Know your Enemy: Steve Bannon by Amy Goodman

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ASPartOfMe
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08 Feb 2017, 7:22 pm

Bannon and Trump's tweets is a distraction from the fact that especially with domestic policy that we have a Pence administration.


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08 Feb 2017, 7:59 pm

ASPartOfMe wrote:
Bannon and Trump's tweets is a distraction from the fact that especially with domestic policy that we have a Pence administration.


Pence was for TPP and NAFTA, I also doubt Pence would of kept the executive order in place protecting LGBTQ federal contractors from discrimination plus he was for amnesty, I think Pence's influence is vastly overstated. He is one of out many voices, Trump does not surround himself with yes men.



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09 Feb 2017, 6:28 am

Jacoby wrote:
You asked why I believed Trump is on my side and that's because he spoke to issues I cared about and opposed the people I wanted blocked from power, not only did he oppose them he humiliated them. Hillary's relevant as she was the alternative to Trump and someone I never would have voted for. I don't think you understand how much I disliked the Clinton's, over my entire lifetime they may as well been Satan incarnate and I don't think I am alone in this way of thinking by the looks of it. Allowing Clinton to rig the Democratic primary 8 years in advanced is an unforgivable crime, I believe Obama's 2008 victory over Hillary was just as much or more because of anti-Clinton sentiment than his qualities as a candidate which are significant don't get me wrong. So Hillary directly/indirectly from her candidacies got both our country's first black president and Donald frickin' Trump elected.

The GOP was not much better, Romney was their chosen candidate in 2012 & scripted loser and Jeb was suppose to the job in 2016. Never once did I think Romney had a chance at winning, never once did I think Hillary was going to win, talentless duds running for money & their own vanity. Democrats do not have any guts at policing their own and their 'activist' base is becoming more & more extreme, they're in a no win situation since the moderate saner wing part of the party is corrupt to its core and by the looks of it they are going to double down on the tactics that helped them lose the election.

The Ron Paul candidacies and how the mainstream media & establishment politicians worked against him impacted my support of Trump because I saw the same forces working against him and attempt to use the same tactics, seeing Trump navigate it and defeat them at their own game convinced me of his genius in this regard which is why I never wavered in my support or my belief in his eventual victory.

Simply put, Trump is doing what he said he was going to do and I support the great majority of it. Maybe if Bernie wasn't a coward he would of actually tried to differentiate himself from Hillary and the Democratic establishment he could of won the nomination, I never took his candidacy seriously because he was never really serious about running and again I believe it was the anti-Clinton sentiment with no other alternative that powered his candidacy. I liked Jim Webb but he got chased out of the Democratic party, I like Tulsi Gabbard but look at how the Democratic establishment treats her. If Democrats are really afraid of what Trump and the GOP might do then they are obligated to work with him because who is else is Trump going to work with the other party won't cooperate? Do you think Trump is beholden to the GOP? The only way that can happen is if they're the only people who will work with him, I think Trump can be reasoned with a lot easier than Paul Ryan or Ted Cruz.

I'm just interested in how you think politics affects YOU personally. When I read your posts I just get the sense that politics is like a soap opera to you. You're emotionally invested, but it isn't tied to anything that concretely affects you in any way whatsoever. It's just a stage show with heros and villains.

Honestly, I don't think Trump won because of people like you. The average Joe sixpack doesn't have the time or political curiosity to dig up all the scandalous information on Hillary. The people who swayed the election in Trumps favor where not people who normally fall into political camps. They were mostly apolitical blue collar workers from the rust belt. Trump won because he made certain economic promises that the mainline Democrats weren't willing to make. He said things that people wanted to hear. He said he would bring manufacturing jobs back from China. Hillary promised nothing. That's the real reason she lost. As far as character goes, neither candidate was very likeable.



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09 Feb 2017, 8:49 am

marshall wrote:
Jacoby wrote:
You asked why I believed Trump is on my side and that's because he spoke to issues I cared about and opposed the people I wanted blocked from power, not only did he oppose them he humiliated them. Hillary's relevant as she was the alternative to Trump and someone I never would have voted for. I don't think you understand how much I disliked the Clinton's, over my entire lifetime they may as well been Satan incarnate and I don't think I am alone in this way of thinking by the looks of it. Allowing Clinton to rig the Democratic primary 8 years in advanced is an unforgivable crime, I believe Obama's 2008 victory over Hillary was just as much or more because of anti-Clinton sentiment than his qualities as a candidate which are significant don't get me wrong. So Hillary directly/indirectly from her candidacies got both our country's first black president and Donald frickin' Trump elected.

The GOP was not much better, Romney was their chosen candidate in 2012 & scripted loser and Jeb was suppose to the job in 2016. Never once did I think Romney had a chance at winning, never once did I think Hillary was going to win, talentless duds running for money & their own vanity. Democrats do not have any guts at policing their own and their 'activist' base is becoming more & more extreme, they're in a no win situation since the moderate saner wing part of the party is corrupt to its core and by the looks of it they are going to double down on the tactics that helped them lose the election.

The Ron Paul candidacies and how the mainstream media & establishment politicians worked against him impacted my support of Trump because I saw the same forces working against him and attempt to use the same tactics, seeing Trump navigate it and defeat them at their own game convinced me of his genius in this regard which is why I never wavered in my support or my belief in his eventual victory.

Simply put, Trump is doing what he said he was going to do and I support the great majority of it. Maybe if Bernie wasn't a coward he would of actually tried to differentiate himself from Hillary and the Democratic establishment he could of won the nomination, I never took his candidacy seriously because he was never really serious about running and again I believe it was the anti-Clinton sentiment with no other alternative that powered his candidacy. I liked Jim Webb but he got chased out of the Democratic party, I like Tulsi Gabbard but look at how the Democratic establishment treats her. If Democrats are really afraid of what Trump and the GOP might do then they are obligated to work with him because who is else is Trump going to work with the other party won't cooperate? Do you think Trump is beholden to the GOP? The only way that can happen is if they're the only people who will work with him, I think Trump can be reasoned with a lot easier than Paul Ryan or Ted Cruz.

I'm just interested in how you think politics affects YOU personally. When I read your posts I just get the sense that politics is like a soap opera to you. You're emotionally invested, but it isn't tied to anything that concretely affects you in any way whatsoever. It's just a stage show with heros and villains.

Honestly, I don't think Trump won because of people like you. The average Joe sixpack doesn't have the time or political curiosity to dig up all the scandalous information on Hillary. The people who swayed the election in Trumps favor where not people who normally fall into political camps. They were mostly apolitical blue collar workers from the rust belt. Trump won because he made certain economic promises that the mainline Democrats weren't willing to make. He said things that people wanted to hear. He said he would bring manufacturing jobs back from China. Hillary promised nothing. That's the real reason she lost. As far as character goes, neither candidate was very likeable.


Well I come from blue collar workers from the rustbelt and moved from there for more opportunity rather than choice, now living close to the border the illegal immigration issue is a lot more real, from my experience in a poor inner city public school I could not support charter/voucher schools any stronger than I already do, gun rights are non-negotiable, plus this administration has been strongly pro-life. It all makes perfect sense to me, I feel like Trump came to me more than other way around. Now I have probably more of a special interest in foreign policy with views outside the mainstream than most people but Trump has come closest with his 'America First' policy, I've always trended non-interventionist to straight up isolationist(which gets used pejoratively).

Perhaps I was just more educated in the Clinton crimes than other people, I knew about the Clinton Body-Count back in the 90s as a child and "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" is something you never forget. Do people not remember the blue dress or what Bill did with that cigar? It's a multigenerational thing I suppose, my parents were very anti-Clinton and thought Bill was an absolute disgrace to the office. They went for Perot/Buchanan/Nader types before 9/11. It's been an interest of mine since I was very young, probably younger than most people. Corrupt immoral lying killers of industry. Maybe most people don't have as good of memory as I do, a lot of people don't seem to remember 2008 even. I think you really underestimated how much Hillary's character played against her, Trump might be a pig towards women but he wasn't obviously corrupt or a criminal and most people even the ones that were voting against Trump agreed with this sentiment.

Now I would prefer the Trump administration not change medicaid to block grants but I am not going to base my vote on that.

Politics and theater are inseparable tho, would you disagree? It's all part of the sport to me.



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10 Feb 2017, 3:05 am

Jacoby wrote:
...now living close to the border the illegal immigration issue is a lot more real...


I don't think people living in the non-border states really get that one, I had family in Phoenix for many years, and I was shocked at how much of an issue it was when I used to go and visit, and that would be 15+ years ago.


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10 Feb 2017, 3:18 am

adifferentname wrote:
I wouldn't use "liberal privilege", although the concept isn't entirely unsound, because I don't recognise that partisanship confers authority or weight of opinion by association, nor do I grant that "Liberals" are "liberals" - but that's a hugely nuanced technicality so I won't argue it too strongly.


I would say that it is a form of privilege, in the language of academic feminism, as liberals (in the US political sense) can openly and forcefully state their opinions and beliefs without worry of being accused of racism or sexism etc or condoning same, while those of us who are not liberal cannot, an unearned (but very much cultivated) advantage. In the past, the shoe might have been on the other foot, with liberals facing accusations of being communists if they were open about their politics, but that word has lost much of it's sting, while, as previously discussed, people accused of the isms have been "othered" to such an extent that it's truly dangerous to be accused.


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10 Feb 2017, 3:29 am

Adamantium wrote:
What I think I am in danger of having turned on me is racist policy and racist fervor.

My children are the descendants of slaves.


Ahh, see, if you'd opened with that, I'd have understood you from the start. From your perspective, as a direct target of racism, the greater danger to you is a false negative, a racist that you missed, where as to me, I'm in more danger from a false positive, a damaging accusation, hence our very different takes on the matter.


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13 Feb 2017, 2:46 pm

Dox47 wrote:
Adamantium wrote:
What I think I am in danger of having turned on me is racist policy and racist fervor.

My children are the descendants of slaves.


Ahh, see, if you'd opened with that, I'd have understood you from the start. From your perspective, as a direct target of racism, the greater danger to you is a false negative, a racist that you missed, where as to me, I'm in more danger from a false positive, a damaging accusation, hence our very different takes on the matter.


I don't agree that you are in more danger from a false positive about Bannon. Nothing said about him is being said about you. A false negative on the other hand... Do you think life will be comfortable and safe for you or anyone else in a country that has been fractured on racial lines? A place with deportation camps for millions of Mexicans and a cycle of "law and order" policing targeting nonwhite people. Maybe if you live in Montana, Wyoming or Idaho, it would be no big deal, if you avoided the news.

Even so, my cultural heritage, the one Bannon and his odious friends claim to be defending tells me that no man is an island. This is true even of men who live in Idaho. Or their own private Idaho.

The danger of a false positive? Lots of people have called him a white supremacist, etc. This has been said about him on the radio, on television, in magazines and in major newspapers. Net impact on his career to date: zero. I really don't think he is in some terrible danger of being crushed by the accusation.

On the other hand he (unlike most Americans) knows exactly what he is talking about when he says he thinks the Immigration Act of 1924 was a good thing.

I think maybe your sensitivities are a little over tuned on this.

I hear you saying "it's the principle of the thing" while carefully avoiding a close look at the reality of the thing. I've seen several people here, apparently unfamiliar with a dictionary, argue against inference. Personally, I'll use the brains that evolution gave me and draw conclusions based on evidence and reasoning.


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13 Feb 2017, 3:24 pm

The deportation of millions of illegal immigrants sounds bad but remind you that Obama has deported millions of illegals as well even though it doesn't seem like it since he had no concern for securing the border at all. Eisenhower removed millions of illegal laborers along the the border in the 50s with minuscule money and people appropriated to it. People say things are impossible or even illegal but don't seem to understand that Obama and the administrations that came before it did not enforce the immigration laws that we already have on the book. It's been a dereliction of duty, the federal government has abandoned the border states on these issues and even persecuted the ones that desperately tried to take matters into their own hands. The powers that are going to cry crocodile tears about the human cost whatever it is, even removing felons with standing deportation orders is controversial to them so if the bleeding hearts cannot be reasoned with then they should be ignored.

If you aren't effected by illegal immigration and are immune to its effects be it because of location or class privilege then you really have no idea how bad the issue is, we are abandoning the most vulnerable Americans there are because the billionaires want cheaper labor but this somehow gets packaged as some humanitarian thing. If you are poor or a working class blue collar person then illegal immigration hurts you the most. If we are going to continue to have a country then we need borders, what we have is not a sustainable situation and if you are actually afraid of America fracturing on racial lines then you should oppose mass demographic shifting immigration.



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13 Feb 2017, 7:03 pm

Jacoby wrote:
The deportation of millions of illegal immigrants sounds bad but remind you that Obama has deported millions of illegals as well even though it doesn't seem like it since he had no concern for securing the border at all.
You don't notice that this sounds odd? That Obama simultaneously deported millions and "had no concern for securing the border" no shred of dissonance there?


Jacoby wrote:
Eisenhower removed millions of illegal laborers along the the border in the 50s with minuscule money and people appropriated to it. People say things are impossible or even illegal
Crimes were committed in the execution of Operation Wetback. It's something Americans should be ashamed of, not look to as an example. They shipped US citizens of Mexican descent over the border and miles out into the desert in 112 degree heat and left them without supplies. People died.


Jacoby wrote:
Obama and the administrations that came before it did not enforce the immigration laws that we already have on the book. It's been a dereliction of duty, the federal government has abandoned the border states on these issues and even persecuted the ones that desperately tried to take matters into their own hands.
This is simply untrue. Both the border patrol budgets and the numbers of people deported give the lie to this idea.
https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files ... 0-2016.pdf
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... ince-2007/
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/28/m ... us-decades
Image
Have things been getting steadily better for blue collar workers since 2005? If not, immigration is not likely the cause of their woes.

Jacoby wrote:
The powers that are going to cry crocodile tears about the human cost whatever it is, even removing felons with standing deportation orders is controversial to them so if the bleeding hearts cannot be reasoned with then they should be ignored.
This is one of the worst arguments for anything I have ever seen. Let's ignore the human cost, because "the powers" don't want to remove felons with standing deportation orders. What does your own obligation to basic morality and law have to do with someone else's malfeasance or error?
How else might this reasoning be applied:
"The cops around here have shown that they don't respect human rights, so they should just be ignored"
"The town council as secret meetings, despite the "open government" law, so they should just be ignored."
"The IRS has made errors, so they should just be ignored."

On a very basic level, this doesn't make sense.

Jacoby wrote:
If you aren't effected by illegal immigration and are immune to its effects be it because of location or class privilege then you really have no idea how bad the issue is, we are abandoning the most vulnerable Americans there are because the billionaires want cheaper labor but this somehow gets packaged as some humanitarian thing. If you are poor or a working class blue collar person then illegal immigration hurts you the most.


Two things: One, Bannon isn't talking about illegal immigration with sessions or when he talks about immigrants in Silicon Valley he's talking about legal immigration so it makes no sense to raise the specter of illegal immigration as a reason why his thinking is somehow acceptable; Two, your are confusing one set of evil machinations of the ruling oligarchs with another--it's not immigration that hurt the blue collar workers of the US but the globalization of the labor supply which allowed the investors to put their capital into offshore plants where labor is cheap, breaking the power of the unions that had once delivered a decent standard of living to industrial workers in the US.

The right wing people who like the anti-immigrant narrative also HATE unions and believe that rich people should be free to do what they want with their money, so they can't admit to the obvious truth that it's the freedom to move production into areas with cheap labor rather than immigration that hurt their workers. You can see this in the US when automakers shut plants in Michigan, where state law means they would have organized labor demanding decent wages and benefits and open plants in southern states hostile to unions and where they can provide lower wages and fewer benefits.

It's right for blue collar people to reject the surrender of the Republic to the oligarchs, but immigrants aren't the ones driving that process. The power of the oligarchs is the natural effect of their success operating in a system that doesn't take any steps to shield legislators from financial influence, but rather encourages them to curry favor with donors by any means necessary.

Jacoby wrote:
If we are going to continue to have a country then we need borders, what we have is not a sustainable situation
We have been a country for 240 years and have always had some kind of borders, just never walls. It has actually worked quite well.

Jacoby wrote:
if you are actually afraid of America fracturing on racial lines then you should oppose mass demographic shifting immigration.
Really! Just look at what all these Irish, Italians, Poles, Africans, Scots, Englishmen, Chinese, Germans and Swedes have already done. I mean, I live in Lenape territory but hardly ever see one. If you think we need to keep white people (or some other ethnicity) in demographic dominance in order to prevent America fracturing on racial lines, then I strongly disagree. American values are abstractions not based in race

American values are fundamentally incompatible with state racism, a conflict that was evident in the thinking of the founding fathers and the partisans on both sides when the Civil War began.


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13 Feb 2017, 7:45 pm

You are unwilling to accept that there are real issues with mass immigration and open borders so you deflect everything to matters of race, that's the problem and why no workable solutions can be found with you. Some illegal immigrants are going to be removed from this country and any amount is going is going to be protest even the real criminals, some of them may be otherwise nice people but they are the citizens of another country that is responsible for them not us. What is an acceptable number to you?

You mention all those ethnic groups but you act as if that it happened naturally and there wasn't active measures that were taken to achieve this shared American identity, it wasn't by multiculturalism but rather assimilation.

This is what Teddy Roosevelt said about hyphenated Americans

Quote:
“There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.”

“This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.”
“But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.”

“The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English- Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian- Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality than with the other citizens of the American Republic.”

“The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American.”



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14 Feb 2017, 10:45 am

Jacoby wrote:
You are unwilling to accept that there are real issues with mass immigration and open borders so you deflect everything to matters of race, that's the problem and why no workable solutions can be found with you.
Your habit of telling me (and others) what my motives are or why the real concerns I have expressed are just a deflection is really annoying. You and I undoubtedly think very differently about a number of issues, but please don't for a moment think that means I am being dishonest about what I think.

This is the kindest way I can think of to express my irritation with what you have just done.

Jacoby wrote:
You mention all those ethnic groups but you act as if that it happened naturally and there wasn't active measures that were taken to achieve this shared American identity, it wasn't by multiculturalism but rather assimilation.

I agree with the sentiment expressed by Roosevelt. I would expand it to say that the man who calls himself an American but shows by his actions that his primary loyalty is to a religious or racial identity plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of the body politic.

I agree that assimilation to core American ideals and values is essential to successful immigration. The immigration process already requires that immigrants pass a test that requires more knowledge of US government than many citizens have, and I think a pledge of loyalty to the core ideals of the nation should be a condition for immigration. A pledge of this kind is already undertaken by everyone who completes the naturalization process:

https://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship/na ... es-america

Quote:
"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God."


Incidentally, Richard Spencer and his pals, praised by Breitbart, are clearly domestic enemies of the Constitution and Laws of the United States of America--exactly the kind that immigrants swear to defend against.

The steps that Bannon and Sessions were praising were not aimed at assimilating restricted groups. I've already been through that.


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14 Feb 2017, 11:37 am

We're all guilty of making leaps of judgment, what I want is simply for people to correct what I say then and state what you actually believe if it differs from what I say, you are very hard to nail down on some really base questions so it gets confusing on what your argument actually is.

You say you agree with the sentiment that Teddy Roosevelt expressed there and the idea of assimilation, I think metered immigration is one of the key things to ensuring assimilation. Vows of support and pledges of loyalty are not only things that should be taken into consideration, I think more needs to be done in order to promote American values and promote a shared American national identity. A lot more went into Americanizing previous waves of immigration, it wasn't all done entirely on individual people's free will and desire to be patriotic Americans. I will say you are correct about people like Richard Spencer are enemies to our common values but he is an American citizen so we must live with his presence as it his right to believe what he believes in but I do not think we have to tolerate such corrosive values from abroad from non-US citizens. If Richard Spencer was the citizen of another country and we could send him back would be it be wrong to do so?



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14 Feb 2017, 11:47 am

Anyone interested in learning more about Bannon should also read this thread, or at least it's OP:

Steve Bannon - Traditionalist?


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14 Feb 2017, 12:09 pm

Jacoby wrote:
you are very hard to nail down on some really base questions so it gets confusing on what your argument actually is.
I am not a knee jerk ideologue of the left. I don't automatically conform to any particular party line on any issue. I think things through for myself.

I am against stupid gun control and for free speech, including offensive and outrageous speech. I am anti-authoritarian and ant-totalitarian, despising too much state power from either political extreme. I think the principles of classical liberalism are good for a nation's economy but should be tempered to prevent extreme excursions and limit income inequality. I think insurance is a stupid model for healthcare and believe some kind of single payer system is better than the exploitative chaos that the semi-free market has created in the area of healthcare. People who try to pigeonhole me and tell me what I believe based on one position or another piss me off.

I like to be persuaded by intelligent argument presented by informed people. I like to learn new things. I hate being told that compassion is a weakness, irrelevancy or something to be discarded because the system demands it. I love the Western enlightenment tradition, the tradition of scholarship at great universities and the achievements of the scientific method. I loathe the idea of using political force to impose traditional behavior on people and limit their personal liberty, but think that freedom and personal liberty sometimes require state oppression of illiberal, oppressive forces.

I count salafist Islamism as just such an illiberal, oppressive force and I support battling such movements in every way.

Jacoby wrote:
If Richard Spencer was the citizen of another country and we could send him back would be it be wrong to do so?
Spencer has expressed hostility to the Constitution, so no--if he was an immigrant seeking naturalization I would say that's a disqualifying position. Likewise, anyone who supports replacing our Constitutional basis of government with Islamism or Christian Fundamentalism or any other political ideology, religious trappings or no, should be excluded.

Adherents of such ideologies should be fought and kept out for what they believe, not where they were born, the color of their skin or the nature of their religious beliefs or lack of the same-unless such beliefs are political, in which case they must either be in harmony with our core values or kept out.


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