Nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, according to a nationwide poll.
I'm certainly not oblivious to the need to guard against needless hostility toward Muslim Americans. I don't think Moslem Americans are our enemy. They are our citizens and while some undoubtedly side with the enemy and think of them as Minute Men or patriots, this view is probably far more prevalent in non-Moslem circles. Moslem Americans can be a valuable resource in speaking the enemy's language and understanding their culture. German-, Italian-, and Japanese-Americans all participated in World War II to our advantage when our enemies were Germany, Italy, and Japan. Still, the treatment of Japanese Americans sixty years ago is reason to be on guard.
But even looking at the poll itself as the story reports it is no reason to panic. Polls are not policy and policy takes place after discussion and debate--not 5 seconds after the question is posed like a poll.
Second, I've seen polls in the past that generically ask about the bill of rights and in a vacuum most people disagree with a whole lot of our basic rights. Is that a bad sign? I don't know. People mostly go on with their lives freely without having to worry about what rights they have since those rights are respected without having to enumerate them on every street corner to the police. Heck, I've read that lots of French people think they have Miranda rights from watching old Starsky and Hutch reruns.
So if you start from the poll that the story highlights and assume such restrictions couldd go through either Congress and all its debate or even an executive order from the president without being over-turned by Congress via bill and then survive court challenge, then yes we should worry. I trust this would get some publicity too and the public education process would kick in, too.
So don't worry here about the gulag starting here. Although if the leaders of organized Moslem groups were more public condemning the terrorists acts that some claim to carry out in their name I'm sure the numbers in such polls would be much lower. Then there wouldn't even be hyped worry to puzzle over. When those people who profess to defend the rights of Moslem Americans to the hilt do so by refusing to admit that fascist Islamists actually are our enemy, those compassionates promote the idea of all Moslems thinking the same.
We have Moslem enemies. They are a distinct minority of Moslems. The rest are not our enemies. This really shouldn't be too complicated to grasp.
