I have been watching politics again. Never a good sign. I know if I start doing this I will get caught up in trivial events that within days, sometimes hours, will be forgotten, as the herd moves ever onward toward the next thing to fight about. As a writer, and as a man who wants to think great thoughts and add to the conversation of eternal things, I try to avoid the teapot tempests and stick to things that will matter to all men at all times. Hence my love of poetry; my disdain for rhetoric.
But every now and then, while I am wasting time, I come upon something I can say to people that might enlighten them over their lives, rather than one political choice. And I feel this is the case here.
In both the Republican and Democratic conventions, we saw family members of people who died in some violent way take the stage and profess the other side is godawful. Putting aside whether any side is godawful, I want to talk about these people.
The first kind of person is the kind of the Republicans ran up. This was a mother who felt Hillary Clinton had mishandled a situation which resulted in the deaths of four Americans. I take little issue with this, and do not with people like Cindy Sheehan, who blamed Bush for the death of her son in Iraq. I question whether these people should be listened to on account of their understandable emotions simply distorting their reason, but I don’t have a problem with their criticism. Why? Because they are questioning the decisions of people who were directly in charge at the time of their family member’s death.
However, I do have a problem with what the Democrats did in their convention. They ran up a series of such “victims,” including the mother of a criminal who attacked and tried to disarm a policeman and was shot for his trouble. These are bad enough, but I want to talk instead about the parents of Cpt. Kahn, an army war hero, an extremely rare thing for a Muslim to be.
Okay. Mr. Kahn took to the stage and began to lambaste Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, for comments Trump made about admitting Muslim immigrants into the United States. Mr. Kahn did not criticize Mr. Trump’s involvement in his son’s death. Trump had nothing to do with Cpt. Kahn’s death. In fact, if Trump had been president before the start of the Iraq War, Cpt. Kahn’s son might be alive today since Donald Trump was against the war.
So Mr. Kahn’s criticism of Trump has nothing to do with the issue that Mr. Kahn knows about. He has no policy or political experience, as a general or policy wonk might. He is simply a father whose son has died with honor, serving his country.
I want to make this clear, as a veteran, there is nothing about being a veteran alone that enables him to see the world any clearer than anyone else. Democrats seemed to understand this when they rejected the war hero McCain for the man who never thought about serving in the military, Obama. If this is true of the veteran, then it is doubly so for family members of a fallen soldier. Nothing about such a person makes them as virtuous as the person who laid down his life. For all we know, Sgt. Kahn hated his parents. For all we know, before his death they hated him for serving in the Infidel’s army. These are unlikely, but we don’t know. Honor is displayed by individual action, not by talking about what others have done.
You cannot transfer virtue from one person to another. I may be proud of my daughter’s accomplishments, but I am under no delusion that I personally achieved them. I am proud only of having raised a great daughter. This I can take some credit for, at least partially so, but nothing else. If she were to go on to save someone’s life, I would not strut around claiming I saved his life. It you take this to an extreme, the boss who hired my daughter saved the man’s life too because my daughter was heading to work when she saved the man. Why not? And the man who stopped my daughter to talk saved the man too, because he creeped out my daughter and made her move to another subway car, where she came into contact with the choking man. And so on. It gets ridiculous. Ultimately, by this thinking, pretty much everyone who ever came into contact with my daughter, or came into contact with the people who came into contact with her, can claim to have saved the man.
But that is, in a way, what the Kahns are doing. They are claiming for themselves the honor of their hero son. Worse, they are using that heroism as a platform to talk about things that have nothing to do with their son’s service, about things they can claim no expertise in. Worst of all, they’re wrong.
Why are they wrong? Because they are. They have said that Trump doesn’t know and hasn’t read the Constitution. Mr. Kahn even wagged a Constitution indignantly at Mr. Trump. Well, I don’t know about the hasn’t read part, but I know Trump is right when he says the Constitution is inapplicable when it comes to non-US citizens. Catholic Frenchmen have no US Constitutional rights, and neither do Muslims from Syria. They may have human rights, granted by International Treaty, or they may enjoy constitutional rights granted by their home countries (or they may not—if they are Muslims, probably not many, if any), but they are not entitled to US rights, including the right to travel, let alone emigrate, here.
They’re wrong on another point. It is perfectly within the rights, under present US Law, for the president to deny any group of people admission to the country.
212(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. Whenever the Attorney General finds that a commercial airline has failed to comply with regulations of the Attorney General relating to requirements of airlines for the detection of fraudulent documents used by passengers traveling to the United States (including the training of personnel in such detection), the Attorney General may suspend the entry of some or all aliens transported to the United States by such airline.
Jimmy Carter denied entry of Iranians during his term. There are other provisions for keeping out sick people who may endanger Americans with illnesses like Ebola. And so on. This is not an extreme position by Trump, unless you think Jimmy Carter was just like Hitler. In fact, a certain public servant issued this proclamation in 2011.
Presidential Proclamation–Suspension of Entry of Aliens Subject to United Nations Security Council Travel Bans and International Emergency Economic Powers Act Sanctions
SUSPENSION OF ENTRY OF ALIENS SUBJECT TO UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL TRAVEL BANS AND INTERNATIONAL EMERGENCY ECONOMIC POWERS ACT SANCTIONS
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION
Read the rest here:
It was signed.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-fourth day of July, in the year of our Lord two thousand eleven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-sixth.
BARACK OBAMA
How come no one waved a Constitution at Obama?
In other words, it is not an unknown fascist step in American history to temporarily block immigration for certain groups. It is not the least bit unconstitutional and never has been. What’s troubling is that a man who knows nothing of our laws (or worse, does) can stand before the DNC with a vetted speech and declare something unconstitutional that isn’t unconstitutional and the media laps it up and most of the population has no idea how wrong he is or why.
No, having a hero son does not mean you are qualified to do anything better than you did before. You might as well say you stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night for all it adds to your ability to speak on political candidates, an election, or, God forbid, the Constitution.
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