By JOE RONCA
Staff Writer
The news for the past two weeks has been dominated by another outburst from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. This time Trump, who is notorious for making politically incorrect statements, recently stated that the United States should ban all Muslims from entering the United States as either immigrants or tourists. Trump qualified his statement by saying that this would most likely be a temporary measure.
However, this did nothing to assuage the public outrage that followed his statement. Politicians from both parties, and even from foreign countries like France and Great Britain, have heavily criticized Trump for his comments.
You would think that the political and media firestorm following Trump’s latest comments that he would have essentially torpedoed his own campaign. However, in this respect Trump has continually defied traditional political wisdom in the aftermath of these politically incorrect statements. He has only gained support after these incidents.
In fact, according to the latest polls in New Hampshire Trump has gained four points of support among prospective Republican primary voters. This is mind-boggling, especially when one takes into account the fact that what Trump is proposing to do is literally illegal. You heard that right, folks. A significant portion of Trump’s policies on immigration are illegal under U.S. law. Let me explain.
In the United States we have a Constitution that governs how the federal government can operate. It also enumerates certain fundamental rights that cannot be denied to American citizens, or really anyone on U.S. soil. In fact, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that Congress shall make no law establishing a religion or prohibiting the free exercise of a religion.
Now, this would seem to be common knowledge among anyone who has ever taken a simple American Government or Civics course at the elementary school level, but apparently Trump does not get the memo. The Federal Government cannot constitutionally prevent anyone from exercising their religious beliefs. The plain letter of the First Amendment states so and federal courts have generally agreed.
Yet, Trump proposes that all Muslims should be at least temporarily barred from entering the United States. This on its face, at least to my untrained legal eyes, appears to be unconstitutional as it violates the First Amendment. The federal government cannot legally prevent anyone from exercising their religious beliefs. That would seem to mean that the Federal Government cannot just ban any particular religious group from entering the United States because the President feels like it.
I mean that sort of action is textbook religious discrimination, pure and simple. I believe that Federal courts would throw out Trump’s ban on Muslim entry even if he was elected and allowed to enact the policy.
Trump has also proposed deporting 25 million people of Mexican descent from the United States. About 11 million of these people are illegal immigrants who entered the United States from Mexico. The rest, however, are mostly people of Mexican descent who were born on U.S. soil to families who immigrated illegally.
These people are American citizens by birth, yet Trump wants to throw them out of the country they call home. Trump has tried to get around this pesky legality by saying that he would end automatic birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants, who he derisively refers to as “anchor babies.”
Again, this policy proposal is blatantly unconstitutional. The Fourteenth Amendment, far and away the most important amendment outside the Bill of Rights, establishes that every person born on American soil is a United States citizen. Denying the children of illegal immigrants born in the United States citizenship is in essence violating their constitutionally guaranteed rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus, revoking birthright citizenship is an action that the federal government does not have the power to carry out constitutionally.
Also, even if Trump decided to deport these people without depriving them of their citizenship, he still would be acting unconstitutionally. This is because American citizens have a right to due process under the Fifth Amendment, which means in this case that they cannot simply be deported arbitrarily without standing trial. So deporting legal American citizens along with their illegal immigrant parents is unconstitutional.
So those are the legal issues with Trump’s plans. Now let’s get to the moral issues involved. It is simply un-American to deport our fellow citizens simply because of how their parents or other immediate family members arrived in this country. It is not constitutional to do so and, to me at least, it is completely immoral as well.
These people are American citizens just like anyone else and they belong here, not in Mexico or anywhere else. They belong here. That is a fact, plain and simple. As for their parents and relatives, that is a tougher question. They did break the law, but their services and hard work are vital for the success of the U.S. economy. Maybe that’s not the most charitable way to look at it, but I don’t want to pay 20 dollars a pound for lettuce, so the immigrants can stay.
Plus, deporting up to twelve million people is logistically daunting. The last organization that successfully carried out en masse deportations on that scale was the SS during WWII, which is scary considering that this is coming from the man leading the race to be the Republican nominee for president.
We need to create a path for citizenship for these people that involves learning English, paying back taxes, and if they have any history of criminal behavior they will be deported. That is the best way to assimilate these immigrants into our society.
Now, I agree with Trump that we need to build a wall in order to secure our southern border with Mexico. We have to do this not in order to stop immigration, but so that we can know who is actually entering the United States. We have seen what happened several weeks ago in Paris. At least one of the attackers was able to get from Syria to the City of Light due to the European Union’s policy of open borders. We cannot afford to make the same mistake that the French did. Our borders need to be secure.
Trump also wants to obviously ban Muslims from entering the country and monitor and even close mosques. Now as I outlined above, banning Muslims is completely unconstitutional. Forcibly shutting down mosques is also unconstitutional for the same reasons.
Now, monitoring mosques is a different story. Should the average mosque be the subject of 24-hour FBI surveillance? Of course not. However, if a mosque is preaching radical Islam or its members have been arrested several times in connection with terror plots or ISIS, then the mosque should come under surveillance and be monitored.
The same is true for Christian churches who encourage their followers to commit anti-abortion violence. Just as the government has the duty to protect the rights of Americans, it also has a duty to protect us from terrorism.
Perhaps the most startling proposal from Trump is the creation of a national identification database of sorts, specifically to keep track of American Muslims. To me, Trump is starting to sound a lot like the Nazis behind the Holocaust. He plans on discriminating against both Muslims and Mexicans on a scale never before seen in American history. Establishing a system to track Muslims at all times, closing their house of worship, and banning them from entering the country are all things very similar to what Adolf Hitler implemented in Germany in the 1930s.
I’ve often wondered, this election cycle, why people plan on voting for Donald Trump. I think now that I know the answer. Donald Trump wins people over to his cause through fear.
He knows that many lower and middle class white people in this country fear Muslims due to attacks by ISIS and al Qaeda. He knows that they also fear that their country will be taken over by wave after wave of brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking immigrants from our neighbor to the south. He also realizes that there is a general sense in this country today that America is on the decline, perhaps irreversibly.
In short, many white people feel that they are being pushed out and marginalized in their own country. Trump knows this, and is proposing radical solutions that will solve these problems and in his own words “Make America Great Again!” Many of Trump’s supporters say that while a radical, he is simply another conservative.
The answer that I have to that challenge is a flat no. Donald Trump is not by any means a conservative. I consider myself a libertarian conservative, and Trump’s policies are not conservative in any sense of the word.
To me, being a conservative means that you believe that government should be as small as possible, that the best economic system ever devised is capitalism, that people have natural rights that need to be protected, and most importantly, that the Constitution is sacrosanct and the only way to properly govern this nation is through the rule of law. Under that definition, this bumbling billionaire with orange skin and a poorly-anchored hair piece is not a conservative, he is a fascist.
Fascists believe, like Trump, that constitutions like ours are mere obstacles to be trampled over on their path to absolute power. Fascists believe that state power will be able to solve any problem, real or perceived, that pops up. Trump has shown that he believes the same by proposing deportation and bans on who can enter the country.
Fascists believe that things like debate and democracy are simply inconveniences that get in the way of achieving their vision of what society should be. Trump, with his bombast and bold attempts to intimidate opponents into surrender, proves that he feels the same way.
Most of all though, fascists are extremely nationalistic and often seek to return their nation to past glories. In fact, fascists are such hardcore nationalists that they often ‘otherize’ a specific group or groups in their society and will discriminate and even commit genocide against them. This is where Trump shows his true fascist colors the most.
He says things like “Make America Great Again!” and “Mexicans are rapists” and “ban Muslims from coming into the country.” Trump’s goals and policy agenda represent fascism in American form. The worst part about this is that fascism is an extremely dangerous and pernicious ideology. The Nazis demonstrated that, once in power, a fascist regime will do anything to maintain its grip on society, including going to war and carrying out genocide.
We have to watch out for the fascist Donald Trump, who in my mind has the potential to lead this country to ruin and cause thousands of deaths. Donald Trump used to be a reality star whose bombast made funny to watch. He’s not funny anymore. He cannot be allowed to become president. If we as Americans want to remain free and prosperous we cannot tolerate this lunatic holding even a smidge of power.
There are rumblings that the Republican Party may broker their nominating convention to ensure that Trump cannot be their nominee. If it comes to pass that Trump gets enough votes then by all means the GOP should nominate someone else instead. Is that democratic? Not at all, but it is a small sacrifice to potentially save democracy in the place where it began.
If Trump receives the nomination, do not vote for him. If this situation comes to pass, I am going to vote for whoever the Libertarian Party nominates for the presidency. They won’t win, but hopefully enough conservatives will agree with me and prevent Trump from winning the election.
It pains me so much to say this, but allowing Hillary Clinton to take the presidency is a much better option than allowing Trump to win. Historians and scholars look back and wonder why the German people did nothing in 1932 when Hitler was on the cusp of coming to power. Germans to this day have great shame as a nation for not stopping the Nazis when they had the chance. I hope that in the far future people won’t look back and ask why Americans did nothing as Donald Trump seized power. As a nation we need to act now to defeat Trump and prevent fascism from ever occurring on American soil.
