05 Feb Bill Walton and America: It’s Not About Inclusion; It’s About Protection
Listening today to Bill Walton doing color commentary on a college basketball game, it’s easy to pick up the pop culture/PC vibe that glories in its outrage against President Trump’s efforts to bring control to immigration.
Walton is nothing if not a lifelong poster child for the pop culture: student protestor at UCLA; nature boy while playing for the Portland Trailblazers of the NBA; all-time, tie-dyed t-shirt loving fan of the Grateful Dead. So it wasn’t surprising during the broadcast when he stumbled over a simple question as to who he would pick to win tomorrow’s Super Bowl.
Having finished his NBA career with the Boston Celtics, he’s a logical fan of the Patriots. But he clearly wanted to launch on a scold of Patriot owner Robert Kraft, head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady for their support of Donald Trump. He meandered around the question, and finally settled on an oblique nod toward his karma theory of why there simply can’t be support of Trump because the truly enlightened way is for ‘inclusion’ and opportunity for all—which, in Walton’s view, Trump’s executive order shows him to be against. And so in deference to big picture karma, Walton implied he must oppose the Patriots.
The Walton commentary epitomizes the challenge facing America. Donald Trump as a personality is such a distraction that his messages are in danger of getting lost in a visceral dislike of the messenger.
Vetting Muslims who seek entry into this country is nothing more or less than common sense. Thomas Jefferson articulated this common sense two centuries ago in his “Notes on the State of Virginia”:
The first consideration in immigration is the welfare of the receiving nation. In a new government based on principles unfamiliar to the rest of the world and resting on the sentiments of the people themselves, the influx of a large number of new immigrants unaccustomed to the government of a free society could be detrimental to that society. Immigration, therefore, must be approached carefully and cautiously.
Muslims of the ‘sharia-supremacist’ view of Islam by definition are ‘unaccustomed to the government of a free society’, and insofar as they seek to extend sharia in America, they will be ‘detrimental to that society’.
A full discussion of sharia requires much more space than is available in a blog post. Suffice to say that sharia-supremacist Muslims are not interested in free-wheeling debate in the ‘arena of ideas’; they are totalitarian ideologues unequivocally opposed to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and to the liberties protected by the US Constitution. Their ideology cannot and will not permit adherents to ‘support, protect and defend’ the Constitution.
Not all Muslims are of a sharia-supremacist view, but it is inarguable that the ones who are causing terrorist violence around the world are of that view.
An American President acting to make sure that legal entry into this country is limited to those who love liberty and genuinely wish to support, protect and defend the US Constitution is doing the job Americans should want him or her to do. He is not violating any legitimate sense of inclusion; he is upholding the right idea of it.
Here’s hoping Bill Walton and the rest of the pop culture will wake up to that fact.
Paul Gable