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McCain’s preference for a Christian over a Muslim president: less than meets the eye
In an interview with the website Beliefnet as reported in The Daily News, John McCain made waves answering a question whether he would vote for a Muslim for president. He said that while he admires Islam, “since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles, personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith.” The reader who sent me the item writes: “I suppose his next logical step is to ban all Muslim immigration? :) “ In fact, McCain’s statements here, both individually and together, are incoherent. If he really believes that Christians are to be preferred for president and (as he also says in the interview) Mormons are acceptable for president, but Muslims are not, then he would have to conclude that in some important way Muslims are less American than Mormons or Christians, which would lead to the forbidden question why they should be in this country at all. But he avoids that problem by turning around and saying that he would vote for a Muslim for president “if he or she was the candidate best able to lead the country and to defend our political values.” So there’s not even the news of McCain’s saying a Muslim shouldn’t be president. Why then did he make the initial statement that he would prefer a Christian over a Muslim? There’s no there there. Indeed, even his initial, unamended statement is less than meets the eye, since all he said was that he “personally prefers” a Christian. He was not categorically opposing the idea of a Muslim president, but merely expressing a preference. And maybe that was his intention. Addressing the Christian readership of Beliefnet, he establishes his preference for Christianity, while also saying that he would vote for a Muslim, thus remaining in conformity with America’s liberal orthodoxy of strict non-discrimination. McCain, like most national politicians, has no habit of thinking. Everything is extempore: “I feel this … but I also feel that … uh, but I also feel that … I wouldn’t prefer a Muslim for president, but if he was really good candidate, then I would support a Muslim for president…” Is this the type of thought process with which he proposes to lead America? On another point, the story says that McCain is starting to show gains in the polls. It occurs to me that with the extreme unhappiness among GOP voters with the GOP candidates, the search for an acceptable candidate could turn back to … McCain. It would be the equivalent of Nixon being considered politically dead after his loss in the 1962 Galifornia governor’s race, then coming back and winning the presidency in 1968.
Terry Morris writes:
He can’t even say that a Muslim POTUS would create further unholy and undue alliances with our greatest adversaries, Islam and Islamic nations. He can’t even imagine that if Christian professing presidents are capable of creating these kinds of alliances, while “preferring” alliances with Christians and Christian nations, that it stands to reasons that a Muslim President would at very least be more disposed to ally with Muslims than his Christian counterparts. All he can say is that he prefers a Christian, but if the best guy between the two candidates (the Christian and the Muslim) is a Muslim, that he’s going with the Muslim. This is the depth of McCain’s thinking on this. What a joke this guy is!LA replies:
No other U.S. politician would say anything other, except for Tancredo and Virgil Goode. Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 04, 2007 08:26 PM | Send Email entry |