Donald Trump has called for banning all Muslims from entering the United States, not only as immigrants but as tourists. He defends this religious discrimination by invoking Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese-Americans!
Francis Schaeffer predicted that there would come a time when Americans would be so fixated on their personal peace and affluence that they would trade away their civil liberties to someone who promised them greater security. Today one faction of the public is so afraid of terrorism that it wants to eliminate Second Amendment rights. Another faction is so afraid of terrorism that it wants to suspend religious freedom. * Aren’t both of these extreme reactions fulfillments of Schaeffer’s prediction?From Donald Trump: Ban all Muslim travel to U.S. – CNNPolitics.com:
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump called Monday for barring all Muslims from entering the United States.
“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” a campaign press release said.
Trump, who has previously called for surveillance against mosques and said he was open to establishing a database for all Muslims living in the U.S., made his latest controversial call in a news release. His message comes in the wake of a deadly mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, by suspected ISIS sympathizers and the day after President Barack Obama asked the country not to “turn against one another” out of fear.
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The world is outraged.
So are Republicans.
Trump has the support of about a third of Republicans, more than any other presidential candidate. But that means two-thirds of Republicans are against him. I can’t see him getting the nomination. Even if he wins a bunch of delegates in the primaries, the choice is still that of the Party, which sets its own rules. Could the GOP refuse to seat Trump delegates at the convention? That would be the nuclear option, but I suspect something like that would happen before the Republican party would let Trump be their nominee.
*I know that non-citizens are not necessarily entitled to the Constitutional rights of citizens, but the principle of religious liberty enshrined in the Constitution means that the government is not allowed to discriminate on the basis of religion, and I would think that would apply to how it administers visas.
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