Donald Trump Calls for Barring Muslims From Entering U.S

[Mary_Gail_36]

As was pointed out, this is not the case. Remember the events like the Colorado movie theater shooting and the school shootings.

If you want to compare US terrorist attack deaths by non-Muslim perpetrators and those where the perpetrators were Muslim; it would depend on when you start the count. If you start the count with 9/11 then those perpetrated by Muslims have a higher death total. But starting there may be a bit arbitrary.

I had mentioned before in another thread that I consider all these mass shootings terrorist attacks.

The two boys who shot up Columbine had one agenda, the guy who shot up the first grade had another, Virginia Tech had another. Years ago, in NY on an LIRR train, another agenda.

The motives were different, but what is similar is that innocent people were killed because someone took it upon themselves to kill.

I doubt that any mother who’s six year old was killed in Connecticut feels any relief that it wasn’t “Islamic Terrorism.”

Who would have thought it was possible? I have a 6 year old.

 

[Larryk113]

This country has been inundated by immigration for some time now. The myth of the melting pot has been promoted as never before. The reality is multicultural societies never last. We have no duty to destroy our culture. In fact we have a duty to save it.

It is a fatal flaw to think that Secular Humanism is a natural ideology. In fact it is just Christian ethics without Christianity. You won’t find it in the rest of the world since it wasn’t Christian or hasn’t been recently. You won’t even find the great pagan cultures of the Greeks and Romans which were receptive to Christianity thanks to good, rational thinking.

What you’ll find in much of the world is a ideology that is incompatible with the notions of tolerance and justice we have in the West. What you’ll find are ideologies that promotes nothingness or raw power. One destroys thoughts by a worldview that all is illusion. The other destroys thought by saying God is pure, arbitrary power and that in service to God anything is justified. These ideologies are incompatible with our culture. They can’t be absorbed into our culture. We can tolerate some small amount of them but must be careful. Too much of these ideologies will disrupt our culture. As evidenced among other things by our promotion of war, divorce, abortion and homosexuality our culture is already gravely wounded from within. If we are to save it the last thing we want to do is further destabilize society intentionally.

Socialism is a stepping stone to communism

It seems to me almost all politicians promote nationalism and, like the people they represent, avoid any nuanced thinking. Most politicians are in favor of a political system that promotes corporate power to be used in coordination with the state. This is basic fascism. The word has a negative connotation, as it should, but for what are perceived wrongly as excesses rather than essential characteristics of the ideology. It is like how some insist that communism will work it just hasn’t been tried when it very much has been tried and the results are always an evil, repressive state just as you’d expect.

 

[Murmurs]

First, you do not seem to be keeping up with recent developments regarding the constitution. It is at the point of being meaningless and this process has been going on since the 30’s.**The words mean only what 5 ***es in black robes say they mean.

That’s kind of their job though, Mr Gravy.

There is a massive block of gilt-engraved marble on the wall of the Supreme Court Building, that reads:

“It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.”

Seems kind of set in stone to me…

Thirdly all this bawling about religious test is a straw man, State Dept. already does discriminate, It denies refugee status to Christians of Syrian persuasion and allows Muslims of same persuasion in. So much for you sacred religious testing being un-American.

Really.

Really?

Don’t care to offer evidence for this assertion? (I’m genuinely curious now).

Finally I think we already have decided the cost in lives lost to preserve 2nd amendment rights. You are not serious because you won’t give a number of acceptable deaths to sustain Muslim immigration

Have we? What is it then?

I don’t really understand what you’re asking for in the second sentence. I’m not saying that Muslim immigration is an inherent good; just that it’s wrong to look on it only as an inherent evil that has to be stopped - unless one looks at all immigration likewise.

 

[stevegravy]

That’s kind of their job though, Mr Gravy.

There is a massive block of gilt-engraved marble on the wall of the Supreme Court Building, that reads:

“It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.”

Seems kind of set in stone to me…

Really.

Really?

Don’t care to offer evidence for this assertion? (I’m genuinely curious now).

Have we? What is it then?

I don’t really understand what you’re asking for in the second sentence. I’m not saying that Muslim immigration is an inherent good; just that it’s wrong to look on it only as an inherent evil that has to be stopped - unless one looks at all immigration likewise.

A. Wrong, They have taken away our right to vote, have twisted words and meaning into pretzels to enforce once free citizens to participate in economic activity they may not wish to. Have approved racial bias and discrimination in the name of equality and a host of other crimes to advance a progressive agenda. So , whatever the imperial capital carves on a wall means nothing to me until words mean something again.

Re: Christians

thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/228670-no-room-in-america-for-christian-refugees

Still have no idea how many Americans have to die to preserve the Muslim immigration?

 

[Darryl_Revok]

A. Wrong, They have taken away our right to vote, have twisted words and meaning into pretzels to enforce once free citizens to participate in economic activity they may not wish to. Have approved racial bias and discrimination in the name of equality and a host of other crimes to advance a progressive agenda. So , whatever the imperial capital carves on a wall means nothing to me until words mean something again.

Re: Christians

thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/228670-no-room-in-america-for-christian-refugees

Still have no idea how many Americans have to die to preserve the Muslim immigration?

So, following the chain of links, it appears that the State Department is only selecting refugees from a number of refugee camps run by organizations which include the USCCB…camps which Christian refugees avoid. What can you do?

 

[Murmurs]

A. Wrong, They have taken away our right to vote, have twisted words and meaning into pretzels to enforce once free citizens to participate in economic activity they may not wish to. Have approved racial bias and discrimination in the name of equality and a host of other crimes to advance a progressive agenda. So , whatever the imperial capital carves on a wall means nothing to me until words mean something again.

I think I have to not touch this with a barge pole.

Re: Christians

thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/228670-no-room-in-america-for-christian-refugees

Well I wasn’t aware, to be honest, and if true, it’s disgusting.

However (and I may be clutching at straws here, but bear with me), I wonder if it’s actually relevant to the matter at hand. The Christian refugees are not being denied entry to the US “because of being Christian”, (but rather, because of the legal nicety that they’re not being persecuted by an actual government). If they were, then it would be discrimination.

They are being persecuted because of being Christian, and there’s no doubt that a) they are suffering and b) the U.S. and other countries (regardless of their own religious statuses) ought to help them just as equally. However they’re denied entry because of who is doing the persecuting, and not the reason for the persecution.

I’m not defending it at all, just to be clear. It’s entirely reprehensible. But while morally wrong, and (I note the article is from January), assuming it hasn’t been changed as a policy, it should be - but it seems perfectly sound legally, even if it doesn’t make it any better.

Still have no idea how many Americans have to die to preserve the Muslim immigration?

I still have no idea whatsoever what the question is. One isn’t particularly related to the other. Muslims aren’t arriving to kill Americans, as a group, because they are Muslims and the others are Americans. A fraction of them do, at most. And as recent events have shown, you don’t need to have come from the middle east to have that desire anyway, so what Trump is pressing for is kind of pointless as well as unworkable. Or do you think anyone who just might be a Muslim (because the nefarious American-hating ones I imagine have enough guile to pretend otherwise), ought to be shipped off to somewhere else even if their family has been here 100 years?

 

[stevegravy]

Something to think about:
from althouse.blogspot.com/

Anyway. Professor Spiro does a fine job of explaining the Supreme Court’s “extreme deference” to Congress and the President under what’s known as the “plenary power” doctrine:

It dates back to the 1889 decision in the Chinese Exclusion case, in which the court upheld the exclusion of Chinese laborers based on their nationality… More recent decisions have upheld discrimination against immigrants based on gender and illegitimacy that would never have survived equal protection scrutiny in the domestic context. Likewise, courts have rejected the assertion of First Amendment free speech protections by noncitizens. Nor has the Supreme Court ever struck down an immigration classification, even ones based on race. As late as 1965, a federal appeals court upheld a measure that counted a Brazilian citizen of Japanese descent as Asian for the purposes of immigration quotas. In the context of noncitizens seeking initial entry into the United States, due process protections don’t apply, either…

 

[exnihilo]

While everyone is entitled to an opinion, do many share in the one you’re articulating, that it’s derived from “bad” rulings and federal “usurpations”?

Until 1789, the United States was a confederation of sovereign states. It isn’t today; nor was it in 1790. The United States as a sovereign country didn’t (technically) exist at the time; it’s closest approximation as a political entity might be the Holy Roman Empire. The founding spirits of some of the individual states, certainly is to have an established religion. It’s also something that, on becoming together as one state the United States, was quite clearly and totally done away with, or had been beforehand.

It might be a founding fact for a handful of the states. It’s not a founding spirit. Honestly

My opinion is certainly unusual. But the popularity of an opinion isn’t the measure of its truthfulness. I disagree with your statement that in coming together under the current constitution that state religion was done a way with. There is a reason the 1st amendment specifically addresses congress. Like all governments the US government has changed over time. Like all peoples our preferences about the nature of the state have changed. We talk about constitutional rights as if the notion we have of them today is as it always was. I think the notion today of religious liberty is very much different from the founding of this country. When people, such as the president or courts, refer to tradition to justify a position then we need to be accurate in our understanding of tradition. It is certainly a recent tradition in the US to not favor Christianity (and even repress it) but this simply was not so from the earliest days.

I see no reason to side with the recent tradition. My opinion like all my opinions has no bearing on the reality of the law. I can’t control Leviathan. I simply don’t give my assent to that law and consider it unjust.

 

[Path_Finder]

**Air Force: 2 Afghan trainees missing from Georgia air base **
msn.com/en-us/news/us/air-force-2-afghan-trainees-missing-from-georgia-air-base/ar-AAgbtaY?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=HPCDHP

Interesting and worth watching though we can not know much from this, for all we know, they may simply see the US as more attractive than Afghanistan and that’s a bit sad that like the Cubans that defect, their home country is not more hospitable. Or there could be nefarious motives.

 

[GEddie]

As was pointed out, this is not the case.

If you want to compare US terrorist attack deaths by non-Muslim perpetrators and those where the perpetrators were Muslim; it would depend on when you start the count. If you start the count with 9/11 then those perpetrated by Muslims have a higher death total. But starting there may be a bit arbitrary. We could just as easily start with the Oklahoma city bombing.

Or the Birmingham bombing in 1964. No-one even thought of Muslims as terrorists back then.

ICXC NIKA.

 

[tuffsmurf]

How is he going to distinguish muslims from christians? Are they going to ask the immirgants/refugees about their religion?

 

[Darryl_Revok]

How is he going to distinguish muslims from christians? Are they going to ask the immirgants/refugees about their religion?

Implicit in every proposal to distinguish Muslims from Christians is the necessity of checking for circumcision. People like Bush and Trump know that this is perhaps the only way, yet they can’t very well say it in polite company.

Of course, middle eastern Jews also circumcise, but what can you do?

 

[2Rollin_Stoned]

Apart from anything else, for someone standing on behalf of a party that trumpets its adherence to the constitution in contrast to its opponents, it’s absurd to make such a suggestion though because it’s unconstitutional to discriminate on the basis of religion. Either you let immigrants in whatever their religion or let no one in, as far as I can see. The US isn’t at war with any particular country nor with Islam itself, so it would I think be illegal anyway. Given Trump or a spokesman hasn’t actually addressed this issue (maybe it’s a non-issue, but if it’s a serious suggestion he has to address it), it raises the additional question of his constitutional judgement. I.e. that he’s unfit for the office he seeks.

No one measures freedom by the lives lost in allowing that freedom to be exercised. If one did, then what of the 2nd Amendment?

Well said!

 

[meltzerboy]

Implicit in every proposal to distinguish Muslims from Christians is the necessity of checking for circumcision. People like Bush and Trump know that this is perhaps the only way, yet they can’t very well say it in polite company.

Of course, middle eastern Jews also circumcise, but what can you do?

Don’t some Christians still practice circumcision (not as a religious ceremony) outside the U.S.? Also, what does Jeb Bush have to do with this?

I don’t know why but somehow your comment brings to mind a Monty Python sketch.

 

[JimmyG88]

Or the Birmingham bombing in 1964. No-one even thought of Muslims as terrorists back then.

ICXC NIKA.

In the UK ‘all irish’ were terrorists in the 1970s 1980s

 

[Darryl_Revok]

Don’t some Christians still practice circumcision (not as a religious ceremony) outside the U.S.? Also, what does Jeb Bush have to do with this?

I don’t know why but somehow your comment brings to mind a Monty Python sketch.

A month or so ago, Jeb Bush was calling for allowing only Christian refugees into the country, yet failed to provide any method for differentiating between the two, and let the issue die.

 

[meltzerboy]

A month or so ago, Jeb Bush was calling for allowing only Christian refugees into the country, yet failed to provide any method for differentiating between the two, and let the issue die.

Thanks for the information. I must have missed that little pearl of wisdom from Jeb. Actually, Rachel Maddow pointed out the other day that some of the other Republican candidates had said things not so different from what Trump said, and only marginally less extreme. She also had an interesting hypothesis regarding why Trump is making all these outrageous statements. Her thinking is that he is itching to be pushed out of the G.O.P. candidacy so that he can run as an Independent. In that way, he can lose with dignity since he doesn’t really want the job of POTUS in the first place. I tend to agree with Rachel on this.

 

[2Rollin_Stoned]

I’m not sure what they are saying then when claiming that not allowing in Muslims is unconstitutional? Because that seems clearly the point. And then they question Trump’s “constitutional judgement” – I have to ask, when did our constitution begin to apply to foreigners?

Since we first had a constitution. Go read it. We were all foreigners.

I find it ironic that many of the same people who contend that temporarily limiting Muslim travel and immigration to the US as basically barbaric. However, they have no problem with bombing a sovereign country 5000 mile away where we don’t actually have permission to be present is perfectly ok. Temporarily limiting Muslim immigration result in the loss of no lives. The bombing in the Middle East of course results in the death ISIS terrorists but no doubt includes the death of a number of innocent individuals also.

The proposal to limit immigration is regarded as a temporary measure and seemingly more humane measure until a better system of screening an be implemented. Perhaps then immigration can be reopened at least to some individuals from the war torn area who are truly seeking to assimilate into our society. Any system has got to be better than our invisible borders we have now.

There is no proposal for internment and the limitations are deemed as temporary. Prospective immigrants do not have a constitutional right to enter this country at will. America should be able to say who enters and who doesn’t. It is not a restriction on a person’s racial background it is a measure to protect us from a known threat in our country.

If America is worried about freedom, they would be much wiser to fight the reintroduction of the Patriot Act which some politicians are proposing to do. It is pretty much free to dive in to their private lives and rights. They should also be very concerned about the establishment of stricter gun laws which appears to be headed in the directions of actually taking guns from lawful American citizens. This would be much more in resemblance of Germany in the late 1930s than a temporary restriction of immigration.

I think that the real problem is that no one trusts our own government, regardless of who’s in office. All you’ve done is enumerate some of the reasons why.

Exactly. I’m reminded of this quote from Benjamin Franklin: He who would trade his liberties for added security deserves neither.

Of course, no one ever says that they’re for losing their own

liberties, just the liberties of others. But what happens when suddenly, after advocating or simply standing by while the liberties of others are taken away, your group is now the group that those in power are advocating the loss of liberty? Yep…it’s never a problem when it’s the other guy’s rights and freedoms. Check this out.
“You can protect your liberties in this world only by protecting the other man’s freedom. You can be free only if I am free.”
Clarence Darrow People V Lloyd 1920

As for military operations against ISIS…if one waited for permission one would never be able to defend oneself from aggressors like these.

Honestly, I don’t agree with Trump. He scares me, and the chances of me voting for him are the same as the chances of me voting for Hillary - not even if my life depended on it. On the other hand, he has every right to say what he wants as long as he doesn’t intentionally incite riotous behavior. It doesn’t mean, though, that the media has to feed into his statements. Trump is fueled by media attention - and to him, the only bad publicity is no publicity. Notice - his biggest lags in polls are right after debates, because the debates are the only places where Trump can’t suck all the oxygen out of the room.

Regardless, it’s getting more difficult to see where Trump actually is in IA polling right now. Why? Two recent polls in IA (both released yesterday) show completely divergent results. One, by Monmouth U (an IA university), shows Trump trailing Cruz by 5 points and just barely ahead of Rubio, with Carson trailing in 4th place. Another, by CNN, shows Trump leading Cruz by 13 points, followed by Carson, with Rubio in a distant 4th. So who’s right? A 14 percentage point difference in Trump’s standing (19% in Monmouth vs. 33% in CNN) is much more than simply margin of error

Good info. Thank you!

 

[2Rollin_Stoned]

How is he going to distinguish Muslims from Christians? Are they going to ask the immigrants/refugees about their religion?

Yeah, obviously he’s never heard of the “Conversos” but I bet Meltzerboy knows about them.

 

[QuidVeritasEst]

I’m impressed with the response to this poll - makes me more likely to stick around and post, to know that most people are more reasonable than I gave credit for.