Tuesday

So why haven't I weighed on on Trump? I don't know. Maybe I just haven't had enough time, but, like pretty much American, I've been thinking about him a lot. Here, in no particular order, are some of my thoughts:

1. I don't like him, not much anyway. If he gets the nomination, I will vote for him, however, because he is a political outsider and I think the Democrats' hubris has reached alarming levels under Obama.

2. I applaud his statement that Muslims ought to be banned from coming into the United States. I don't agree with it, but I applaud him for saying it and touching off a much-needed conversation. The Bill of Rights, as our own Supreme Court has observed on a few occasions, is not a suicide pact, and Our Founding Fathers did not have the nineteenth-century philosopher J.S. Mill's open society in mind when they formed this country in the late eighteenth century.

3. Did I say I didn't agree with Trump's statement? Let me rephrase that: I probably don't agree with it. What I do agree with: There should be a moratorium until we have a national debate about it, which is all Trump was saying, if I understand correctly.

4. It's not farfetched to say WWIII has started (Pope Francis thinks it has). If so, who is the war between? We can say we don't discriminate based on religious belief, but if the reality is that religious beliefs are driving the war, we pretty much have to start discriminating based on it. We can allow our ideological desire for the open society override the facts and make ourselves more vulnerable or we can alter our ideology to fit the facts.

5. No, the Muslims in San Bernardino aren't the same as the pro-life nut who shot up the Colorado clinic. The Muslims act in accordance with the Koran (parts of it, anyway . . . the parts from Mohammad's later teaching, after his Christian wife had died and he had turned more bitter), the pro-life shooter acts in contradiction of his.