Not much to Ponnuru, except as a polemicist.  And the Schaivo case was a humiliating circus.

Of course, Derb shows he's the classic reptilian Englishman.  Yet more reason to raise a glass to 1776, and we don't have to bow to the Queen.

This may seem to make too much of a single clause, but Derbyshire makes a major (if common) error of history, logic, and simple text-reading when he says:

"Yet it remains the case that our Constitution does not permit the framing of laws based on the peculiar tenets of any religion or sect,"

That this is obviously false can be decisively and permanently settled by the simple expedient of consulting the text of the Constitution itself, which contains no such restriction.

It does state that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." but that is quite a different matter.

Firstly, it solely restricts Congress (meaning the federal government), being entirely silent about the states.  This was quite deliberate.  In fact, the prime motivation for the Establishment Clause was the protection of already-existing established churches in the states, such as the Congregationalist Church in Massachusetts, from being superseded by a nation-wide established church.  Each state had its own traditions and religious history (Maryland was founded as a Catholic haven, Virginia had been officially Anglican / Episcopalian, etc.) and all feared the contentiousness that would arise over which would get to be the official church of the United States.  But while many (such as Jefferson in Virginia) opposed established churches in their states and sought to dis-establish them there, nobody dreamed that the First Amendment would ban or prevent states from having them.  Again, its motive was quite the contrary.  We can see this by established state churches continuing unmolested by any lawsuits far beyond ratification and well into the 19th century.  If the authors and ratifiers of the First Amendment believed states were now obligated to dis-establish their official churches, they would have said so once it was in place.  Of course nobody conceived of such an absurd notion at the time, which required the distance of generations, combined with sophistry and ignorance, to germinate and spread.

Secondly, the establishment of a church is not at all the same thing as "the framing of laws based on the peculiar tenets of any religion or sect."  To press the matter, the federal government could for example, perfectly constitutionally, have its sole official holidays on Catholic feast days and Holy Days of Obligation, issue official proclamations praising various saints and angels revered only by Catholics, commemorate various anniversaries solely important to Catholicism, etc. etc., while pointedly refusing to do the same for any other faith, as long as it does not formally make Catholicism the official religion of the USA or the federal government.

Establishment is a specific, narrowly defined, and limited act.  If it were not seen as such, the Founders would not, for instance, have bothered to specifically ban religious tests for public office.  England to this day has an established church but has permitted Catholics and Jews in Parliament since the early 19th century. 

Moreover, it is instructive that all three branches of the federal government, from Day One and throughout the Founding Era and the entire lifetimes of the authors and ratifiers of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, had official prayers; chaplains; religious holidays; religious proclamations of prayer, thanksgiving, and fasting; and so on, without the slightest complaint about the supposed unconstitutionality of such a practice.

Some might attempt to protest that mere symbolic acknowledgement does not equal substantive matters, but do they really wish on themselves the mess or sorting out what is merely symbolic from what is "substantive"?

Thirdly, of course it is completely impossible to divorce religiously inspired ideas from public policy from a practical point of view. Few issues, from war to taxes to crime to charity to farming, are left untouched on by religion, and the vast majority of Americans then and now, public and politicians, have their views and values guided and shaped by their faith. 

Attempting this is also inimical to both political and religious freedom.  Are we going to mount massive background checks on every Congressman's correspondence and history with each bill introduction, and each candidate's filing for office, to ensure his motivations are solely secular?

Not to mention ultimately un-American for another key reason.  The Founding Fathers were motivated by a religiously inspired conviction that order and liberty were preferable to chaos and tyranny.  Their construction of the American political order steeped in this framework, irretrievably part and parcel with it.  To try to escape it is to escape from or destroy the project itself.

Having said all that, nothing in the Constitution BANS such un-Americanism, at least to a certain degree.  If we wished, we could mandate a zealous French-style secularism at all levels, via statute (for some elements, such as banning chaplains) or a fresh constitutional amendment (for others, such as secularity checks mentioned above).  And one is free to make the case that doing so would be a terrific idea.

But nothing in the Constitution now, as written, and as intended by its authors and ratifiers, mandates strictly zealous secularism in any way, and claims that it does are either ignorant or dishonest.  Again, all it does is ban the FEDERAL government, not the states, from making a particular denomination the official church of the United States or the Federal government.  Nothing more.

It is a little disappointing that the author of such a well-considered critique would nevertheless go on to mar his opus We Are Doomed with some palpably over-the-top assertions of his own.

At any rate, it seems Mr. Derbyshire cannot write without delivering a generous helping of insights either useful or entertaining.