I'm pulling out one of Charley's "Quick hits" because I find it so utterly shocking as to merit further discussion. Let's begin with Article VI of the U.S. Constitution: but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. I like the definitive nature of that pronouncement. "No religious test." "Ever." "Any office or public trust." Seems pretty clear to me. Not so much to Mitt Romney, evidently, who reportedly said the following to one Mansoor Ijaz at a fundraiser: I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that "jihadism" is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, "... based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration." Can Romney possibly have said that? Someone whose calls might actually be returned (i.e., not me) needs to ask him pronto. Because if he did, it's one of the most appalling things I've heard any candidate for national office say, in this cycle or any other. Let us count the ways. - "based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified." This sounds an awful lot like a quota to me -- and not even the rather ham-handed affirmative action-type quotas of the Bakke era. I'm talking about the old-school quotas, where universities and other institutions placed a ceiling on the number of members of particular minority groups (Jews, African-Americans, etc.) that could be offered admission. Sounds like that's what Mitt Romney has in mind for his cabinet. Every fair-minded person in this country, liberal, conservative, or in between, should be horrified by this.
- "But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration." Oh, thank you sir! Please, may I have another? Honest to crikey.
- "but no religious Test shall ever be required" Right, so getting back to that Constitution thing. Read again what Mitt Romney said: he considers how many Muslims there are in the United States, his android-like brain runs a couple of quick calculations, and he concludes that "I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified." Never mind that there might be good reasons to have a Muslim in the cabinet regardless of their representation in the American population -- as Mr. Ijaz argues:
Imagine how a qualified American Muslim FBI director, sensitized to the genuine concerns among Arab and Muslim communities about civil rights violations, would be able to ensure that FBI actions and policies target the real bad guys, not communities as a whole. Imagine how an American Muslim CIA director or defense secretary whose understanding of cultural differences in places that breed Islamist violence would ensure that intelligence was not biased by bigotry or lack of understanding and that defense strategies were constructed on data acquired from authentic sources. Now, you can agree or disagree with that argument, but it sure seems to me that using percentage of the population of a particular religious group as the principal determinant of whether a member of that group may have a cabinet position, as Romney appears to be doing, is not only stupid but borders on violating Article VI.
The Globe reports that, in an apparently unrelated interview, Romney told CNN that "[s]uggesting that we have to fill spots based on checking off boxes of various ethnic groups is really a very inappropriate way to think about we [sic] staff positions." No disagreement there. But surely, excluding a Muslim from a cabinet post simply because there aren't enough Muslims in the U.S. is just as bad, if not worse. And yet, as Mr. Ijaz points out, Romney "wants America to be blind to his religious beliefs and judge him on merit instead." Mitt Romney -- redefining hypocrisy for the 21st century. |
