Whenever I get worked up by the opinions of Dennis Prager, I remind myself what he does for a living. He’s not a scholar or a Jewish organizational leader, but a talk-radio host. What David Foster Wallace once wrote of another conservative talk-show host applies to Prager: He “is not a journalist — he is an entertainer.” Whether talk-radio hosts actually believe what they say is irrelevant to the larger goal, which is attracting and keeping an audience that feeds on us-and-them grievances. Listeners tune in not to learn anything, but to find affirmation for their own anger.

Or at least I hope so. Because if Prager actually believes what he recently wrote about Illinois congressman Keith Ellison, the first Muslim to be elected to Congress, then I despair for Prager, his audience, and religious conservatism.

Prager was upset that Ellison was planning to take his oath of office while holding a Koran instead of a Bible. To Prager, this represents an assault on “American civilization,” which he equates with the values contained in the Old and New Testaments. “When all elected officials take their oaths of office with their hands on the very same book,” writes Prager, “they all affirm that some unifying value system underlies American civilization.” If Ellison can’t swear by the Gospels, writes the coauthor of The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, then the congressman “will be doing more damage to the unity of America and to the value system that has formed this country than the terrorists of 9/11.”

Even those who are inclined to agree with Prager found the column, well, counterfactual. Right-leaning blogger Eugene Volokh of the UCLA School of Law pointed out that making Ellison swear on the Bible would violate another “unifying value system” — namely the Constitution. America’s foundational document makes quite clear that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Which is why members of Congress are not sworn in with a Bible or any other religious text — only after the official swearing-in on the House floor do they hold private ceremonies where they can choose to grasp the Scriptures.

Neither argument is likely to sway Prager. His beef is not with those who would breach official protocol. It is partly an argument with Islam, and largely with what he calls “muliticulturalist activism.”

Prager assumes, because he can apparently read minds in the Muslim world, that radical Islamists will see Ellison’s act as a huge moral victory. Maybe they will — there’s no controlling what the world’s radicals think, nor any sense in trying. But since we’re in the mind-reading game, can’t we also say that seeing a Muslim in the role of U.S. lawmaker is a victory of Western values over those of radical Islam? After all, he is using a Koran to swear allegiance to the Constitution, not the other way around. Where are the conservative pundits to celebrate what Ellison represents: an Islam that sits comfortably within the American democratic tradition.

But that assumes Prager cares more about sending messages to the Muslim world than he does about preserving America’s “Judeo-Christian values.” This has been a drumbeat of his and a cadre of West Coast Jewish conservatives, including Michael Medved and Rabbi Daniel Lapin of Toward Tradition. Prager devoted 25 columns to the topic last year. He summed up his argument for Judeo-Chrisitian supremacy in a recent posting on the Jewcy.com Web site:

Suffice it to [say] that Judeo-Christian values alone gave humanity the notion of the sacredness of human life; linear history and therefore the idea of moral and scientific progress; universal standards of good and evil; the abolition of slavery; the scientific method; the development of democracy; equality of the sexes; the greatest experiment in non-ethnicity-based society (America); the greatest music ever composed; and the greatest art ever drawn.

Phew. Kind of interesting how Judeo-Christianity gets credit for all the good stuff — you know, abolition of slavery instead of slavery itself, the sacredness of human life and not the Inquisition or slaughter of the Indians, the scientific method as opposed to the persecution of Galileo. It also doesn’t seem to faze Prager that most of these advances only occurred after, sometimes well after, the Enlightenment, when control of intellectual and political life was actually wrested from the Church.

Prager’s column is only tangentially about America and radical Islam. It is really a defense of America as a Christian country, with “Judeo” thrown in to make it more palatable for Prager’s coreligionists. Volokh sees the U.S. Constitution as a “multiculturalist document” in that it “tries to forge a common national culture as well as tolerating other cultures.” Prager takes a wholly opposite view, declaring — again, without the benefit of facts — that “insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible.”

Again, Prager is more of an entertainer than a journalist or Jewish “leader,” but his narrow reading of the “clash of civilizations” has become a trope among religious conservatives. According to their interpretation, it is a clash between the “Judeo-Christian” West and radical Islam. In order to win, the West needs to strengthen the religious values from which it derived its power and goodness. Multiculturalists, then, represent a fifth column, eroding this biblical unity from within.

One small problem: Radical Islam hates democracy, free speech, women’s rights, due process, religious diversity, tolerance for alternative lifestyles — in other words, the whole multiculturalist shebang.

Prager’s worldview stops being entertaining when you realize how radical it is — a manifesto that is not the opposite of fascist Islam, but its mirror image.