Constitutional scholar Clayton Cramer
writes:
Joseph Story was an early Supreme Court justice. His Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States have been cited repeatedly by the Supreme Court. There are 172 citations in federal court decisions since 2021. Concerning freedom of religion, let me quote from there:
1877. The real object of the [First] amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance, Mahometanism, or Judaism;, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government. [2 Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States 606 (1873).
If you examine the laws of the early Republic, you will see that this appears repeatedly. The dominance of Christianity was simply assumed. The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, section 10, includes this requirement for officeholders: ...
He goes on to give examples of requirements to be Christian or Protestant.
Some people act as if the First Amendment means an obligation to admit Mohammedans or Jews into the USA. No, the truth
is more nearly the opposite.
NPR Radio reports:
President Trump's extensive new travel ban took effect just after midnight on Monday, barring nationals of 12 countries from entering the U.S. and partially restricting those from another seven. ...
The ban mostly affects countries in Africa and the Middle East. ...
The 2017 ban — initially targeting Muslim-majority countries — prompted immediate outcry and legal challenges, forcing the first Trump administration to make a number of revisions. The Supreme Court upheld a revised version in 2018, but former President Joe Biden promptly rescinded it on his first day in office in 2021, calling it a "stain on our national conscience."
...
The full ban applies to foreign nationals from 12 countries: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Heightened restrictions apply to people from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
No, it was not a "stain on our national conscience." It was a stain that we admitted so many Mohammedans.
