Civil Commotion

Carson has lumped all Muslims into his stereotyped view of Islam while ignoring similar elements within his own religion.

Warren Throckmorton

Oh, boy. Ben Carson said yesterday that he thought it would be a bad idea to elect a Muslim president because their beliefs are inconsistent with American ideals.

Carson, meanwhile, was asked Sunday whether a president’s faith should matter to voters.

“I guess it depends on what that faith is,” he said. “If it’s inconsistent with the values and principles of America, then of course it should matter. But if it fits within the realm of America and consistent with the Constitution, no problem.”

Asked whether Islam is consistent with the Constitution, Carson said: “No, I don’t — I do not.”

So far as Carson goes, he is right: We should not elect somebody who is hostile to American ideals. The difficulty which arises of course is that Christianity, too, is hostile to American ideals. The Founders were very definite: They were creating a government of men.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Never mind Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Scott Walker, Donald Trump’s religious theatrics … can you name a single clergyman anywhere who will uphold those passages I’ve highlighted, who does not want all of humankind on its knees?

You cannot.

UPDATE:   Marveling at the Francis-mania now sweeping across the Americas, I note that George Will, the exemplar for educated conservatism, makes a similar observation:

He stands against modernity, rationality, science and, ultimately, the spontaneous creativity of open societies in which people and their desires are not problems but precious resources. Americans cannot simultaneously honor him and celebrate their nation’s premises.

Hard words, but absolutely true — and equally applicable to such as Albert the Pious and most of the Republican candidates for president; their aim is to undo what the Founders achieved.

Because Holy Men are special, whereas y’all are no damn good.

Seriously: I marvel that these preening yahoos can walk down the street without people pointing and laughing.

• I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.

• I know you are brave and unselfish people, making sacrifices for a great principle but I cannot join you. I believe in the present effort which the allies are making to suppress German militarism. I would approve of America going to their assistance. I would enlist to that end, if ever there be a situation where I believe I could do more with my hands than I could with my pen.

• American capitalism is predatory, and American politics are corrupt: The same thing is true in England and the same in France; but in all these three countries the dominating fact is that whenever the people get ready to change the government, they can change it.

• All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescapably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.

• It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!

• The American People will take Socialism, but they won’t take the label.

• Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself. He is humiliated by his simian ancestry, and tries to deny his animal nature, to persuade himself that he is not limited by its weaknesses nor concerned in its fate. And this impulse may be harmless, when it is genuine. But what are we to say when we see the formulas of heroic self-deception made use of by unheroic self-indulgence? What are we to say when we see asceticism preached to the poor by fat and comfortable retainers of the rich? What are we to say when we see idealism become hypocrisy, and the moral and spiritual heritage of mankind twisted to the knavish purposes of class-cruelty and greed?

• The first thing brought forth by the study of any religion, ancient or modern, is that it is based upon Fear, born of it, fed by it — and that it cultivates the source from which its nourishment is derived.

• In the most deeply significant of the legends concerning Jesus, we are told how the devil took him up into a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time; and the devil said unto him: “All this power will I give unto thee, and the glory of them, for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will, I give it. If thou, therefore, wilt worship me, all shall be thine.” Jesus, as we know, answered and said “Get thee behind me, Satan!” And he really meant it; he would have nothing to do with worldly glory, with “temporal power;” he chose the career of a revolutionary agitator, and died the death of a disturber of the peace. And for two or three centuries his church followed in his footsteps, cherishing his proletarian gospel. The early Christians had “all things in common, except women;” they lived as social outcasts, hiding in deserted catacombs, and being thrown to lions and boiled in oil.

  But the devil is a subtle worm; he does not give up at one defeat, for he knows human nature, and the strength of the forces which battle for him. He failed to get Jesus, but he came again, to get Jesus’ church. He came when, through the power of the new revolutionary idea, the Church had won a position of tremendous power in the decaying Roman Empire; and the subtle worm assumed the guise of no less a person than the Emperor himself, suggesting that he should become a convert to the new faith, so that the Church and he might work together for the greater glory of God. The bishops and fathers of the Church, ambitious for their organization, fell for this scheme, and Satan went off laughing to himself.

• Journalism is one of the devices whereby industrial autocracy keeps its control over political democracy; it is the day-by-day, between-elections propaganda, whereby the minds of the people are kept in a state of acquiescence, so that when the crisis of an election comes, they go to the polls and cast their ballots for either one of the two candidates of their exploiters.

• In the course of my twenty years career as an assailant of special privilege, I have attacked pretty nearly every important interest in America. The statements I have made, if false, would have been enough to deprive me of a thousand times all the property I ever owned, and to have sent me to prison for a thousand times a normal man’s life. I have been called a liar on many occasions, needless to say; but never once in all these twenty years has one of my enemies ventured to bring me into a court of law, and to submit the issue between us to a jury of American citizens.

• Birth control is one of the great fundamental achievements of human reason, as important to the life of mankind as the discovery of fire or the invention of printing. Birth control is the deliverance of womankind, and therefore of mankind also, from the blind and insane fecundity of nature, which created us animals, and would keep us animals forever if we did not rebel.

The first clip is former Senatorial candidate from Alaska (Sarah Palin territory) Kathleen Tonn addressing the Anchorage city council as it considers a law forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and the second is some yahoo addressing Donald Trump at a meeting in New Hampshire.

Seriously: The loonies have taken over. The Republicans are doomed when its leading candidate won’t dismiss such an insane diatribe.