Some serious people filled with righteous anger are calling for a ban on 2 billion people from entering the USA based on the actions of a handful...others are calling for the end of the 2nd Amendment. I laugh at both.
Two thoughts:
1)
@Once-Ler , the President has the full right to suspend entry for any alien or class of aliens. See
8 U.S.C. 1182 (f):
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.
While a person may question whether it is
wise for him to propose to do so, he undoubtedly has the
legal ability to suspend entry of Muslim aliens (Muslim aliens falls within "any class"). You may state that this deprives these innocent Muslims of their Constitutional rights. However, aliens, particularly before they enter the country,
do not have
any Constitutional rights.
And here's the issue: Elsewhere within section
1182, there is this black-and-white prohibition:
Any alien who—
(snip)
(VII) endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization;
(snip)
is inadmissible.
How does one discern whether a Muslim alien who wishes to enter the country endorses or espouses terrorist activity? Sure, you can look at their paper trail, their writings, their social media activity, if there is any of the above. You can inquire of the local government agencies to see if they have any past history on the person. And so on.
But what if the person has scrubbed their social media clean? What if the person posts on Twitter and Facebook using a pseudonym? What kind of cooperation and accuracy should one expect if the person comes from a hostile government, such as Iran, Syria, Libya, or one with a dysfunctional, corrupt, or virtually non-existent government, such as Somalia, Sudan, or Pakistan?
You could state that the number of Muslims who support terrorism is relatively small and would be correct in making that statement. But the number who support terrorism is not trivial. See this November, 2015,
poll by Pew. 8% of Turks have a favorable opinion of ISIS as do 9% of Pakistanis, 11% of Senegalese, and 14% of Nigerians. To put it in context, Turkey has 79.4 million people. 8% of that is 6,352,000. 25,418,688 of Nigeria's 181.4 million people support ISIS. And so on. Now how are you going to effectively screen out that 8% of Turks or 14% of Nigerians from entry (I assume that you wouldn't want to allow ISIS sympathizers to enter the country). But according to 8 U.S.C. 1182 a(3)(B)(i)(VII) that is exactly what is supposed to happen).
You might also want to take a look at this
Center for Security Policy poll (conducted by the Polling Company) conducted a year ago about attitudes of Muslims who are in this country already. Rather disturbing.
The point is that the number of Muslims who favor terrorism is admittedly small, but the number is non-trivial. Do you know of an effective method to screen those who support terrorism out?
War is hell.
Oh, you didn't know we were at war? Well, that so-called "handful" constitute millions of determined enemies of liberty and threats to Americans' safety. If not directly through acts of terrorism, then by cultural/political threat to civilization (sharia law). Those handful of jihadists fighters certainly know they are at war with us. The problem lies with the impossibility of distinguishing peaceful and threatening Muslims.
As you gather, I don't think there's any equivalency between Christianity and Islam. None. It's an oil and water thing.
@aligncare As you mention, we are at war, whether we recognize this or not. The empirical information I provided above are a validation of your claims. However, we do not need nor should we want to sacrifice our liberty as a result of this. Remember Ben Franklin's famous quote:
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
Sadly, Mr. Trump has this leftist tendency to want to expand government power to fix it for us. I don't want him to "fix it" for me. I want him (and potentially his government) to just stay out of my way and let me live my life. Focus on what has been explicitly delegated to the federal government in the Constitution and get the heck out of my way in everything else (let me handle it as a person, or let the local/state governments handle it at the lower level).
