Today, Breitbart is ramping up the hysteria, asking, “How many Westerners will leftists allow to die in order to achieve their utopian vision of a multicultural world without borders?” First of all, Breitbart is setting up a straw man; most “Leftists,” while supporting comprehensive immigration reform, do not support “open borders” as such. Most of us support something completely different — building a country in which people can live their own lives without the fear of being harassed by the police because of who they are.
The Neocon standardbearer for the 2016 election is Marco Rubio, who is anything but moderate. His own slogan touts a “New American Century,” which is a dog whistle for the Neocons. In other words, Rubio and his ilk think that the problem with the Bush Administration is that they did not go far enough — the next goal is to finish the job. What Breitbart conveniently forgets is that we lost more Americans to the illegal invasion of Iraq than we did to the tragic attacks of 9/11. Keep in mind that the ultimate Neocon goal is World War III and regime change in Russia:
Like spraying lighter fluid on a roaring barbecue, the neocons also want a military escalation in Ukraine to burn the ethnic Russians out of the east, and the neocons dream of spreading the blaze to Moscow with the goal of forcing Russian President Vladimir Putin from the Kremlin. In other words, more and more fires of Imperial “regime change” abroad even as the last embers of the American Republic die at home.
Keep in mind that Victoria Nuland has been actively pushing this policy in her position as Assistant US Secretary of State, fomenting conflict between the US and Russia even as it becomes evident that cooperation is needed against the likes of ISIS.
In its piece, Breitbart seeks to guilt-trip anyone who calls for restraint or moderation; in their book, if you do, you are in league with certain insidious evil “open borders” advocates. Lately, various Republican state legislators and governors have sought to declare, on flimsy legal grounds, that their states are unwelcome for Syrian refugees which the President already pledged to take in. They are doing so on flimsy “states rights” grounds. We fought a Civil War over this 150 years ago. This debate is already settled. The Federal Government controls foreign policy, not the states. Next thing you know, Republican governors will want the President to exempt various state industries from the TPP. Had these people gotten their way in 1789, 13 different states would have had 13 different foreign policies towards a host of countries interested only in getting their hands on the vast natural resources of the New World.
There is, of course, a place for States’ Rights. The Tenth Amendment states any rights not specifically granted to the Federal Government are reserved for the people and the states. But the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution states that the Constitution shall take priority over any state laws. This means, for instance, that states cannot pass laws making Christianity the official religion of the state, for instance.
Some of the GOP Presidential Candidates, on “humane” grounds, would seek to let in Christian Syrians. But that, too, is un-American. The Constitution prohibits any kind of religious tests for public office. It prohibits the establishment of religion or the favoritism of one religion over another. The Founding Fathers specifically stated that in establishing religious liberty, it would include Islam. Jefferson owned a Qur’an, openly dialogued with Muslims, and specifically fought to include them in the Constitution. He acted during a time, like today, in which fear of Muslims was high. Washington felt the same way:
In 1783, the year of the nation’s official independence from Great Britain, George Washington wrote to recent Irish Catholic immigrants in New York City. The American Catholic minority of roughly twenty-five thousand then had few legal protections in any state and, because of their faith, no right to hold political office in New York. Washington insisted that “the bosom of America” was “open to receive . . . the oppressed and the persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges.” He would also write similar missives to Jewish communities, whose total population numbered only about two thousand at this time.
One year later, in 1784, Washington theoretically enfolded Muslims into his private world at Mount Vernon. In a letter to a friend seeking a carpenter and bricklayer to help at his Virginia home, he explained that the workers’ beliefs—or lack thereof—mattered not at all: “If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans [Muslims], Jews or Christian of an[y] Sect, or they may be Atheists.” Clearly, Muslims were part of Washington’s understanding of religious pluralism—at least in theory. But he would not have actually expected any Muslim applicants.
Although we have since learned that there were in fact Muslims resident in eighteenth-century America, this book demonstrates that the Founders and their generational peers never knew it. Thus their Muslim constituency remained an imagined, future one. But the fact that both Washington and Jefferson attached to it such symbolic significance is not accidental. Both men were heir to the same pair of opposing European traditions.
In fact, Muslims have been part of this country since the 18th century, unknown to most people back then. Any religion can be misused. Christianity was misused to justify the Holocaust and the Crusades. The fact that any religion can be misused means that we cannot pick and choose which ones we like and which ones we don’t like.
And if we don’t act, we will be just as culpable as our forefathers; despite the increasing persecution of the Jews in Europe, we steadfastly refused to take any in during the months and years before World War II and even after it started. Most people fleeing Syria are doing so because they are fleeing the very people who attacked Paris — the Islamic State. We were conceived of as a refuge for people fleeing famine and persecution from around the world, as Washington himself said. If we continue to depart from that identity, we will continue to stray from the values that our country was founded on.