●
They are running a presidential campaign decrying wage stagnation, income inequality
and widespread economic malaise — as if they’ve not been in office for the past
seven years.
●
Their leading presidential candidate is 27 points underwater on the question of honesty and is under FBI investigation for possible mishandling of classified
information.
●
Her chief challenger is a 74-year-old socialist with a
near-spotless record of invisibility in 25 years in Congress. The other three
candidates can hardly be found at all.
●
The only plausible alternative challenger, Joe Biden, has run and failed twice
and, before tragedy struck (to which he has responded, one must say, with
admirable restraint and courage), was for years a running national joke for his
endless gaucheries and verbal pratfalls.
For the
GOP, this has all been a godsend, an opportunity to amplify the case being made
every day by the Democrats themselves against their own stewardship. Instead,
the Republicans spent the summer attacking each other — the festival of ad
hominems interrupted only by spectacular attempts to alienate major parts of
the citizenry.
The latest
example is Ben Carson, the mild-mannered, highly personable neurosurgeon and
one of two highest-polling GOP candidates. He said on Sunday that
a Muslim should not be president of the United States.
His reason
is that Islam is incompatible with the Constitution. On the contrary. Carson is
incompatible with a Constitution that explicitly commands that “no religious
test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust
under the United States.”
Ever. And it
is no defense of Carson to say that he was not calling for legal
disqualification of Muslims, just advocating that one should not vote for them.
That defense misses the point: The Constitution is not just a legal document.
It is a didactic one. It doesn’t just set limits to power; it expresses a
national ethos. It doesn’t just tell you what you’re not allowed to do; it also
suggests what you shouldn’t want to do. For example, the First Amendment allows
you to express whatever opinion you want — even, say, advocating the
suppression of free speech in others. But a major purpose of the Constitution
is to discourage and delegitimize such authoritarian thinking.
Carson later backtracked, saying that he meant
opposing someone not because of his identity, ethnicity or faith but because of
his ideology — meaning that he wouldn’t want in the White House an Islamist who
seeks to impose sharia law.
Neither
would I. Unfortunately, that’s not what Carson had said. In the original
interview, he said, “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of
this nation.” It would not have been hard to attach any of the appropriate
restrictive adjectives — radical, extreme, Islamist — to the word “Muslim.” He
didn’t.
Indeed,
Carson gave the correct answer minutes
later when he said he wouldn’t apply his presidential religious test to
congressional candidates. In that case, “it depends on who that Muslim is and
what their policies are.” Which is, of course, the right answer, the American
answer, the only possible answer to the same question about a candidate for the
presidency.
Carson is
not one to cynically pander. Nor do I doubt that his statement about a Muslim
president was sincerely felt. But it remains morally outrageous. And, in a
general election, politically poisonous. It is certainly damaging to any party
when one of its two front-runners denigrates, however thoughtlessly, the
nation’s entire Muslim American community.
Particularly
when it follows the yeoman work done by the other leading GOP candidate to
alienate other large chunks of the citizenry. Three minutes into his campaign, Donald Trump called Mexican
American immigrants rapists who come bringing drugs and crime. He followed that
by advocating the deportation of 11 million illegal immigrants. And sealed the
deal by chastising Jeb Bush for speaking Spanish in answer to a
question posed in Spanish.
Trump’s
contretemps with women enjoy even more renown — his attacks on Megyn Kelly
(including a retweet calling her a bimbo) and his insulting Carly Fiorina for
her looks.
Muslims,
Hispanics, women. What next? Who’s left?
It’s a crazy time. One party is knowingly lurching toward
disaster, marching inexorably to the coronation of a weak and deeply wounded
presidential candidate. Meanwhile, the other party is flamboyantly shooting at
itself and gratuitously alienating one significant electoral constituency after
another
******
The key paragraph
in the Krauthammer article is this:
“Neither would
I. Unfortunately, that’s not what Carson had said. In the original interview,
he said, “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.”
It would not have been hard to attach any of the appropriate restrictive
adjectives — radical, extreme, Islamist — to the word “Muslim.” He didn’t.”
But this is where
Krauthammer is wrong. The tenets of Islam include jihad and
Sharia law. You do not have to add the appropriate restrictive adjectives for they
are part of Islam itself, however difficult for us it is to accept this fact.
This is why
Nonie Darwish is right and Krauthammer is wrong. She wrote in WHY BEN
CARSON IS RIGHT:
“The media claim that the majority of Muslims are
"moderate," but they ignore that fact that in the Muslim
world, the "moderates" are out of power and always will be. The
reason is not because they represent the true peaceful Islam, but because
Islamic guides and books are not on their side. Islamic books, including the
Quran, don’t support the concept of “moderation,” peace or forgiveness, but
support the concepts of vengeance, retaliation and jihad. It is a fact that
Islamic books have always sided with radicals, with no exceptions.”
