As most everyone is probably aware, Donald Trump has called for banning all Muslims from entering into the US, including those who are citizens. This has followed on months of similar rhetoric, although not quite so extreme, not just from Trump but from the other Republican candidates as well about observing and being vigilant with Muslims, up to and including registering them and putting informers in the Mosques.
When these ideas were being promoted there was little if any objections from the right, the very same people who would flip if someone proposed anything even close to the same thing for Christians. Which means they are not really concerned with religious liberty or freedom for all, but simply religious liberty for themselves, or people like them.
It’s like those who are using Hanukah as a celebration for religious freedom, when, as a story in the Washington Post pointed out, it should better be understood as freedom to force other people to worship the same way that you do. That, of course, is not religious freedom, but religious tyranny and that is what those who regularly talk about religious “freedom” truly want is to be allowed to force everyone else to believe the same things they do. It’s as we saw in Animal Farm, “everyone animal is equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Although the response has not been overwhelmingly opposed to Trump’s statement, when Cheney comes out and says you are wrong we at least know there is a line that can be crossed that will bring some rebuke. Now the question is will the rebukes increase and will this by the straw that finally breaks the back of Trumps racist rhetoric.
* I originally put in the wrong Orwell title, and from the comment changed from 1984 to Animal Farm.
I like your quote "every animal is equal, but some animals are more equal than others," but I believe it is from "Animal Farm." Very good point though and many Americans would do well to read "Animal Farm" not as a book against Communism, but as a warning of could happen when one group or one philosophy gets too much control. Thanks for your sermons and thoughts which I so often find helpful and enlightening.
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