Donald Trump (or, more likely, his campaign adviser's butler's third assistant) has written an op-ed for the Deseret News in Salt Lake City. This is his chance to make the case to Utah that he is not as objectionable a candidate as most people surmise. The result is a copy-pasted laundry list of the same talking points his campaign uses everywhere else, though his newfound give-a-damnness about "religious liberties" is, in the immediate wake of his announcement that we'll be forming domestic "commissions" to monitor American Muslims, a bit eyebrow-raising.
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have tried to undermine our religious liberties on the altar of political correctness. They have challenged the rights of businesses and religious institutions to speak openly about their faith. Undermining religious liberty has been a trend in the Democratic Party for decades.
This is a lie, of course. Those devious non-conservatives have merely sought to make sure religions held by Americans who are not far-right evangelical conservatives are protected as well. Knock yourself out speaking about your faith! You're just not allowed to discriminate against other Americans who don't share it. We call this concept "religious liberty," in that people other than you are allowed the "liberty" to choose their own religions regardless of what you personally want them to do.
This is certainly a fine line Trump seeks to walk, given that the last Republican candidate was treated with suspicion in some quarters for being Mormon, rather than one of the "approved" far-right religions. You'll forgive his adviser's butler's assistant for being a bit vague.
As a leader in the Senate facing re-election in 1954, Lyndon Johnson succeeded in passing into law an amendment to threaten pastors with the loss of their church’s tax exempt status if they opposed or supported a candidate for election or re-election from the pulpit.
This, too, is a recent addition to Trump's deeply held political beliefs. Someone on his staff told him that churches were upset over the (mostly apocryphal) loss of tax exempt status if they engage in explicitly political advocacy, and this turned into the one concrete policy proposal Trump could offer the evangelical right in a sea of his not-giving-a-damn.
I oppose government interference with all Americans’ rights to freedom of religion and speech, which are guaranteed by the First Amendment in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. I will appoint U.S. Supreme Court justices who respect the right of all Americans to practice their religion not just in the privacy of their homes, but in the public square, in their professions and in the conduct of their businesses.
And we'll be forming government "commissions" to investigate religious groups for ties to "radical" beliefs and "un-American" values—but don't worry. We don't mean you. This time, anyway. You know, presuming you vote the right way.
For the record, this op-ed isn't going to work. There aren’t enough stupid people in America to make this work, and with our ongoing lead paint removal efforts there likely won’t be in the future. While there are a great deal of Americans who are just fine with the thought of instilling their own religion as the preferred American faith and "monitoring" or "testing" all the others, Donald Trump is a uniquely bad messenger for the idea. And his talking point-fueled adviser's butler's assistant isn't going to change that with this remarkably phoned-in effort.