I did warn you that he was intellectually over-matched:
This guy is not longer a joke, he’s simply despicable. Chris Wallace asked Herman Cain about a mosque being built in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. After arguing that Islam doesn’t qualify as a religion or something under the 1st Amendment, they got to the heart of the matter.
“So Wallace asked the inevitable question: does any community have the right to ban mosques? “Yes, they have a right to do that,” Cain replied, without skipping a beat. He later added that, while he is not willing to discriminate based on religion, “I’d rather err on the side of caution.””
Cain has a rather convoluted understanding of the US Constitution, at least when it comes to it’s applicability to Muslims in this country. I didn’t like John McCain’s attempts to rewrite the 1st Amendment through campaign finance reform laws and I don’t like candidates for President like Cain who think some people may only build houses of worship at the sufferance of their fellow citizens.
I’m not saying that Cain’s instincts about the inevitable curtailment of religious freedoms aren’t on target, as there are real doubts about whether the concept of religious freedom can survive a large Islamic population any better than the right to bear arms survived the introduction of nuclear weapons. And there are certainly major problems with the way secular officials around the nation are violating the First Amendment in favor of Islam. Even so, to argue that Islam isn’t a religion is simply absurd, on par with the assertion that the Federal Reserve doesn’t need an external audit because it performs so many internal ones.
As a general rule, Americans look disfavorably upon any politician who attempts to narrow the scope of the Bill of Rights, particularly with regards to the First and Second Amendments. If you don’t want mosques built in your community, the correct time to deal with the issue is not permitting immigration from countries filled with people who are inclined to want to build mosques.