Newt Gingrich's Religious Sniff Test

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Newt Gingrich, fresh off his stinging defeat in the VPPrentice, as CNN called it, fought for relevance by offering these comments on Fox News after the attack in Nice:

Western civilization is in a war. We should frankly test every person here who is of Muslim background, and if they believe in Sharia, they should be deported. Sharia is incompatible with Western civilization. Modern Muslims who have given up Sharia, glad to have them as citizens. Perfectly happy to have them next door. But we need to be fairly relentless about defining who our enemies are. Anybody who goes on a website favoring ISIS or Al Qaeda, or other terrorist groups, that should be a felony, and they should go to jail. Any organization which hosts such a website should be engaged in a felony. It should be closed down immediately. 

Our forces should be used to systematically destroy every internet-based source. And frankly if we can't destroy them through the internet, we should destroy them with kinetic power, using various weapons starting with Predators, and frankly just killing them.

The ever-helpful fair and balanced Sean Hannity, noting his "whole-hearted" agreement with Gingrich's "powerful statement" asked a followup:

How do we ascertain - how do you possibly ascertain whether or not that person really wants assimilation, really wants a new life, or whether or not they want to expand that caliphate, which is what we're at war against?

Here's the response:

Look, the first step is you have to ask them the questions. The second step is you have to monitor what they're doing on the internet. The third step is - let me be very clear. You have to monitor the mosques. I mean if you're not prepared to monitor the mosque, this whole thing is a joke. Where do you think the primary source of recruitment is? Where do you think the primary course of indoctrination is? You've got to look at the madrasas. If you're a school which is teaching Sharia, you want to expel it from the country. We have to understand - we are behaving as though we are insane. We're like sheep wondering why the wolves keep killing us.

After you're done monitoring the mosques, Newt, and the internet, and doing your religious sniff tests and looking under the burqas and hijabs and niqabs, can we take a look at the people that I want to investigate and deport or send to jail?

No -- wait -- these folks are all over the place, they've been here forever, they're easy to find on the internet so people - even politicians - can emulate them-- let's start with these folks and when we're done purging the scum that incite honest-to-goodness homegrown terrorism, and talk about rape and sexual assault as if they're jokes, and approve or turn the other way when it comes to attacks on gays, or children, you can go ahead and take on the Muslims:

• Good Christians who think it is impossible for a man to rape his wife, and OK for him to sexually abuse her? Or good Republicans who justify rape in any number of ways?
• Good Christian pastors who believe that gays should face a firing squad or that the 9/11 attacks were punishment from God? And if they have schools, well, we surely need to shut them down so these ridiculous, hateful and dangerous beliefs cannot be spread.
• And of course, there's the Westboro Baptist Church - shouldn't they go to jail for terrorizing funerals of fallen heroes, spitting on our soldiers, mocking their sacrifice?
• Catholic priests? I mean, this one's easy, right? Thousands of victims, millions of dollars in payments, let's shut 'em down. 
• White supremacist groups such as the ones that radicalized the Charleston terrorist on the internet? And presidential candidates who can barely bring themselves to disavow these groups and their leaders, as well as everyone who supports such a candidate? We cannot possibly have room for this type of terrorist thinking in America, can we? 

Let me know if you need any more examples of groups or people who terrorize us right here at home, every single day, and likely don't have a Muslim belief among them. 

Oh - and let us not forget that if it's the rhetoric that causes the problem, we'll need to go after the irresponsible media who fan the flames of hatred every day, on television and the related websites, radicalizing impressionable Americans, young and old -- starting with the talking heads at Fox News and their guests.