Gary M. Wisenbaker, Valdosta Today Opinion
The great hue and cry of late centers on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s proposal to ban foreign Muslim travelers from entering the United States.
There was a time when those wanting to protect America were praised. Not so today.
Junior varsity Congressman David Jolly (R-FL), an attorney and former lobbyist, went so far as to call on Trump to withdraw from the race. Jeb! Bush diagnosed that such a proposal proves that the leading GOP candidate for president (Trump, that is, not Bush) has become “unhinged”.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, normally centered and thoughtful, took to the podium to philosophize that restricting immigrants or visitors (and, presumably jihadists) from coming to our shores based on some religious litmus test is “not what this country is all about.”
Well. Tell that to the Irish Catholics who were vilified in the 1840s because they wanted in. Or to the Chinese who were barred by law from entering the country in the 1880s. Or to the German Jews fleeing the Nazis who were excluded by regulation in the 1920s.
And then there are those snarkling that the entire concept is “unconstitutional”. These theorists might want to pull out their Constitutional Law 101 books and brush up on the law.
Constitutional rights have never attached to any foreign individual or class of foreign individuals unless they are on American soil, nor does the Constitution bestow any right of entry to the United States. And in a long stream of cases the Supreme Court has recognized the federal government’s right to regulate immigration and even do so discriminatorily.
“In other words,” an ACLU position paper on immigration explains, “the government has the power to decide who to let into the country and under what circumstances.”
That the Trump detractors’ frothing is as misplaced as it is misinformed is self-evident as there’s been no suggestion of interfering with any Muslim American’s rights either here or abroad. He has not suggested deportation and has recognized that those American Muslims traveling abroad may have a right to re-enter.
This country, Speaker Ryan, is “about” life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is “about” safety and security for all citizenry. It is “about” the governmental responsibility to provide that safety and security which includes, among the many moving parts in doing so, securing borders and regulating who can cross those borders.
Any sovereign nation that cannot do that or refuses to do that loses that sovereignty and, hence, fails in its fundamental task of protecting the lives, liberties and happiness within its borders.
The disingenuousness of the reactions to the suggestion of controlling who can come to this country only elucidates the failure of those so reacting in performing this basic tenet of governance.
The lock-step caterwauling also suggests panic not only within the GOP establishment but the entire Washington ruling class.
For too long they have ignored the concerns of the everyday American, catering only to their own preferences for porous borders to politically correct speech, for budget deals that increase a suffocating national debt to tinkering around the edges of a Balkan War era tax scheme.
They now resemble Marie Antoinette without any cake and they know it.
Trump has seized on this sentiment, articulated a voice for it, and messages it with an unfiltered clarity that apparently, based on his leading position in all the polls since his announcement, resonates with the voters.
And they are closing the borders of elective office to those on the inside and who have so miserably failed the American people.
Gary Wisenbaker (gary50155@gmail.com) of Valdosta, Ga., is a PR and political consultant
