Tablet & Pen,’ is a fixture on my bedside table.

Like any good politico, he starts out all rosy-eyed.  Bear with him.  He draws clear parallels between prejudice in the U.S. against Jews and against Catholics — both groups seen at one time as un-American, foreign, “other” — and the current politically manipulated wave of Islamophobia.  And he draws the clear conclusion:  anti-Muslim zealots are so angry because they know they’re on the losing side of American history.

As they say in the Middle East, “from your lips to God’s ears.”

See what you think:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/VgLAzwgizdk]

If the headline read “Pat Buchanan:  Not Enough Muslims on the Supreme Court,” that’d be something.   Instead, what we get is the utterly predictable:  “Pat Buchanan:  Too Many Jews on the Supreme Court.”

Surprise surprise, Pat’s been Jew-counting.  Those damn Jews are taking over our most sacred institutions.  When all else fails — and the lesbian “smear” campaign against Elena Kagan is clearly faltering (amazing that it’s 2010 and we still talk of “accusations” of lesbianism) — there’s always good old antisemitism to fall back on.   As Jean-Paul Sartre put it:  “If Jews didn’t exist, antisemites would have had to invent them.”

Count ’em, says Buchanan from his current perch as a commentator on MSNBC.  Three of ’em if Kagan gets the nod!  Out of nine.  It’s a calamity for Christian America — a separate little cabal there on the bench, out to corrupt the purity of Christian values.  What do you mean, Judeo-Christian?  Nobody pays any attention to that Judeo bit.  That’s just another sop to the Jews, adulterating Christianity.  We have to put a stop to them.  We have to stand up to this canker in our society.  Who the hell do they think they are?

None of the three are religious?  Ha, you don’t believe that, do you?  It’s in their blood — the stain, as Philip Roth put it, the fatal flaw, as bad as being black.  And hey, if they’re not religious, that makes it even worse.  What do they believe in?  Abortion?  Gay marriage?  Civil rights?  The Antichrist?

Thank God (as it were) we have no less an authority than Richard Nixon’s assurance that Buchanan is neither an antisemite nor a Jew-hater (the precise distinction clear only to Nixon), but “a good patriotic American.”  The Nixon seal of approval is always reassuring.

Is it worth pointing out that only four Jews have sat on the Supreme Court before?  That a third of all justices have been Episcopalians, who are 1.7% of all Americans?   That the Constitution upheld by the court forbids discrimination on the basis of religion?   No — that’s only stooping to the level of Buchanan demagogery.

Come on, Obama:   rock Buchanan’s world and  nominate a Muslim next time.

Or even — gasp! — an atheist.