What Pisses Me Off About President Trump’s “Muslim Ban”

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Originally published January 29th, 2017.

Hello everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio. Let me give you the facts, let me tell you what it means, and then let me chill you to the bone like I’ve just dunked your ass in a vat of bloody gazpacho.

So. Friday, Donald Trump temporarily closed US borders to refugees, or economic migrants, or jihadists, or people who just want to come in with a bunch of wives, make a bunch of babies by suckling off the US tax system through the welfare state – I don’t know, I don’t even know what to call them anymore. Immigrants without papers, I don’t know, that seems to have offended Italians in the past, but anyway. The reality is that everyone’s going mental. Well, everyone on the left is going mental. And this is just one more nail in the coffin of the final rites of leftist credibility, for reasons I will get into right about now.

So. There was an executive order put out. Now, everyone’s saying, Muslim ban! Not true. Not true. Not even true. And if you’re out there tweeting about this or twittering about this or chanting about this or Facebooking about this – Muslim ban! Muslim ban – you are part of the spark of the fire that is trying to burn down the world, and I’m trying to stop it, I’m trying to stop it! But you don’t make it any easier when you put out provocative nonsense like THAT! It is not a Muslim ban, for reasons we’ll get into in just a moment.

So in the actual text of the executive order signed by Donald Trump, what you will NOT notice – which is actually quite interesting, and should be a tell that you might be being trolled by a master troller – is that the order doesn’t actually specify any of the countries to be included in the visa suspension. The countries are in fact Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Why? Seems odd. Well, you see, President Trump – yeah, still not old – President Trump is not suspending visas from the countries that he has selected, countries that he picked or his team picked or anything like that. No no no, you see, this is the funny thing. President Trump is suspending visa approval from countries that were selected by one President Barack Hussein Obama. Gasp! Isn’t that interesting? Countries selected as security risks by President Barack Obama. Hmm.

Now. Trump is suspending all of the visa applications from these countries selected by Barack Obama. Nothing to do with Muslims, it’s not like if you’re a Muslim you’re banned, it’s just, if you’re from these countries, visas have been suspended. So, not Muslim, and he didn’t even choose the countries.

Bit of a history to this. In 2013, President Barack Obama suspended refugees from Iraq for six months due to significant security concerns. In 2015, Congress passed a law restricting visas from what were called “states of concern.” So countries where there was significant concerns regarding potential for terrorist infiltration through immigration, through refugee programs, and so on, I assume. So, in 2015 Congress passed this law restricting visas from states of concern, and Obama signed this law. In 2016, the Department of Homeland Security (this is under Jay Johnson) expanded these restrictions. Now, 2016, last year, Obama was still the president! He’s in charge! He’s in charge.

So what has President Trump been up to? Well, he’s taking the same action that Obama took in 2013, suspending visas, and he’s applying these visa restrictions to the countries that Obama selected as risky governments, risky states. He’s taking the same action Obama took in 2013 regarding Iran, applying visa restrictions to the countries Obama selected in 2015 and 2016. Does that reframe it a little bit for you, just in terms of reality? He’s only been the president for about a week. And he’s kind of doing what Obama did to the countries selected by the Obama administration as states of concern, you see, it’s not coming out of nowhere.

Now, people are freaking out and I’ve been sort of following this tonight. A New York judge named Anne Donnelly, who looks exactly as you’d expect her to look, she had a judicial ruling, and she targeted only the current permitted visa holders who were in this kind of limbo Tom Hanks zone during crossovers, between travel and the denial of entry upon landing and so on. Fewer than 200 people are kind of in this limbo around the country, so no, it’s not this giant mess. And her ruling stops the Department of Homeland Security from turning them around, forcibly turning back people who are currently arriving from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. They have current valid visas, they just can’t be turned back. So it’s fairly small, fairly limited, and it’s because [the order] is perceived to be creating undue hardship and so on. So it’s fairly small, fairly limited, she’s not overturned the direct order, presidential order, anything like that.

Okay. So, it’s not a Muslim ban. Of the top ten Muslim countries by population in the world – just go and sort them by population – no bans whatsoever! And people are saying, well, there’s this Iranian director who wants to come in, Oscar, he want to come in, he can’t! Oh my god, people. The executive order, just READ IT, for God’s sake! Stop reading what people say about stuff and read it yourself. The executive order clearly allows for exceptions. Now, another thing he said was, hey, Christians get priority over Muslims when it comes to this kind of stuff, particularly as refugees and so on. Christians are, y’know, the most persecuted group in the mIddle East for sure, maybe even the world. Yeah, Christians are not having a fun time over there, and so he’s giving priority to Christians over Muslims. If I remember rightly, there are a few Muslim countries that seem to give priority to Muslims over Christians… Maybe I’m just misremembering that. But yeah, shockingly, a Christian country may be giving some preference to Christians over Muslims.

So those are just the facts. He said he was going to do it. It’s actually less than he said he was going to do (of course, we’ll see where he goes from here), and it’s temporary, and it’s for seven countries, from a list developed by Barack Obama, passed by Congress, signed by Obama. Just what Obama did in the past! But see, didn’t matter then, right? For you guys on the left, it didn’t matter when Obama did it, didn’t matter when Obama developed this list of seven countries, didn’t matter when he signed the law. Doesn’t matter! Because, because he’s your team, right? He’s your team, he’s not the Republicans. So if your team does it, it’s gold, baby! But if the Republicans do it, it’s stone satanic evil!

Do you have the capacity to look in the mirror and see yourself for what you’ve become? Base echo chamber zombies of in-group preference from hell. No reasoning, no principles, no facts. Our team good, your team bad! Blurrrrgh! It’d be, I’d call it simian, but I have more respect for simians.

Here’s the thing. This is the rant part. If you’re done with facts, you can turn me off right now, but you might want to stick around. These are just big-picture thoughts I have.

The Middle East is a mess, and the Middle East is a mess to some degree because it’s the Middle East. And, to another degree, because Western governments have been meddling in the region. Now, part of the reason why Western governments have been meddling in the region is because Western governments and Western technology and Western demand created a massive oil industry which then Middle Eastern governments – a lot of them – stole from the West. And, therefore there has been some involvement. That’s a very very quick picture of a very very complex topic, but. Countries in the Middle East have been horrendously, brutally, destabilized, invaded, overrun, enemies have been funded, civil wars have been fomented, under both Republicans and Democrats. George Bush invaded two countries, and President Barack Obama, over the course of his eight years, innumerable drone strikes that hit a lot of uh, “unspecified targets”, also known as people you love and care about. But Obama, I guess after receiving the Peace Prize, proceeded to drop 100,000 bombs in seven countries, mostly Muslim, largely in the Middle East.

See, that’s a lot of bombing. Where was the anti-war movement then? Oh! That’s right! See, he’s on your team. So when he bombs seven Muslim countries, it’s fine! When Bush – hurgh, terrible! – invaded, and the invasions was terrible, the invasions were terrible. Wrong. Where were you people on the left, why weren’t you after Obama and Lynch and Holder to hold the people accountable from the Republican administration under Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney for what they did? A war crime, I would love to have found that out. Why weren’t you after Obama? Well, because he’s your team. So having used your anti-war bona fides to oppose the Republican warmongers when the Republicans were gone, when your guy was in, boop! All gone! All gone. He can bomb the shit out of everyone, we don’t care ’cause he’s our guy, he’s on our team! Yay!

There’s a mess in the Middle East. Countries are destabilized. Obama and Hillary Clinton, as President and Secretary of State, had a significant role in lots of messes, not just selling massive amounts of weaponry to Saudi Arabia, which have used it locally to spectacularly gory effect, but also working to help destabilize and overturn and overthrow and destroy two countries that figure quite predominantly in this latest migration crisis – that would be Syria and Libya. Funding ISIS and al-Qaeda and their affiliates in order to overturn legitimate governments, not great, guys. Not great at all. But you people on the left, now you love Muslims, where was your love when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were bombing and undoing and destroying those countries? No no, it’s your team, right?

When this destabilization is occurring, I want you to zoom right out. Like, lunar distance from this. What’s happening to the people in the Middle East is unconscionable, ungodly, unholy, horrendous. Why are they all coming to the West? I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of these three-million-person tent cities is Saudi Arabia. Lots of land, not wildly overpopulated, it’s not Manhattan wall to wall in the desert. Why are they all coming to the West? Some of this stuff is civil wars, some of these are internecine warfares, Shia and Sunni. Why? I don’t remember Saudi Arabia giving Europeans a lot of sanctuary during WWII. Why? Because if we want to help these people out of the Middle East, I think that’s actually a pretty good thing to do. It’s not their fault that their region got destabilized by internecine conflicts and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and the British and and and. Let’s help them. But, here’s the thing: you can create safe zones in the region and you can help MANY MANY TIMES MORE people by relocating them IN the Middle East than by bringing them to the West. You understand? Many, many, many more times the people. It’s not about helping people. It’s about looking good and feeling good and virtue signaling and bringing in people who are going to vote for the left. You can help. More than a dozen people in the Middle East for every one person you bring to America. If you really want to help them, help them where they live, don’t bring them to Minnesota. Little bit of a climate shock, culture shock.

Here’s the thing. And everyone I think understands this deep down, but I think it’s important to mention. Here’s the thing. ISIS and other radical jihadists have a plan. It’s not a secret plan, you don’t need a decoder ring, you don’t need some Dick Tracy wristwatch scrambling technology to understand this plan. They’ve spoken about it, they’ve published about it, they’ve written about it, they’ve chanted about it, it’s probably carved into somebody’s head somewhere. ISIS has a plan. They say that they want to blend jihadists into the migrants into the West. Right there. Right there in the open. Openly stated. Now, let’s say you’re a Western government, let’s say that you somewhat take seriously your commitment to protect your own citizens, and this includes people who are already there who are Muslims, you’re committed to protect your own citizens, right? When you have a somewhat aggressive group promising to embed terrorists and jihadists into the waves of immigrants coming into the West (or migrants or whatever you want to call them) what do you do? Well, do you do something? I think you kind of have to.

I have a weakness. I like me a good coffee. Maybe a little too much, but I like me a good coffee. Now I get these things called K-cups. Let’s say that I order a bunch of K-cups, 100 K-cups, and someone comes along and says to me – and I believe this person, they’ve got good authority with me – “Oh yeah, 21 of those K-cups are probably poisoned. Y’know, five for sure, two definitely, five probably, 21 yeah, pretty much.”
What do I do?
“Oh yeah, well, I’ll just take these and I’ll, Ill drink them and feed them to my friends, and y’know.”
No!
“Sorry, I can’t take the order.”
“What, don’t you like K-cups?”
“I got no problem with K-cups! I ordered the K-cups! I just don’t like the poison part!”

Now, here’s the thing: if immigration is being restricted from countries where ISIS has promised to embed jihadists – I’m going to go out on a limb here – I think morally the fault kind of lies with ISIS. Not with the countries who have to say, whoa, whoa, we’ve read, we’ve translated, we understand, that’s the plan, to embed the jihadists in the immigrants. So we’ve got to stop this whole thing, because these people are coming in without papers, a lot of them, we’ve got no clue who they are, we can’t vet them, we don’t know what’s going on, and a whole bunch of people have been slipping through the cracks and shooting up people and blowing up people and driving trucks through people, so whoa everybody! I think they might be serious about this embedding thing. IS it really the fault of Western governments? OR is it the fault of ISIS and other groups who wish to embed these people in the migrant waves? Where’s the real moral responsibility here? I mean, again, call me crazy, maybe I’m way out on a limb here. But I could sort of understand that. If I were in the Middle East, I’d say, whoa, these guys are saying they’re going to bring their jihadists into your countries through the migrants, of course you have to shut the doors because you don’t know who’s who, I can completely understand that. These guys are the problem, not the countries trying to keep their citizens safe. (“But it would be real nice if you stopped bombing, invading and drone striking us?” “I agree.”)

The Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, is taking to Twitter saying ‘oh, you can come here. You can all come here.’ And I mean, I know it feel real good to type that in the moment, and lots of people are like, oh man, you really care, you’re really compassionate. But here’s the thing. Let’s just take Syrians. I’m sure a lot of them are lovely people, really sorry again about the country, wasn’t my doing, I have been fighting like hell against this stuff for most of the ten years, decade of my public intellectual life and privately before then, fighting against this stuff, trying to wake people up to what Western governments are doing in the Middle East.

But here’s the thing: 21% of Syrians sympathize with ISIS. So, see, it’s great to say, oh, you can come here, you’re welcome, diversity is our strength. 21% of Syrians are ISIS sympathizers. And if you really want to help them, help them in the Middle East. Send the money over there, help them in the Middle East, help them to resettle. Similar languages, similar customs, similar religions, similar climate, similar geography, much more at home. Oh, right. But then you don’t get to virtue signal and you don’t get to import a whole bunch of people who are going to vote for the left. Because how well are they going to do? This is what Germany’s finding out. Two thirds of the refugees entering Germany are not even literate in their own language. They can’t functionally read and write in their own language! Can’t succeed. Provoke conflict, people get resentful. You understand.

And this is what I mean when I say, leftism is falling apart in terms of credibility. Lefties who claim to care about the Muslims? No. No no no no no. Oh, you were all over Bush for Iraq. Obama? 100,000 bombs? 7 different Muslim countries? Where are you? Hillary helped to destabilize Syria and Libya. And you wanted her in POWER?

In America, 74% of Muslims voted for Hillary and only 13% voted for Trump. Quick question: which one of these two had the blood of countless Muslims on her hands? Oh, I’m sorry, I gave that away! Because I said the word her, right? But she’s your team, lefties! She’s on your team, you don’t care!

For the cost of resettling 10,000 refugees in the United States, you could settle 121,797 in the Middle East. So your virtue signaling, your ‘I want to be viewed as a good person,’ your ‘I want to troll Christians,’ your ‘I want to get votes,’ costs almost 112,000 people the chance to get out of a civil war hell-hole the like of which you can scarcely even imagine. You’re not helping them! You’re helping yourself on the bodies of people.

Y’know, that’s more than 110,000 people who won’t be resettled because you spent that money to bring people to the United States. Of those 110,000 people, some of them are going to die, some of them are going to starve, some of them are going to step on land mines, some of them are going to get blown up. Some of them are going to get sick and have no access to health care because YOU wanted to look like a good guy and you wanted to paint little hearts and “Refugees Welcome!” No! Think! Be compassionately intelligent and HELP PEOPLE WHO NEED IT! IN the Middle East!

All human desires are infinite, all human resources are finite. Bringing people to the West condemns many, many more times the people you bring to the West, condemns those people to life as a disaster in the Middle East. For every 10,000 refugees you bring the United States, you could settle almost 122,000 in the Middle East, where they would be safe. It’s not about you! It’s not about your votes, it’s not about your virtue signaling, it’s about helping people WHO NEED IT!

And bring the boys and girls back home. Now you’re trolling, but you’re just trolling the right, you’re trolling Trump. Obama banned refugees from Iran for six months in 2013, you didn’t care! Why?Your team! Obama restricts immigration from Venezuela. Which is supposed to be your Socialist paradise, where people are hunting rats and pigeons through the garbage. Obama restricts immigration from Venezuela, you don’t care! It’s your team! FUCK YOUR TEAM! Fuck teams! Let’s HELP people! Stop trolling, stop escalating! Stop making it about YOU, it’s about helping people in NEED.

We are at a crossroads. We are right here at the crossroads. We think, or it all falls apart. We learn to think, or it all falls apart. I can’t do it if you don’t learn to think and manage yourselves. And think about how to help people rather than how to make yourself look good while standing on the bodies of those you’ve left behind! You must learn to think.

You must learn to think, nothing else matters. Learn to think, or everything we love, everything we treasure, will end. Learn to think, or everything we love will end, followed by love itself. And you and I know, we both know, what emotion enters our hearts when love leaves.