Buchanan:
Calling for a moratorium on Muslim immigration “until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on,” Donald Trump this week ignited a firestorm of historic proportions.
As all
the old hate words — xenophobe, racist, bigot — have lost their electric charge
from overuse, and Trump was being called a fascist demagogue and compared to
Hitler and Mussolini.
The
establishment seemed to have become unhinged.
Why the
hysteria? Comes the reply: Trump’s call for a temporary ban on Muslim
immigration tramples all over “American values” and everything we stand for,
including the Constitution.
But is
this really true?
The
Constitution protects freedom of religion for U.S. citizens. But citizens of
foreign lands have no constitutional right to migrate. And federal law gives a
president broad powers in deciding who comes and who does not, especially in
wartime.
In
1924, Congress restricted immigration from Asia, reduced the numbers coming
from southern and Central Europe, and produced a 40-year moratorium on most
immigration into the United States.
Its
authors and President Coolidge wanted ours to remain a nation whose primary
religious and ethnic ties were to Europe, not Africa or Asia.
Under
FDR, Truman and JFK, this was the law of the land.
Did
this represent 40 years of fascism?
Why
might Trump want a moratorium on Muslim immigration?
Reason
one: terrorism. The 9/11 terrorists were Muslim, as were the shoe and underwear
bombers on those planes, the Fort Hood shooter, the Times Square bomber and the
San Bernardino killers.
And as
San Bernardino showed again, Islamist terrorists are exploiting our liberal immigration
policies to come here and kill us.
Thus, a
pause, a timeout on immigration from Muslim countries, until we fix the
problem, would seem to be simple common sense.
Second,
Muslims are clearly more susceptible to the siren call of terrorism, and more
likely to be radicalized on the Internet and in mosques than are Christians at
church or Jews at synagogue.
Which
is why we monitor mosques more closely than cathedrals.
Third,
according to Harvard’s late Samuel Huntington, a “clash of civilizations” is
coming between the West and the Islamic world. Other scholars somberly concur.
But if such a conflict is in the cards, how many more millions of devout
Muslims do we want inside the gates?
Set
aside al-Qaida, ISIS and their sympathizers. Among the 1.6 billion Muslims
worldwide are untold millions of followers of the Prophet who pray for the
coming of a day when Sharia is universal and the infidels, i.e., everyone else,
are either converted or subjugated.
In
nations where Muslims are already huge majorities, where are the Jews? Where
have all the Christians gone?
With
ethnic and sectarian wars raging in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Yemen,
Libya, Nigeria and Somalia, why would we bring into our own country people from
all sides of these murderous conflicts?
Many
European nations — Germans, French, Swedes, Brits — appear to regret having
thrown open their doors to immigrants and refugees from the Islamic world, who
have now formed unassimilated clusters and enclaves inside their countries.
Ought
we not explore why, before we continue down this road?
In some
countries of the Muslim world, Americans who embrace “Hollywood values”
regarding abortion, adultery and homosexuality, can get their heads chopped off
as quickly as converts to Christianity.
In what
Muslim countries does Earl Warren’s interpretation of the First Amendment —
about any and all religious presence being banned in public schools and all
religions being treated equally — apply?
When is
the next “Crusade for Christ” coming to Saudi Arabia?
Japan
has no immigration from the Muslim world, nor does Israel, which declares
itself a Jewish state. Are they also fascistic?
President
Obama and the guilt-besotted West often bawl their apologies for the horrors of
the Crusades that liberated Jerusalem.
Anyone
heard Muslim rulers lately apologizing for Saladin, who butchered Christians to
take Jerusalem back, or for Suleiman the Magnificent, who conquered the
Christian Balkans rampaging through Hungary all the way to the gates of Vienna?
Trump’s
surge this week, in the teeth of universal denunciation, suggests that a large
slice of America agrees with his indictment — that our political-media
establishment is dumb as a box of rocks and leading us down a path to national
suicide.
Trump’s
success tells us that the American people really do not celebrate
“globalization.” They think our negotiators got snookered out of the most
magnificent industrial machine ever built, which once guaranteed our workers
the highest standard of living on earth.
They
don’t want open borders or mass immigration. They want people here illegally to
be sent back, the borders secured, and a moratorium imposed on Muslim
immigration until we fix the broken system.
As for
the establishment, they are saying pretty much what The Donald is saying. To
paraphrase Oliver Cromwell’s speech to the Rump Parliament:
You
have sat here too long for any good you have done here. In the name of God, go!
