Presidential Candidates Re-Paint the Constitution

Republican Presidential candidates, apparently unwittingly, are painting themselves into a corner.

George Pataki, former New York governor and a long-shot candidate is quoted as saying free speech rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution do not extend to speeches urging American Muslims to take up arms against other citizens. "We do not have to tolerate that kind of speech in America," he said. "It is a crime and we must stop it."

Pataki is rallying us around a confusion. Threatening the government is certainly a crime, but advocating “taking up arms” (Second Amendment) is not.  And being a religious apostate is not a crime either (First Amendment). To extend gun rights to all good Christians but not to Muslim citizens is a Constitutional contradiction. The "confusion" embedded in Pataki's statement is fall out from the common sloppy generalization that all Muslims are terrorists--similar to the once popular idiosyncrasy that "the only good Indian is a dead one."

It is scary in today's world to think of a Muslim owning a firearm, but befuddling the Constitution in the process of displaying ones resolute patriotism is an awkward stumble. Something is amiss when one guarantee in the Bill of Rights is restricted to enhance another. Terrorism must and can be stopped, but rhetoric that has the odor of bigotry is liable to create collateral damage—to the integrity of the Constitution.  It is like a police car in a high speed chase where the patrolman does not follow wisely determined department protocol.

Senator Lindsey Graham, also a Republican Presidential candidate, says we should deploy troops against ISIS and "kill every one of these [Islamic] bastards that we can find." I acknowledge that we are at “war” with terrorists, but identifying the enemy as Islamic bastards knots religion and guns together in the slur, and the Constiutution is brushed aside as being unhelpful.

Donald Trump brings it closer to home in his engaging way by “finding” this enemy all around us. He says we need to start closing down mosques, gather data about American Muslims, and “take out” (kill) terrorist family members. By fogging over the distinction between “radicalism” and Muslim religious faith, this is defiance in extreme of the First Amendment's hands off regarding the “free exercise” of personal religion.

These Presidential aspirants in effect are throwing down the gauntlet, challenging (ironically) the patriotism of anyone who holds the strictures of the Constitution as sacred.

Yesterday a video crossed my social media transom that identified the perpetrators of all the infamous terrorist attacks of the past years as Islamists, making the point that we have to be stupid if we continue to tolerate Muslims. This is a useful example of how the above quoted Republican candidates likewise lose their footing. We are implored to grab the nearest weapon and attack the threat, taking no prisoners. No matter if the Constitution is left torn and discarded in the process. It doesn't matter who the enemy is. If he looks like, sounds like, acts like a Muslim, he is a terrorist.

I expect that anyone swallowing that video—erasing all peaceful and law abiding American Muslims as non-existent or secret friends of terrorism—would cheer on any means of removing them, apparently indiscriminately, just as Pataki, Graham and Trump want to. Killing them is the surest way to do this; at least jail them or deport them (along with those darn unibody illegal Mexican gangster types). The rule of law or the logistics of transport are too muddling to be of any use.

I understand that election campaign season is a time for letting loose all restraints on reasoning in order to get attention. There will be time later to backtrack and regain ones senses when faced with responsibility in office once elected. But the news crazed average voter meanwhile is expected to make important choices.   The common voter is left on his own to judge the candidates based on the one-liners that the candidates spill out to the news media who are competing for ratings.

Guns and violent responses are admission that we are devoid of creativity and are pronouncements that we are failures at responsible safeguarding of our political heritage. Our Founding Fathers had great hopes that their descendants would show how a Democratic Republic could endure without despoiling its promising potential. The Constitution has been amended 27 times, but always on technicalities or clarifications, not on principles. If the Presidential candidates want to cast the First and Second Amendments as principled contradictions, they need to either get their principles untangled or advocate a 28^th revision. There is a procedure for this, but it is not by the fickleness of election-cum-impeachment.

If Donald Trump (now joined by other contenders seeking better poll counts) is elected President and follows through on his rhetoric about how to deal with our problems, he will instantly become a candidate for impeachment, unless the Constitution no longer means what our Founders intended us to follow.

        Doug Good