A favored strategy of those who consider the American way of life to be a flawed construct is to use our freedoms against us, turning Constitutional concepts into vehicles for their own aggressive attempts to supplant that same Constitution. For lack of a better description, I’ll call them Constitutional usurpers, as they seek to replace the authority of the Constitution with their own.
To them, I’m sure, this is a delicious irony. To us, it challenges our sense of fairness and assumptions of good faith. As children of freedom and individual liberty, we see Constitutional precepts as bulwarks against tyranny, not stumbling blocks to the furtherance of an agenda. Simply put, we respect the rights of others in order to ensure our own rights are respected. Elementary civics.
This simple concept is indecipherable to the Constitutional usurper, as they are invested in a totalitarian worldview where pluralism is a dirty word and individual freedom is an impediment to “progress.”
Indeed, it is the existence of these people, the insidious nature of their mindset, that the Constitution was written to restrain. Clearly, the passing of centuries has not relieved mankind of that burden.
With the ascendance of Islam in both western culture and politics, the conflict between those who just want to be left alone and those who flatly refuse to do so, is inevitable. The conflict is unavoidable, and it is a fool’s errand to try. Our efforts are better directed toward managing this conflict to avoid bloodshed on a scale not seen since WWII.
Like World War II, this is a civilizational struggle. This is a high stakes contest with the freedom of mankind as the prize; we want to maintain it, and they wish to eliminate it utterly. When a man is pointing a gun at you it isn’t helpful to close your eyes and wish it were not so, which is an apt description of the behavior of many Americans today.
To recognize the threat, in all its enormity, is transformative, placing a heavy responsibility on each of us to respond. To put it bluntly, you might have to put down the remote and do something. As a man who enjoys his entertainment, I can appreciate the reluctance of people to engage, but I cannot accept pretending there is no threat.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump stirred up controversy when he called for the immediate halt of Muslim immigration until the federal government national security apparatus can get a handle on the threat. Predictably, people began to lose their minds, including many prominent Republicans.
Tellingly, the ones who became most frantic in their reaction were Muslim leaders. Understandably, no one wants to be singled out, but the reaction went beyond the expected expressions of disapproval, veering wildly into something akin to hysterics. Immediately, the Constitutional argument was trotted out.
There was a hijab-clad woman on one of the national news networks stridently dressing down Trump as ignorant of the Constitution, suggesting that the prohibitions against religious tests for office, or the prohibitions against freedom of religion in the First Amendment would preclude his pause in Muslim immigration.
Of course, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) immediately called for Trump to drop out of the race, citing again, the Constitutional protections for religious worship in the First Amendment. Funny thing though, the free exercise of Islam precludes the free exercise of other religions, indeed it forbids it, making the practice of Islam unconstitutional in itself.
The Constitution prohibits government contravention of inherent rights, one of those being freedom to worship according to one’s own beliefs, however, the Constitution cannot be rightfully construed as a protector of behavior that in itself contravenes those rights by another means – in this case Islamic supremacism declaring and enforcing the hegemony of Islam over other religions and governments.
In other words, freedom isn’t a suicide pact.
The Constitutional usurpers are no friend to America, they are merely frantic at the idea that their coveted Constitutional cover will be soon blown, leaving their political ideology masquerading as religion open to widespread scrutiny.
It’s about time.