Ban all Religions Until the Test Results Come Back Positive

        

        Last week Donald Trump, in his usual inimitable fashion, again made an incendiary comment that aroused great anger, from fellow Republican presidential candidates, and almost everyone to the left of Trump. But not to his supporters; they loved it. They can’t wait to have Trump banning Muslim immigrants...actually anyone they don’t like...and ignoring established U.S. laws, policies and regulations….”Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...and turn them away."

         But as wrong as I think Trump is, he may have stumbled onto a very good idea. It just isn’t restrictive enough. Let’s run with his idea of banning a religious group. If I agreed with his position, then we shouldn’t stop there; we should go even further. Let’s not just ban Muslims from entering the U.S., let’s ban ANY religious person. Yes, ban them all… until they’ve passed a test indicating they understand the separation of church and state, that they will uphold and defend that separation, and that our Constitution supersedes ANY law that's in someone’s holy book.

        This ban would not just apply to foreigners hoping to resettle in America, but also to anyone who already lives here. For example, if Christians promote an interpretation of their God’s laws as somehow overriding the Constitution, they need to be removed to another place, say, the Vatican, until such time as they take a test proving they understand this is a secular nation and the Constitution is the ONLY law of the land. They can practice whatever religion they want in their own homes or in a place of worship (that would no longer be tax-exempt), but they cannot claim their God’s law is higher than Constitutional law.

        It doesn’t matter if the believers are Hindu, Mormon, Buddhist, Shinto, Zoroastrian, or they worship of a pile of rocks. They must show, via both written and verbal testing, that they acknowledge their religious laws stop at our border. They do not supplant any U.S. law at any time…period!

         If they are Muslim and disagree; Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Yemen, and even ISIS are all trying to implement Sharia. Let them live there and practice their faith. Or if they are Mormon and believe that what Elohim says overrides U.S. law, expel them to one of the uninhabited islands of the Alaska archipelago until testing confirms they fully understand and comply with the Constitution.

         Trump's not the first. Whether anti-British, anti-Chinese, anti-Japanese, anti-black, or anti-Commie...down through history, Americans have loved vilifying and repressing others.

        

         Now, far be it for me to point out to the oh-so-wise and well-informed Trump, who clearly hasn’t studied U.S. history, we already tried banning certain groups…the Chinese in the late 1800s, the Japanese in World War Two, and Communists during the 1950s. It just doesn’t work, and won’t work, even if we turned this nation into a completely fascist dictatorship like, say, Nazi Germany. So rather than banning, the best step is to make sure everyone understands we are not bound by the religious laws of any gods, or any religious sects.  

        Trump’s pandering to squeamish, anxious white xenophobes gets great press, but it won’t get him elected president. However, if he’d go along with a test given to every religious person immigrating here, or living here, so we can get them up to speed on how the Constitution works, then he and I might have some common ground to discuss ideas.

Know your Constitution

The dead elephant in the room

It is rather fitting that the Republicans were prevented from winning much on Election Day since they ignored a majority of the American voters throughout the campaigns. Though I am exactly in their target demo: older white male, professional job, college degree, fiscally conservative, and from a very conservative family, there is no way I can support most of the Republican Party’s platform. (Don’t mistake that to think I vote Democratic; I don’t. I usually vote Libertarian but it depends on the issue and the candidate.)

                Listening to certain radio ilk the past month made one think Romney was a shoo-in. Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved and other mouthpieces of the far right fringe have been citing poll after poll showing that Romney had not only caught up with Obama, he had surpassed him in various demographics and was on a roll that would take him into the White House. It is a perfect example of the old adage ‘If you believe a lie long enough, it will become the truth to you.’ It has now been exposed that many of the pollsters didn't have a clue as to what was happening. They asked the wrong questions of those polled, and in a good number of cases because the questions were ‘loaded’, they got the result they wanted to hear. When polling is based on what you want to hear, you’ll get a skewed result.

One of the talk show hosts tried mightily to show that the evangelicals were going to come out in record numbers and vote for a Mormon for president; not because of his conservatism, but because he was a ‘man of faith’. Supposedly, they should be able to relate to that even though the evangelicals’ own ‘holy book’ denounced anyone who didn't think like them. I know from dealing with many 'born-again christians' that they DO NOT believe a Mormon is even close to being a christian. I can’t wait to read how the talk show host will interpret Romney’s loss, if he bothers trying. My bet is on him claiming that it became evident that god could not allow a Mormon to become president. (Then why the call to support him? Didn't he check with god first?)

                Not helping the Republican cause were the various incidents of ‘hoof-in-mouth’ disease that made some of the candidates look like air-headed lemmings and became well-deserved targets of scorn and ridicule. Voters remember that kind of buffoonery when it comes time to cast their ballot. If the Republicans hope to win in the future, they’d be advised not to take the advice talk show annoyance Dennis Prager. Just days after the election, he was telling callers on his show that the Republican Party didn't abandon the voters, they abandoned the party, and encouraged his listeners to go out and ‘re-sell’ Republicanism to everyone they know. They should pitch all the things that reflected Republican Party values, and convince people that those values are what make good candidates, and a party worth following. He didn't advise them to take a look at how many Republicans interpreted planks in their party's platform. Maybe they should. 

        Because just how do you sell to anyone that ‘rape is a blessing from god’, gays who simply want the right to marry just like heterosexuals, can’t, an attitude of ‘I don’t want the federal government taking away my freedoms, just the freedoms of any woman who wants an abortion’, that you should be fiscally conservative, except when it comes to the Drug War and funding every military weapon system that can be conjured up, and regardless of the Establishment Clause, insisting that the Republicans are the only faith-based party and that god only supports right-wing (Republican) decisions?

       Good luck with that.