http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/ben-carson-founding-fathers-wouldnt-have-trusted-muslim-president
Ben Carson: Founding Fathers wouldn’t have trusted a Muslim president
Ben Carson: Founding Fathers wouldn’t have trusted a Muslim president
Ben Carson offered up a new explanation for why he’s opposed to a Muslim American becoming president, citing fears of “different loyalties” that he believes the Founding Fathers articulated by barring immigrants from becoming chief executive.
As has been the case in the past, the implication was that outwardly patriotic Muslims could not be fully trusted as loyal Americans given their faith. He has previously cited theories popular on the far right warning that seemingly assimilated Muslim Americans may be using religious edicts to conceal an extremist plot.
The latest comments came at an appearance at the National Press Club on Friday, when an audience member asked why he felt a Muslim citizen couldn’t be loyal to the Constitution as president given that there were already Muslim military officers, policemen, and judges – all positions that require fidelity to the law.
“A good understanding of the Constitution answers that question for you,” Carson said. “Because when you look at the Article II, and we’re talking about requirements for the president, they have to be a ‘natural born citizen.’ Now why is that the case?”
The clause Carson refers to bars naturalized immigrants from the position of president. There are numerous Muslims born in America, of course, and a hypothetical Muslim president would by definition have to be a natural born citizen.
The Constitution prohibits any “religious test” for public office, but Carson argued on Friday that the audience should read between the lines to divine the Founder’s intent.
“I’m sure if you had gone to the Founders and said, ‘but what about this person? They may not be a natural born citizen but you know they’ve been in America for most of their lives, and they’re a fine upstanding citizen, they served in the military, they came back they were on the police force, can’t they be the president?’… they would have said no,” Carson said. “They said ‘We don’t even want to take the slight chance that we would put someone in that position who had different loyalties.’ That’s the answer to your question.”
“I’m sure if you had gone to the Founders and said, ‘but what about this person? They may not be a natural born citizen but you know they’ve been in America for most of their lives, and they’re a fine upstanding citizen, they served in the military, they came back they were on the police force, can’t they be the president?’… they would have said no,” Carson said. “They said ‘We don’t even want to take the slight chance that we would put someone in that position who had different loyalties.’ That’s the answer to your question.”
Several Muslim activists briefly approached Carson at a reception before the event, hoping to convince him that citizens like themselves were as American as anyone else.
“One is innocent until proven guilty, but he’s called Muslims guilty even before verifying them,” Mike Ghouse, executive director of the American Muslim Institution, told msnbc after offering himself to Carson as a resource for information about Islam. ” I think it comes out of ignorance. He needs some guidance.”
Dr. Carson is quoted,
ReplyDelete“"I’m sure if you had gone to the Founders and said, ‘but what about this person? They may not be a natural born citizen but you know they’ve been in America for most of their lives, and they’re a fine upstanding citizen, they served in the military, they came back they were on the police force, can’t they be the president?’… they would have said no,” Carson said.""
Actually, that particular question DID arise at the Federal Convention, and WAS answered-- in the affirmative; at least as far as the naturalized citizens of their own generation were concerned. The original citizens clause, allowing one who was "a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution" was included for the specific purpose of making such persons eligible to be president.
From Volume 2 of “History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States” by George Bancroft (1889):
“One question on the qualifications of the president was among the last to be decided. On the 22nd of August the committee of detail, fixing the requisite age of the president at thirty-five, on their own motion and for the first time required only that the president should be a citizen of the United States, and should have been an inhabitant of them for twenty-one years. On the fourth of September the committee of states who were charged with all unfinished business limited the years of residence to fourteen. It was then objected that no number of years could properly prepare a foreigner for that place; but as men of other lands had spilled their blood in the cause of the United States, and had assisted at every stage of the formation of their institutions, on the 7th of September it was unanimously settled that foreign-born residents of fourteen years who should be citizens at the time of the formation of the constitution are eligible to the office of president.”
From Justice Story’s “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States” (1833):
“It is indispensable, too, that the president should be a natural born citizen of the United States; or a citizen at the adoption of the constitution, and for fourteen years before his election. This permission of a naturalized citizen to become president is an exception from the great fundamental policy of all governments, to exclude foreign influence from their executive councils and duties. It was doubtless introduced (for it has now become by lapse of time merely nominal, and will soon become wholly extinct) out of respect to those distinguished revolutionary patriots, who were born in a foreign land, and yet had entitled themselves to high honours in their adopted country. A positive exclusion of them from the office would have been unjust to their merits, and painful to their sensibilities.”
They were willing to accept as eligible persons who had been born foreigners to America and who might have grown into advanced maturity as foreigners. Apparently they put demonstrated loyalty ahead of some nebulous fear of a "slight chance that we would put someone in that position who had different loyalties."