Tell Us What You Really Think, Hitchens

Today in Slate, Chris Hitchens comes out swinging in favor of a personal religious test for office, that is, the total legitimacy of refusing to vote for a candidate because of his religious views. Article VI of the Constitution clearly prohibits an official, legal religious test (and rightly so). However,

what Article VI does not do, and was never intended to do, is deny me the right to say, as loudly as I may choose, that I will on no account vote for a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee, who is an unusually stupid primate but who does not have the elementary intelligence to recognize the fact that this is what he is.

And so Hitchens chronicles another sordid chapter in the public's ongoing confusion about what is unconstitutional (Congress ruling that our national religion will be Mormonism, only Muslims may run for office, and ill words spoken about Catholics will be punishable with jail) and what is absolutely A-OK Constitution-wise (I become a Scientologist, vow to cast my votes only for Jews, and talk shit about Baptists in my spare time).