It ought to be obvious that anyone seeking entry into our country should be ideologically certified. We have no obligation to accept subversive elements. Now those who promote Shari'a are subversive elements. Therefore, we have no obligation to allow them in. Indeed we, or rather the government as representing us the people, has a moral obligation not to let them in.
This is just common sense. Trump, not Hillary, possesses this common sense as he made clear in his outstanding Phoenix immigration speech.
But you loathe Trump the man, don't you? And you have some good reasons. I suggest you make a distinction. There is the candidate and there is the candidate's ideological agenda. Both of the candidates have deeply flawed characters. But one supports a destructive leftist agenda and the other does not. And one or the other will be the next president. It won't be Jill Stein.
So, if you are a conservative, is it not obvious that you must vote for Trump?
Things are coming to a head. We cannot tolerate as a 'new normal' another Islamist slaughter of innocents every six months or so. So what is to be done? What prophylactic measures do we need to take to protect the USA and the rest of the West from the Islamist virus?
London Ed writes,
What kind of public policy, if any, would you advocate to improve the currently dire relations between the Islamic communities in the West, and their neighbours? All Muslims I know (not many, however) are horrified by extremism, and do not see it as Islamic. ‘They are just thugs’, said one of them. Most immigrant communities have ended up assimilating in some way. My first encounter with Islam was in Turkey, where a nice ex-policeman showed us round some mosques and explained Islam. He told me a moving story about a Turkish earthquake where a badly injured man, crushed under some concrete, begged him to shoot him. The policeman refused, saying it was for God to make those kind of decisions about life and death. The man died an hour later. Here we are talking about ‘ordinary Muslims’. It is a fact that all religions have extremists, and that such extremists tend to hold disproportionate power. Is there any way of redressing the balance? I.e. if you were home secretary or the US equivalent, what measures would you be taking?
Let me first take issue, not with the truth, but with the import, of the claim that all religions have extremists. The claim is true, but it is misleading unless various other truths are brought into proximity with it. It is not enough to tell the truth; you must tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. There is a mode of mendacity whereby one tells truths with the intention of deceiving one's audience. See How to Tell the Truth without being Truthful .
Here is a second truth: the raw number of Islamic extremists (terrorists and those who foment terrorism) is vastly greater than the number of Buddhist extremists. So one cannot use the truth that all religions have extremists to downplay the threat of Islam, or to suggest that there is a moral equivalence between Buddhism and Islam.
So when a leftist says, "There are Buddhist terrorists too!" force him to name one that that was involved in a terror attack in London or Madrid or Paris or New York or Orlando or San Bernardino or . . . . Not only are there very few Buddhist terrorists, they are not a threat to us, meaning chiefly: the USA, the UK, and Europe.
There is another important point that Ed the philosopher will appreciate, namely, the distinction between being accidentally and essentially a terrorist. Suppose there is a Buddhist monk who is a terrorist. Qua Buddhist monk, he cannot be a terrorist because there is nothing in Buddhism that supports or enjoins terrorism. What makes him a Buddhist does not make him a terrorist or predispose him toward terrorism. Our Buddhist monk is therefore accidentally a terrorist. His committing terrorist acts is accidental to his being a Buddhist. He is a Buddhist monk and a terrorist; but he is not a terrorist because he is a Buddhist. Muslim terrorists, however, commit terrorist acts because their religion supports or enjoins terrorism. Their terrorism flows from their doctrine. This is not the case for Buddhism or Christianity. No Christian qua Christian is a terrorist.
Of course, not every Muslim is a terrorist; but every Muslim has at the ready a religious doctrine that enjoins and justifies terrorism should our Muslim decide to go that route. There are many more potential Muslim terrorists than actual Muslim terrorists.
Note also that a Muslim does not have to commit terrorist acts himself to aid and abet terrorists. He can support them monetarily and in other ways including by refusing to condemn terrorist acts.
While not every Muslim is a terrorist, almost every terrorist at the present time is a Muslim. We ought to demand that leftists admit the truth of both halves of the foregoing statement. But they won't, which fact demonstrates (a) their lack of intellectual honesty, (b) their destructive, anti-Western agenda, and (c) their ignorance of their own long-term best interest. As for (c), liberals and leftists have a pronounced 'libertine wobble' as I like to call it. They are into 'alternative sexual lifestyles' and the defense of pornography as 'free speech,' and such. They would be the first to be slaughtered under Shari'a. Or have they forgotten Orlando already?
London Ed tells us that in Turkey he met "ordinary Muslims" who were fine people. Well, I lived in Turkey for a solid year, 1995-1996, and met many Muslims, almost all of them very decent people. These "ordinary Muslims," some of them secularists, and others of them innocuously religious, are not the problem. The jihadis are the problem, and there are a lot of them, not percentage-wise, but in terms of raw numbers. It is irrelevant to point out that there are good Muslims. Of course there are. We all know that. But they are not the problem.
So what measures should we in the West take?
I will mention just the most obvious and most important one: severely curtail Muslim immigration. There is no right to immigrate, and correspondingly, we are under no obligation to let in subversive elements. We have a culture and a way of life to protect, and their culture and way of life is inimical to ours. Muslims who enter the USA should be forced to sign a statement in which they renounce Shari'a, and then they must be monitored for compliance.
This is not a religious test but a cultural-political test: do you share our values or not? Chief among these values is toleration. If not, stay home, in the lands whose inanition and misery demonstrate the inferiority of your culture and your values. The main reason for carefully vetting Muslims who aim to immigrate into the USA is political rather than religious, as I explain in the following companion post:
"But you can't bar Muslims from immigrating! We have freedom of religion! That's not who we are! That goes against our values!"
Andrew C. McCarthy answers this sort of nonsense very sensibly here.
As I would put it: Freedom of religion does not extend to the protection of a hybrid political-religious ideology whose aim is to subvert the very Constitution that protects the freedom in question, and protects it for all.
Liberals love 'diversity' even at the expense of such obvious goods as unity, assimilation, and comity. So it is something of a paradox that their refusal to take seriously the enforcement of immigration laws has led to a most un-diverse stream of immigrants. "While espousing a fervent belief in diversity, immigrant advocates and their allies have presided over a policy regime that has produced one of the least diverse migration streams in our history." Here
As an addendum to The Incompatibility of Islam and the West, let me add that the case against Muslim immigration is political not religious. It is because Muslims are politically subversive that their immigration must be curtailed or eliminated, not because they have a different religion.
The U. S. Constitution in its First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion: one is free to practice the religion of one's choice, or refrain from the practice of any religion.
Now if Islam were a religion like Buddhism or Christianity or Judaism, there would be no problem. But Islam is unique. On an extreme view which I do not endorse, Islam is a political ideology masquerading as a religion; on a moderate view, which I do endorse, it is a hybrid ideology: at once both a religion and a political ideology. Either way is not a pure religion.
Qua political ideology, Islam is incompatible with Western values, or at least U. S. values. One reason for this is that Islam is not tolerant of religious diversity. It cannot be since it blends the religious and the secular and does not recognize the separation of church/mosque and state. Secular law is driven by Islamic law, or rather secular law just is Islamic law. So the 'infidel,' whether Buddhist, Christian, Jew, or whatever, must either convert or accept dhimmitude.
Petula Dvorak, Washington Post, 13 June: "Omar Mateen despised gays in the same way that Donald Trump and too many of his supporters despise Muslims."
Why isn't this libel?
'Libel' as defined in the law:
1) n. to publish in print (including pictures), writing or broadcast through radio, television or film, an untruth about another which will do harm to that person or his/her reputation, by tending to bring the target into ridicule, hatred, scorn or contempt of others. Libel is the written or broadcast form of defamation, distinguished from slander, which is oral defamation. It is a tort (civil wrong) making the person or entity (like a newspaper, magazine or political organization) open to a lawsuit for damages by the person who can prove the statement about him/her was a lie. Read more.
Dvorak and her employers ought to be careful. Trump is a vindictive man with the will and the wherewithal to take legal action against his enemies. There are plenty of negative things she could say about the man that are true.
Whether or not Dvorak's outrageous statement counts as libel, she has no evidence for it. To call for a moratorium on Muslim immigration is perfectly reasonable in present circumstances and does not imply any hatred of Muslims.
Analogy. The law forbids the sale of firearms to felons. I think this provision of the law is wise and good and conducive unto law and order. Does that make me a hater of felons? I don't hate them; I merely hold that it would be unwise to allow them to purchase firearms. Similarly, I don't hate Muslims, I merely hold that in present circumstances it would be wise to vet carefully immigrants from Muslim lands.
Is diversity our strength? Or anybody's strength, anywhere in the world? Does Japan's homogeneous population cause the Japanese to suffer? Have the Balkans been blessed by their heterogeneity — or does the very word "Balkanization" remind us of centuries of strife, bloodshed and unspeakable atrocities, extending into our own times?
Has Europe become a safer place after importing vast numbers of people from the Middle East, with cultures hostile to the fundamental values of Western civilization?
Read the whole thing in the light (darkness?) of Orlando.
It's about time these establishment types began wising up:
[. . .] Immigration to the U.S., and citizenship itself, should be seen, again, as a privilege, not a right—and assimilation and integration, not multicultural separatism and ethnic and religious chauvinism, should be the goal of the host. We need not single out Muslims in terms of restricting immigration, but we should take a six-month timeout on all would-be immigrants from countries in the Middle East deemed war zones—Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen—not only for our own immediate security but also to send a general message that entrance into the U.S. is a rare and prized opportunity, not simply a cheap and pro forma entitlement.
The inability of Barack Obama and the latest incarnation of Hillary Clinton to utter “radical Islam” or “Islamic terrorism” in connection with Muslims’ murderous killing sprees again is exposed as an utterly bankrupt, deadly, and callous politically correct platitude. Mateen did not learn to hate homosexuals from the American government, popular American culture, or our schools, but rather from radical and likely ISIS-driven Islamic indoctrination. From Iran to Saudi Arabia, the treatment of gays is reprehensible—but largely exempt from Western censure, on the tired theory that in the confused pantheon of -isms and -ologies, multiculturalism trumps human rights.
Finally, the Left will blame guns, not ideology, for the mass murder, forgetting that disarmed soldiers who could not shoot back were slaughtered by Major Hasan, that the Tsarnaev brothers preferred home-cooked explosives to blow up innocents in Boston, that the Oklahoma and UC Merced Islamists did their beheading or stabbing with a knife, and that Mateen likely followed strict gun-registration laws in obtaining his weapons.
Indeed. There is no right to immigrate, and the USA has no obligation to accept subversive elements. We do have a right, however, to demand assimilation. This has definite consequences. If you are a taxi driver you cannot refuse to accept as a fare a person coming out of a liquor store with a closed container of spirits. If you work check out in a supermarket, you cannot refuse to touch a package of bacon. If you refuse, you ought to be fired on the spot. If you want to dress up like a nun of the 1950s, go right ahead, but we had better be able to see your face.
We are tolerant, but not to the point of tolerating the intolerance of Sharia. You must renounce it and accept our values if you wish to live among us.
We are peace-loving, but we are prepared to defend our superior culture against barbarians.
Mr. Cohen feels that Trump is betraying the principles that America stands for:
It ['betrayal'] is the word that comes to mind almost on a nightly basis when I see some Trump surrogate defend his position on one of the cable news shows. How can you? I want to ask. Do you believe that the government should apply a religious test to let people into this country? Christians? Yes. Jews? Sure. Buddhists, Hindus and Zoroastrians, step this way. Muslims? Not so fast.
Do the people who support Trump realize that they are betraying not merely Muslims but the principles that America stands for? We don't apply religious tests to anything. In that way, we are different than some other countries. In that way, we are better.
How foolish can a liberal be? There is no right to immigrate and the U.S. has no obligation to allow subversives into the country. Now sharia-supporting Muslims are subversives. The values of sharia are antithetical to American values. So it makes perfect sense to carefully vet Muslims who seek to come here. Only those who renounce sharia and show a willingness to assimilate should be allowed in. We have every right to preserve and protect our culture and values.
The U.S. Constitution is not a suicide pact, and it obviously needs to be interpreted in such a way that it is not made into one. Article VI ends as follows: ". . . no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
Whether a test is religious depends on what counts as a religion. Is Islam a religion? There are those who maintain that it is a political ideology masquerading as a religion. If this is right, 'no religious test' does not apply to Islam. On a more moderate view, Islam is a hybrid ideology: both a religion and a political ideology incompatible with American values. But then my point about subversive elements kicks in.
Only if a Muslim renounces sharia, embraces American values, and shows a willingness to assimilate should he be allowed into our country. Isn't this just common sense? Of course it is, and it is precisely what liberal idiots like Cohen lack. These same idiots typically label 'xenophobic' those who express such rational concerns as I am now expressing. A phobia is an irrational fear, but there is nothing irrational about fear of Muslim subversives. Typical liberal behavior: misuse language and slander your opponent.
With fools there can be no productive dialogue. We are left with condemning them for their willful stupidity.
So while Trump's rhetoric is incendiary and irresponsible, the essential content of his message about Muslim immigration and Mexican illegal immigration is sound and easily defended.
Every morning I find a new batch of anti-Trump articles by so-called conservatives. These anti-Trumpsters clearly see the man's many negatives, but most of them refuse to come clean on the question: "Do you advocate not voting for Trump thereby aiding and abetting a Clinton victory? Yes or no?"
Conservatives latched on to the GOP as an instrument to express their ideals. Now loyalty to party is causing many to abandon their ideals. Conservatism is not misogyny. Conservatism is not nativism and protectionism. Conservatism is not religious bigotry and conspiracy theories. Conservatism is not anti-intellectual and anti-science. For the sake of partisanship — for a mess of pottage — some conservatives are surrendering their identity.
Here is a little fair and balanced commentary on Gerson's outburst.
True, conservatism is not misogyny. And it is true that Trump has stupidly made misogynistic statements. By alienating the distaff half of the electorate, it is is a good bet that the foolish man has sealed his fate. We shall see. But whether he is fairly described as a misogynist is not clear given his appointment of women to high positions in his organization.
'Nativism' and 'protectionism,' like 'isolationism' are not neutral words. They are pejoratives. Suppose someone sees the failures and false assumptions of U. S. foreign policy and appreciates that some U. S. interventions make things worse instead of better. If you wanted to describe such a person fairly and neutrally you would call him a non-interventionist, not an isolationist. There are paleo-cons and neo-cons. A paleo-conservative non-interventionism, which need not exclude judicious and well-thought-out interventions, has arguably a better claim on the honorific 'conservative' than neo-conservative interventionism.
The same goes for 'protectionist' and 'nativist.' They are pejoratives. People interested in a serious discussion ought to use neutral terminology.
Suppose you are neither a libertarian nor a leftist. You appreciate that the U. S. is neither a shopping mall nor a job market. It is a nation with a culture, a long tradition, and a commitment to a set of values including liberty, self-reliance, self-determination, and constitutionally-based limited government. You appreciate that a nation has a right to preserve and protect its culture and resist its dilution let alone its "fundamental transformation." Having this right, a nation has the right to protect itself from illegal immigration and a right to select those groups which it will allow to immigrate. A nation has no obligation to allow immigration at all, let alone immigration of groups of people whose values are antithetical to the nation's values. True, immigration can enrich a nation if the immigrants are willing to assimilate and embrace the values and traditions of the host country. Ask yourself: are sharia-supporting Muslims immigrants of this kind? The answer is obviously in the negative.
There is no net benefit to Muslim immigation. Of course there are are wonderful individual Muslims. See my high praise for Zuhdi Jasser. But policies cannot cater to individuals.
'Nativism,' like 'racism,' is a term used by leftists and other destructive types to slander their opponents and pre-empt rational debate.
When people like Gerson employ the 'nativism' epithet they play the same filthy game as leftists. So how conservative are people like him? A conservative is not a leftist. Nor is a conservative a libertarian.
Is it "religious bigotry" to insist that subversive, sharia-supporting Muslims with no intention of assimilating and every intention of "fundamentally transforming America" not be allowed to immigrate? Of course not. It is just common sense.
The lion said to the turtle, "Come out of your shell, and join the party!" The turtle said to the lion, "OK, Leo, after you have had yourself declawed and defanged."
Defense mechanisms, both physical and psychological, serve a good purpose even as they limit relations with others. But too much armor, psychic and otherwise, will stunt your life. Too little may end it.
Among a body politic's defense mechanisms are secure borders and a wise immigration policy.
The USA at present has neither. You know what to do.
There is, however, a minor problem with this notion, namely, that Mexican invaders will then have to travel so much farther north to get to a place worth living in.
The graphic below is from a recent Trump protest rally in California. Now Trump's negatives have been on display for a long time and there is no need to recount them. But is he a racist?
You can always count on a liberal to play the race card. And so it is part of their reflexive and unreflective nature to label anyone who is not a liberal a racist. It is a tactic that has proven effective. So of course Trump is called a racist. I see no evidence that he is.
In any case, the issue of illegal immigration is not about race.
Most liberals think that opposition to illegal immigration is anti-Hispanic. Not so. It is true that most of those who violate the nation's borders are Hispanic. But the opposition is not to Hispanics but to illegal entrants whether Hispanic or not. It is a contingent fact that Mexico is to the south of the U.S. If Turkey or Iran or Italy were to the south, the issue would be the same. And if Iran were to the south, and there were an influx of illegals, then then leftists would speak of anti-Persian bias.
To repeat, a salient feature of liberals and leftists — there isn't much difference nowadays — is their willingness to 'play the race card,' to inject race into every issue. The issue of illegal immigration has nothing to do with race since illegal immigrants do not constitute a race. There is no such race as the race of 'llegal aliens.' Opposition to them, therefore, cannot be racist. Suppose England were to the south of the U. S. and Englishmen were streaming north. Would they be opposed because they are white? No, because they are illegal aliens.
I apologize to the intelligent for saying things so obvious, but the stupidity of liberals is wide and deep and we must repeat, repeat, repeat. And repeat some more.
"But aren't some of those who oppose illegal immigration racists?" That may be so, but it is irrelevant. That one takes the right stance for the wrong reason does not negate the fact that one has taken the right stance. One only wishes they would take the right stance for the right reasons. Even if everyone who opposed illegal immigration were a foaming-at-the-mouth redneck of a racist, that would not detract one iota of cogency from the cogent arguments against allowing illegal immigration. To think otherwise is to embrace the Genetic Fallacy. Not good.
Here. The problem is not that Hillary is too stupid to grasp the distinction between legal and illegal immigration; the problem is that she is a corrupt leftist out for her own personal gain at the expense of her country.
Chris Hedges over at Truth Dig is worried about the rise of American fascism. But first things first. First we crush Hillary and the Dems. There will be plenty of time to keep an eye on Der Trumpster should he make it to the White House.
I am not worried about American fascism. We Americans are not a bunch of Germans about to start goose-stepping behind some dictator. Our traditions of liberty and self-reliance are long-standing and deep-running. A sizeable contingent of Trump supporters are gun rights activists who would be open to an extra-political remedy should anyone seek to instantiate the role of Der Fuehrer or Il Duce. True, Trump appeals to those having an authoritarian personality structure. But his supporters are also cussedly individualistic and liberty-loving. I expect the latter characteristic to mitigate the former.
There is also the following interesting question wanting our attention: why is it better to have the personality structure of the typical leftist? Why is it better to be a rebellious, adolescent, alienated, destructive, irreverent, tradition-despising, anti-authoritarian, ungrateful, utopian, dweller in Cloud Cuckoo Land?
Someone told me today that Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals is dedicated to Lucifer. Lucifer, not Lucifer Schwarz of Poughkeepsie. Makes perfect sense.
An outstanding essay by Victor Davis Hanson, except that he fails to address the question of Muslim immigration and the question of a moratorium on it. A failure of nerve? A desire to remain comfortably respectable in his ivory tower? You will recall the 'conservative' Lindsay Graham's denunciation of Donald Trump as a 'xenophobe' when he made his moratorium proposal. That's exactly how liberals talk! The implication is that one has an irrational fear of foreigners because one has an entirely reasonable desire to keep jihadis out of the country.
How insidious is political correctness! It infects even conservatives.
Only politically correct topics may be discussed. So Eric Holder called for a 'conversation' on race as if we had never talked about this before. But I don't recall him calling for a 'conversation' on immigration.
The other constraint is that 'conversation' must consist in an acquiescence by the conservative in the leftist's nonsense. No dialog allowed.
So whatever you say about Donald Trump, we ought to give him this much: he began a real conversation (no sneer quotes) about immigration. And the RINOs are going to be dragged into it.
You don't like Trump's crudity, bombast, and exaggeration? Me neither. He is undoubtedly lacking in the gravitas department. But on immigration he is basically on the Right track. For proposals more temperate and nuanced we may turn to thinkers such as Daniel Pipes. See here.
Let the conversation (no sneer quotes) begin. Let's see how serious you leftists are about real conversation.
