I know I’m going to trigger some people here. But then, I enjoy that sort of thing when constitutional questions come up.
The threat of global Islamist terror is a fight that in many ways has been going on since the inception of Islam and before that. It is the age-old conflict between Eastern despotism and Western freedom. Yes, tragedies like New Zealand happen. But the Islamist and generally anti-Christian inverse is much more common but rarely reported.
The Spartans saw the specter of the despotic East at Thermopylae. The Israelis deal with it every day. We should fight this as we fought the last global threat, by containment and power applied at strategic pressure points. It is the way to strategic victory. For context, see department” George Keenan’s Long Telegram.
However, domestically the U.S. Constitution guarantees that our American concept of Western freedom includes freedom of faith. We have no state religion and there are no religious tests for high office. If that were true, given emotions of the moment, Catholics and Jews may possibly have been excluded from office during times in our history.
So it is today with Muslims.
I emphasize the difference between Islamic and Islamist. The first a faith. The second an ideology. Social media these days and yes, the conservative movement, harbors people who do not understand that difference. This brutishly populist and ignorantly xenophobic bunch lash out at anything they don’t comprehend. Since that list covers a lot, their aim is wide and inaccurate. These days, their trigger fingers itch to deny constitutional rights to Americans on the basis of faith alone.
Thus, those on the extremist right who call for disqualification from elected office of Muslims are plain wrong. Unless you successfully repeal the First Amendment, to do so is unconstitutional and frankly un-American, given the basic freedoms this country rests on are contained in the First Amendment.
These social media tough guys, these pitchforked purveyors of idiocy, want to burn down the village in order to save it. Sure, trample the constitution as long as you get the “muzzies.” When the next mob turns on them? Too late, genius.
With the tools the Constitution gives us, politically fight leftist politicians here who happen to be Muslim? Fight them because we abhor their leftism? Yes. Intelligently fight Islamist tyranny the world over? Yes. In doing so, have the Islamist stench of oppression and irrational bigotry contaminate this nation and our freedoms by denying our own citizens the right to hold office?
No.
