Symposium: Banning Sharia?

How can a democracy that values tolerance take measures against those citizens and immigrants that are basically intolerant and would undermine and ban all rights and freedoms that we have so far enjoyed over the past three centuries?

Is there a constitutional right for groups and individuals to enter America, become "American," and change America to fit their image of what America and Americans "ought" to be?

In my mind:

American citizenship is a privilege that can not be shared with everyone in the world. So those who are American citizens must determine who is eligible to join this unique nation. That is our right. It also is our responsibility, and it is one we must exercise with caution because America’s future depends on it. I would argue that, in the 21st century, America citizenship should be offered to a select few who love freedom, who are willing and able to contribute to America’s democratic experiment, and who will not hesitate to defend America from her enemies.

... Americans believe in freedom, openness, equality and tolerance.  But that is very far from meaning that we are standardless, that we suspend all judgments, and that there is not a distinct cultural “American-ness” to which we have a right to expect adherence as the price of entering our community.  That American-ness is based on a number of core precepts – the right of the people to govern themselves through accountable political leaders, rather than be dictated to by creeds, courts or supranational bureaucracies; equality of opportunity but liberty to achieve according to merit; respect for other cultures and traditions, but liberty to make informed judgments about whether those cultures and traditions are likely to blend or clash with our own; and so on.

America is not a place as much as it is a state of mind.

There is no doubt that forces without the United States are dedicated to the destruction of the United States and America. Forces within the United States, an unholy alliance, a fifth column are aiding and abetting our enemies. By insinuating themselves into the highest level of government, education, bureaucracy, media, commerce, and so on, we have witnesses a slow, inexorable subversion of American culture. We must identify, monitor and neutralize this movement among whom and which:

the ideologically corrupt mainstream media, the hate-America crowd, the soft politicians, the short attention span of most Americans, the shallowness of values, the lack of education, the aversion to the sight of blood, the absence of an historical sense, the mostly partisan left-democrats, the anti-intellectual, anti-patriotic, anti-democratic, anti-security, and, yes, anti-freedom cancer that seems to metastasize every day.

I can't help but believe that some of the above characteristics, the short attention space, aversion to blood, shallowness of values, were created in the media and in the schools in order to hasten the destruction of the United States.

What is our imperative? How must we act to a further erosion and cultural and national suicide?

The key question is what our democracy “ought” to do with the fifth columnist in our midst.  The answer is that they must be identified, prosecuted under conspiracy and other applicable criminal statutes, and they must be neutralized in federal prisons for a very long time.  They should not merely be deported, only to show up here plying their terrorist trade yet again.  Unlike the Australians who make suggestions, we must be ruthless about eliminating these people.

As to those not yet identified as fifth columnists, they must be watched (yes, with domestic wiretaps, and every other tool available to us), and when they cross the line put away until they pose no further danger to us.  Undercover agents in mosques, surveillance, subpoenas, search warrants, grand jury investigations, use of the IRS—whatever it takes.  Once we defeat the terrorists, things will get back to normal—as they did after the Civil War, WWI, and WW II.  (Ask Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR how they would handle today’s problem).
If accomplishing this requires focusing on every Muslim in the United States (“profiling” is the pejorative term of art used by the left), so be it—and no apologies, thank you.  As has oft been said, while most Muslims are not terrorists, most terrorists have been Muslims. 

Some claim that America will destroyed by the above methods, that all that will be left will the territorial integrity of the United States but not America.
The America of yesterday has already been destroyed by 9/11. Our citizens are just waking up to the realization that we have been under attack for decades and that attack's destruction is irreversible because changes must be made to prevent a total collapse. Although we can never be the same, we fend off the brigands that are attempting to clamber aboard and "throw overboard" and send packing, or imprison those that clearly are a member of that scurrilous crew, intent upon looting and enslaving the American ship of state.

Read the symposium for additional ideas.