Editorial: Ben Carson dismisses 3 million Americans

At the same time that he is sympathetic to Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis for her dedication to her faith, Ben Carson vilifies 3 million Americans for their devotion to theirs.

It shouldn’t be surprising that Carson, a leading Republican candidate for president, thinks all Muslims are unfit for the presidency. It’s a mainstream position in the Republican Party, with only 45 percent of Republicans in a Gallup poll this summer saying they would be willing to put a Muslim in the White House.

What’s surprising is that Carson bases his religious test on the Constitution, which explicitly demands the opposite.

On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, host Chuck Todd asked Carson if a president’s faith should matter. Carson said it depends on whether that faith is compatible with America’s values.

“So do you believe that Islam is consistent with the Constitution?” Todd asked.

“No, I don’t. I do not,” Carson said. “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that.”

So much for the Republican nominee being a constitutionalist, if it’s Carson. It’s not Islam that’s inconsistent with the Constitution; it’s Carson’s use of a religious test for public officeholders.

Paragraph 3 of Article VI of the Constitution says: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” (It was introduced by a South Carolinian, Charles Pinckney.) The First Amendment also lays out the principle of freedom of religion before any other.

Why would the Framers go out of their way to specifically ban a religious test for office? To protect against the very type of system they were breaking from in England. Laws there in the 1700s blocked anyone from holding public office who was not a member of the Church of England. The monarch was the head of the church and everyone was required to show loyalty.

Fleeing that, America’s founders made religious freedom one of the new nation’s fundamental tenets and enshrined it in Article VI. More than 230 years later, though, some presidential candidates are more interested in playing to people’s fears than in abiding by the Constitution.

It’s part of a rising Islamophobia in America. That is fueled in part, to be sure, by terror attacks of Islamic extremists. But some American politicians and commentators ignore that the victims of those attacks are overwhelmingly other Muslims, and that there are 1.5 billion peaceful Muslims around the world.

Saying so amounts to political correctness for many Republican primary voters, and Carson’s intolerance is as likely to drive his poll numbers up as down.

It’s not a matter of political correctness, though. It’s a matter of being correct with the Constitution. Carson wasn’t.

This story was originally published September 21, 2015 at 4:12 PM with the headline "Editorial: Ben Carson dismisses 3 million Americans."