During the last Democratic debate, the host asked all candidates to comment on their Christian faith. At the recent Republican debate, a similar question was asked concerning their Biblical beliefs. Both the Democrat and the Republican candidates scrambled at the chance to show who was the most believing Christian.

How would you have reacted had at least one candidate shown the courage, and felt the moral obligation, to take that most opportune chance to express Constitutional values as follows?

Mr. Host, I find the question constitutionally inappropriate for a presidential debate. But it was asked and I will respond. Everyone who knows me privately knows who I am and what I believe. Those in the American audience who do not, need only know this one thing: As president I will consider all peoples regardless of faith, or no faith for that matter, as equals. I consider this attitude an absolute requirement for any public servant. Furthermore, I say to the world, and especially to the Muslim world, during this perilous time, America embraces your faith as it embraces our majority Christian faith. This idea is a very important concept, and I want to make it perfectly clear. Our Founding Fathers did not create a Christian nation; they created a political system where all peoples have the right to live and practice their beliefs in anyway they want while pursuing their right to the pursuit of happiness. Of course there is an important constitutional restriction. No one has the right to violate another person's similar guarantees, especially the sacred right to life and property.

Bin Ladin violated those American concepts to the core! Of course, America and the world will remain dedicated to bringing anyone inflicting those unacceptable kinds of religious terrorist acts to justice. As President I will emphatically invite the Muslim world to join with us, confident that with these kinds of new sincere American attitudes, they will. The so called war on terrorism should never have been a war of violence or "Crusades," as President Bush believed and conducted; but rather, an American invitation to the Middle East to a sharing of human values and a joining together of all good peoples everywhere in the victory over extremist fundamentalist behavior be it Muslim or Christian. A safe home, food on the table, health care, children educated, etc., all of these are universal human goals. A continuance of this insane war with all its associated costs, human and otherwise, and wasted world resources makes those human goals ever more difficult to achieve.

If Americans are ever going to solve the Muslim terrorist problem they need to put their own house in order first. Today's American house and the Middle East house are very similar. At this very moment, the Middle East house is in conflict regarding who is the best Muslim, the Sunni or the Shi'a, while the American house is having presidential arguments being broadcast to the rest of the world as to who is the best Christian. Certainly one difference is in the degree to which the conflicts are conducted. But I don't like the direction America is going, and the people of the Middle East can see the contradiction.

The American message should not be just about Democracy, which I have been hearing about forever, but rather about our great Constitution and its Bill of Rights and our Secular (not a dirty word) or neutral government that respects all beliefs and who's duty is to act as moderator of religion (and never a participator) in cases where those beliefs become abusive, or out of hand, from time to time.

And so, I believe, with good people taking to the streets and showing their repugnance at every violent religiously motivated act, even if it comes from within their own culture, terrorism will cease because it will be seen as being counter productive.

As your President I promise these kinds of human-to-human communications, including many taken directly to the common Middle East peoples, will be a large part of the peace initiatives of my administration.

--Grant Simons