Ben Carson is getting a lot of flack – but what he said was that those whose values are not consistent with the US constitution should not be President, and that he believed that Muslim values were not consistent with the constitution. (I just heard an idiot BBC radio correspondent parse this to say that Carson had said that the Constitution disallowed Muslims and that was patently wrong). Carson could have chosen his words better and said instead that the “values of radical Muslims would not be consistent with the Constitution” and nobody would have been able to quarrel with that. Donald Trump is being criticised for not defending Barack Obama against someone who charged him with being a Muslim. (He countered – but later – that it was not his job to defend Obama).
But the real point here is that even all the mainstream media and all the “conventional” politicians see the characterisation of being a Muslim as negative and as an attack. Now why would that be? Why object to Obama being called a Muslim if that was not perceived as being derogatory?
In June this year, Gallup conducted a poll about the acceptability of different categories of people as President of the US (a question which apparently was first asked in 1937). The results are quite clear. For the country as a whole, socialists, atheists and Muslims need not apply.
The 3 least acceptable categories and their relative positions are the same across Democrats, Independents and Republicans.
When looking at the differences by age, opinions are very soft for those between 18 and 29 ( which is to be expected since those under 25 have brains where the critical cognitive faculties are not fully developed). Opinions harden with age. But even here the 3 categories least acceptable across all age groups are always socialists, atheists and Muslims.
Across all political parties and across all age groups, socialists, atheists and Muslims – in that order – need not apply. Of course what Gallup does not show is who the socialists, atheists and Muslims find least acceptable.
The k2p blog 