After the San Bernardino shooting, in which 14 people were killed by a Muslim couple, many are calling for a halt to foreign Muslim entry into the United States. At first glance, this may seem like a reactionary, racist, ineffective policy. In fact, it is part of a proud American tradition.
In 1999, two high school boys killed 13 people at Columbine High School, allegedly inspired by violent films and games like “The Matrix” and “Doom.” Afterward, America outlawed violent media. Today, white high school males are also routinely screened for dangerous levels of angst and misanthropy.
In 2007, a South Korean student killed 32 people at Virginia Tech. Following this, all South Koreans were banned from attending college in the United States.
In 2012, an allegedly autistic man murdered 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. As a result, autistic people are under surveillance and may not approach public schools. People on the autism spectrum must wear identification cards at all times.
Oh wait!
We didn’t do any of that. We were able to recognize after each of these mass shootings — and dozens more — that no single community should bear the burden of the blame for America’s gun epidemic. And we were right.
The hard truth is that gun violence, mass shootings and radical jihadism cannot be taken out with one stone.
But it’s easier to pick a scapegoat. The act of stamping out Muslims is being sold to us as a cure to America’s epidemic rate of small arms terror attacks. Not only this, it will prevent the encroachment of the frightening Shari’ah Law, keep the Islamic State from gaining a foothold in America and generally solve our National Security crisis. That’s quite the cure-all.
In medical history circles, there is a saying about cure-alls: they cure nothing. Way back when the very best prescription medicine was half booze and half opium and they sold it (literally) by the shot glass, cure-alls were sold by charismatic swindlers who knew better than to believe their own line. I sincerely doubt that today’s politico charlatans believe that their medicine will work, either.
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump was the first to sell us this elixir. Well, the first politician to suggest it with a straight face, anyway. My uncle proposed keeping “them” out years ago, half-joking.
And the plan does sound rather like a joke. If we bar Muslim entry into the the United States, can Muslim diplomats come to the United Nations? Can our closest allies in the Middle East even send their presidents, or are they suspect now, too? Can pop star Zayn Malik tour? If our beloved Muslim athletes and entertainers, like Shaquille O’Neal, Akon, T-Pain, Mike Tyson, Dr. Oz, Janet Jackson or Dave Chapelle, take a vacation abroad, can they come back?
Many conservatives have been quick to denounce Trump’s plan as unrealistic. Some high-level Republicans, including most of Trump’s opponents in the presidential nomination race, are in this number. That’s all well and good.
But the GOP is hardly rising up to condemn the policy as the hateful, ineffective attack on faith and freedom that it is. This is in part due to Trump’s impact on the race for the nomination.
The Overton Window explains Trump’s influence. This phenomena was detailed by and named after late Michigan native Joseph P. Overton, who noted that the public deems certain ideas sensible and other ideas unthinkable based on the frequency with which the ideas are proposed and how “distant” those ideas are from others. In other words, we tend to buy into policies in the middle of the bell curve, but the stuff that’s really out there can shift that curve in either direction.
Sorry, that was wonky. But the point is that Trump has already shifted the bell curve of Republican politics in a very scary direction, and it might be there to stay.
Few and far between are major players in the GOP who will categorically denounce not only the hasty wording of Trump’s proposal but its spirit and aims. Politically, this is smart. Trump has proposed identification cards for Muslims, a mandatory registry of all American Muslims, surveillance of all mosques, and, now, banning them from entering the country. This outlier position gives his opponents wiggle room to carve out a radical position that, when compared to Trump’s, seems reasonable.
No matter where politics moves, it will never be reasonable to persecute people based on their faith.
The vast majority of terror attacks and mass shootings carried out on American soil have been perpetrated by Christians. One might protest that these people do not represent Christianity. Let’s not play into ISIS’ fairytale narrative of Islam versus the West by persecuting Muslims. We are better than this.
Columbine was not followed by a ban on violent media. Virginia Tech was not followed by a ban on South Korean entry into the United States. Sandy Hook was not followed by legal restrictions on the autistic community.
So why is it that the San Bernardino shootings force us to ban Muslims (including American citizens) from entering our country?
Proponents of banning Muslims from America, please answer in the form of a question. The correct answer: “What is: I am a racist.”
