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The problem involves the 39 percent of Americans who recently told Gallup that Muslims should carry special identification. It involves the many callers to Jerry Klein's Washington radio show who demanded that tattooing marks on American Muslims' foreheads be a prelude to deporting them en masse. It involves increasing amounts of hate mail I receive when I call for greater understanding of Muslims. It also involves an intellectualized approach exemplified by conservative hero Mark Steyn. \"With every passing month,\" Steyn wrote in a recent column, \"there are more Muslims and fewer Episcopalians, and the Muslims export their manpower to Europe and other depopulating outposts of the West. It's the intersection of demography and Islamism that makes time a luxury we can't afford.\"

This new tribalism has been fueled by many sympathetic liberals, but it took one of America's greatest liberals, historian Arthur Shlesinger Jr., to warn us a decade ago of the perils of our \"cult of ethnicity.\" As Shlesinger argued, \"The vision of America as melted into one people prevailed through most of the two centuries of the history of the United States.\" But in our PC age, \"Instead of a transformative nation with an identity all its own, America in this new light is seen as preservative of diverse alien identities.\" He warned that the cult of ethnicity dangerously \"belittles unum and glorifies pluribus.\" Pronunciational correctness is exhausting and time-consuming. If I were to be consistent, Paris would now be Paree, Germany would be Deutschland, sushi would be soosh-EEE, and I would need to pronounce Tony Blair's name with a posh British accent. If I were a TV journalist reporting on Tony Blair meeting with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kawl-eeee-for-nia while they nibble on ethnic food and discuss the state of affairs in Germany, I suspect I couldn't keep up with the demands of the moment.

One of my more enjoyable duties there is to entertain the troops with merchandise giveaways involving trivia questions to be answered. I recently decided to run a series of trivia questions on whether there are more Nguyens on our staff or more months in the year (15 Nguyens compared with only 12 months). I also asked how many correct ways there are to pronounce that name (plausible answers ranged from two to three to five back down to zero, depending on whom you asked). All persons seemed amused enough, especially our sizable and hearty [Nguyen] contingent. But one senior executive was not amused: \"[Rob Asghar], wouldn't you be offended if we asked how many ways there are to pronounce, say, Mohammad?\" Me, I would prefer candor from an offended Nguyen, Chan or Mohammad to pre-emptive PC censorship and its killjoy chilling effect on all communications.

Such silliness demanded a remedy, and the Bowl Championship Series formula was born, combining the best wisdom of eight computer rankings with polls and other measures. The BCS would match the top two teams annually for an undisputed championship game; and best of all, the matchup would be determined not solely by fickle, moody and prejudiced human beings, but with the aid of the utter objectivity that only the digital age could supply. College football officials have tried tinkering with the formula. They reduced victory margins when that seemed unfair, but now it's unfair to a USC team that outscores everyone by bucketfuls of points. Some argue for a playoff system, some argue for creating a human oversight committee that could overrule computer blindness, and some argue for other measures. But we can't agree, and maybe we shouldn't. We Trojans were cardinal red about this, since USC had spanked Alabama on Alabama's own field that season. Crimson Tide fans countered that the game was early in the season, and Alabama improved more over the course of the season than USC did. Both were right. No computer could solve such a controversy, and frankly, no humans could either.

Let's tell a story to angry and threatened Hollywood executives. In the olden, olden days, there was no such thing as technology. People sang songs and told campfire stories because they wanted to, not because their intellectual and creative content was protected. Rumor has it that plagiarism ran rampant among early cave painters, but the matter was generally dropped due to more pressing matters, such as escaping from the saber-toothed tiger who just entered the cave. Then, Shiva predictably decided this was too boring and moved into a phase that heralded destruction for those on the inside but new opportunities for those on the outside. Suddenly, any idiot could make a home movie and distribute it on the Internet. Any boob could come up with his own Web log, and many did. Any fool could share files, and most of us did, thanks to Napster and its progeny. Such is the genius of our free-market system, which galvanizes both artists and charlatans. The best works of Shakespeare, Mozart, Bach, Dante and Cervantes did not result from protection from studios and legal entities. They rose from the liberated human spirit. Studios and lawyers must learn from this. They cannot stop their Shiva as he continues on his cosmic dance of creation, destruction and renewal. They must learn to stop attempting futilely to protect the turf of the past and instead join in the dance.

I say it's time for a field trip. Send [Michael Newdow], [Alfred Goodwin] and their friends to visit Mecca for a while. Ah, I forgot they're not allowed even to enter Mecca, because of religious laws there. Then perhaps they can visit Islamabad during the month of Ramadan, and walk the streets looking at restaurants that have been closed by the government in order to compel everyone into fasting during daylight hours. Our American friends may gain helpful perspective. Yet the truth is that an open religious marketplace is the best antidote to coercion. The New Testament revealingly depicts how some of the apostle Paul's most fruitless missionary work was in Athens, where the Areopagus' bustling farmer's market of ideas gave him a short and fair hearing and a far more tepid response than he received in many other cities. In other words, Pat Robertson is probably praying right now that Newdow lives long enough to witness the horror of a nation that will inevitably react to his squelching of God by becoming more publicly religious than ever.

Sam Harris has echoed the sentiment in a new book, \"The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason.\" Harris, a foe of not just religious extremists but moderates too, writes, \"Words like 'God' and 'Allah' must go the way of 'Apollo' and 'Baal,' or they will unmake our world.\" Harris contends that religious faith is \"the devil's masterpiece.\" The notion that religion is the enemy of peace is at odds with the history of the 20th century. Hitler's National Socialists were driven by reason, science and temporal considerations - not by prayer, liturgy or the hope of heaven. Uncle Joe Stalin's calm barbarism sprang not from his youthful intention to be a priest, but from his later spurning of faith-based values. And Mao was religious - and prolific - in his goal of exterminating religious people. Religion says we must love our enemies; science and reason say we are merely animals trying to perpetuate our own line at the expense of rivals. Religion says we gain when we sacrifice; science and reason cannot make that case. Religion says every human is made just a little lower than the angels, crafted in the image of God, and imbued with a great dignity; science says we're a random accident that will be replaced by future accidents. Religion preaches altruism, but altruism is never reasonable.