It pains me to mar my pristine web page with the name Donald Trump, but I feel I have no choice. Trump has made any number of vile, bigoted comments over the last year, but proposing to ban all Muslims from entering the United States is not something I can leave unaddressed.
I have lived in the South for all of my life. I heard every shade of bigoted comment, from the very mild and deeply camouflaged to the naked and bald. Most are idle, empty protests that do nothing to affect the world at large, and thus are better off ignored. But not this. Not the sacrifice of the first amendment to a ridiculous claim of national security.
Thomas Jefferson, before he died, requested that the following words be inscribed on his tombstone:
Here was buried
Thomas Jefferson
Author of the Declaration of American Independence
of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom
& Father of the University of Virginia
Each time I take the tour at Monticello (which I have done at least 15 times), the tour guide has pointed out that the words Jefferson chose to put on his own tombstone omit his service as the President of the United States. This is because Jefferson thought the establishment of religious freedom was a more important legacy than being the elected President.
Wouldn't it be nice if Donald Trump felt the same way.
In America, religious freedom is a big deal. The Pilgrims came here for religious freedom. The Declaration of Independence calls liberty "self-evident" and "inalienable." And not just for American citizens: the Declaration states that "all men are created equal." All means everyone, no matter what country you are from.
It is a conveniently overlooked fact that our Founders considered freedom and equality to be something all humans have a right to, not just those with the proper birth certificates. People in other countries have just as much of a right to freedom of worship as Americans do. The whole point of the American Revolution was that rights belong to citizens naturally. We are not given our rights by the government. They belong to us, whether the government acknowledges this truth or not.
We were the first nation in the history of the world to guarantee religious freedom. Once upon a time, we thought so much of it that we wrote it into the Constitution, the highest law of the land.
The irony is that the miserable people who support the Muslim ban are the same people who fret the about big government and government tyranny. Isn't restricting the travel of people based on religious beliefs the worst kind of government control?
In 1988, Ronald Reagan said: "The first amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people of this country from religious values; it was written to protect religious values from government tyranny." This gets it exactly right. When religious freedom is made secondary to public safety concerns, it puts religion in the service of the government. If the government can limit religious liberty to keep citizens safe, then it can limit religious freedom anytime the people feel threatened. And that is almost always.
This argument, that the universal freedom of religious belief should be subservient to national concerns, is appalling. What country dares call itself free if the people who cross its borders have to fear being asked about their religious convictions?
But there is something else.
There is a such thing as human decency. As ethics. Integrity. Core personal values. When I think of a core personal value, I think of something that does not need to be explained. Something that is so deeply embedded in my being that I cannot fully give voice to it, any more than I can say who I am and what I am like. Core values shouldn't be explained, they should just be. We shouldn't have to explain the logical reason why murder is wrong. Why rape is wrong. Why owning human beings is wrong. It should be obvious.
If it isn't obvious to you, the problem is with you, not with the values themselves.
In the same way, it should be obvious that no decent nation would use a religious test to decide who can and cannot cross the borders. We don't do that. Because decency dictates that we don't discriminate against people because of their religious beliefs. Anyone who wants to think of himself or herself as decent has to be on board with this.
There are practical arguments, of course. In practice, banning a religion from crossing our borders is not going to decrease terrorism. Doesn't anyone see that someone who wants to commit an act of terrorism would have no problem lying to customs officials? The only people effectively banned would be the ones willing to tell the truth. In other words, the honest Muslims. We have nothing to fear from honest Muslims.
How much stupider could an idea be, that we can keep dishonest people out of America by asking them to tell the truth? We are going to keep terrorists out with the honor system?
But as silly as the reason is, it isn't bad reasoning that is important here. There is something much more profound. There are some things decent people don't do, and this is one of them.
Is there a price to be paid for letting Muslims into America? Because this is what the bigots always say. They say if we are "soft" on this issue, we will be taken advantage of. We will be sorry.
To which I say: Sorrier than if we abandon our core beliefs? Sorrier than if we betray ourselves?
As Shakespeare said in Julius Caesar:
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant taste of death but once.
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
We can't prevent tragedies from happening. One way or another, there will always be evil in the world. If it isn't terrorism, it will be something else. Because there is always something else. The real question is this: Do we want to face evil with or without our core values?
You either understand this or you don't. If you don't, you stand against everything America ever stood for, all the way back to the beginning. Before the beginning, in fact: Jefferson wrote the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom in 1777, ten years before the Constitution.
The one thing America should never do, not ever, ever, ever, ever, is protect bigotry by refusing to admit people who have religious beliefs that conservative extremists consider politically incorrect.