Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich wants to be President. And to get there, he’s perfectly happy to destroy the nation he professes to love.

The United States is founded on a set of fine principles, which include freedom of speech and assembly. That is what we should be fighting for — the preserve those freedoms.

Instead, people like Gingrich ignore the very Constitution they claim to defend. We can debate the dubious wisdom of building a mosque near Ground Zero — but from the standpoint of Constitution, Muslims have the same rights as any other religious group. Gingrich wants to play a childish game of tit-for-tat, denying Muslims the right to build their mosque because, he says, “there are no churches or synagogues in all of Saudi Arabia”.

Our Constitution guarantees specific rights that apply to everyone equally. That is what should make us a great nation — our ideals, our search for fairness and freedom.

A man who does not respect the Constitution should never be hired to defend it.