Sep 21, 2015 3 min read

Ben Carson may be a brain surgeon, but he urgently needs to sit in on a remedial course in American civics.

In an appearance on “Meet the Press” Sunday, the Republican presidental candidate proclaimed that, no, he “would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.” Later, he told the online magazine The Hill that whoever becomes president should be “sworn in on a stack of Bibles, not a Koran,” and “Muslims feel that their religion is very much a part of your public life and what you do as a public official, and that’s inconsistent with our principles and our Constitution.”

Oh boy.

His observation that Islam would be an integral part of how a believer would conduct their public duties “and that’s inconsistent with our principles and our Constitution” is certainly very interesting in light of the outpouring of support by many Republican presidential candidates and evangelical Christians for Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who has refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples because she says it conflicts with her religious beliefs. What about the “religious liberty” they say they so zealously want to defend? Would that apply to only one faith?

But the overriding issue is that the same Constitution Carson cites, and many of his supporters say they revere, explicity states in Article 6, paragraph 3 that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

That’s it. Period. Anyone of any faith – or no faith – can be president.

We’ve been down this path before. In 1928, New York Gov. Al Smith was the subject of whispers and smears when he was that year’s Democratic nominee for president because he was Catholic. Many Protestant voters subscribed to the notion that Catholicism was alien and un-American and that a Catholic president would take marchng orders from the Vatican. Thirty-two years later, John F. Kennedy lost votes in some Democratic strongholds in his whisker-thin victory over Richard Nixon in the presidential election, almost certainly because he was Catholic (though, as his wife Jackie is said to have told friends, not a very good one). In September 1960, Kennedy told the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in a now much-quoted speech that “I do not speak for my church on public matters; and the church does not speak for me.”

Now, six Catholics sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, alongside three Jews. And it’s not a big deal. In the Republican presidential field, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum, George Pataki, Bobby Jindal and Chris Christie are all Catholics, while John Kasich is a former Catholic who has since converted to the Anglican Church. Again, no big deal. Religious beliefs and practices that were mocked and vilifed in another age are now widely accepted and embraced.

The same will happen with Islam once the fevers of our time have subsided. In the meantime, though, the likes of Carson, Donald Trump and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will continue to try to make political hay by baiting and slandering Muslims. And Hispanics. And gays. And on and on and on. It’s a mean, ugly show of intolerance and bigotry.

And it’s not worthy of people who seek to lead this country – all of it.