patrick.net

Heraclitusstudent, as I read your comments, I can't help noticing that you don't acknowledge the areas where we seem to agree, and you seem to resort only to negative remedies with regard to addressing the problem. Why resort first to changing laws and even the Constitution, without even offering a free ticket? Amending the Constitution takes years and costs a lot of money; the founders made the process difficult precisely to prevent over-reaction to the concerns of the moment. Please don't let anger cloud your judgment. We do have a problem, but anger about the source of the problem should not distract from finding the cheapest and simplest legal solution.

curious2 says

Why resort first to changing laws and even the Constitution, without even offering a free ticket?

Because as I said I don't believe many people would take a free ticket if it meant to never come back.

Heraclitusstudent says

curious2 says

Why resort first to changing laws and even the Constitution, without even offering a free ticket?

Because as I said I don't believe many people would take a free ticket if it meant to never come back.

The believers believe that they must go. The free ticket offers them the opportunity. If you're considering going full snackbar because Islam says so, then you'd better not skip your free trip to Mecca first, because that would make you an unbeliever and ineligible for paradise. If they stay, even when offered a free ticket, then they are effectively declaring that they are unbelievers, infidels. You can repeat the offer every day, everywhere. The refusal of a free ticket is a daily declaration, with actions speaking louder than words. Every day a "Muslim" doesn't sign up for his free ticket, every waking hour he attends to other things instead of signing up, he is effectively saying he doesn't believe that he needs to go to Mecca, which means he doesn't really believe Islam, and he isn't going to do what it tells him to do. Even if he prays 5x/day, he knows the whole time that Islam says he has to go, and he has failed to go, even though he could have gone. What if he gets hit by a bus tomorrow, how will he explain his failure to go when he had the chance? The inconvenience of not being allowed back? That is but a mere earthly matter, which would not trouble him if he were a true believer and trusted that all things are the will of Allah.

curious2 says

If they stay, even when offered a free ticket, then they are effectively declaring that they are unbelievers, infidels.

Well but tickets to Mecca aren't THAT expensive.
Most people wouldn't take a free ticket at the price of never coming back. It's much easier to go buy your own ticket, go there and come back.

So yes we can do that but I don't think it would have much effect.

Also this is a worldwide problem. You can't ignore the rest of the world. You need to go for the root of the problem. You need to fight the ideas.

Heraclitusstudent says

You need to fight the ideas.

I agree about that, and I've lamented previously that two presidents in a row (R+D) have insisted on publicly expressing "respect" for Islam.

Heraclitusstudent says

It's much easier to go buy your own ticket, go there and come back.

I had already suggested the possibility of legislation saying people who choose to go to a specific list of countries that, for example, advocate the violent overthrow of our Constitutional government are thereby choosing to renounce whatever right to return they may have had. The offer of a free ticket would in itself require legislation if it is to be publicly funded. The two suggestions could be easily combined in one statute. I think such a prudent defensive measure would be more patriotic than the so-called Patriot Act using the presence of potential terrorists as an excuse to spy on everyone.

"BRUSSELS — Ilyass Boughalab may be dead, but his brief stint working in Belgium's nuclear industry is still very much alive in the minds of this country's nuclear security officials worried about the Islamic State.

Boughalab's family said he was radicalized after he had security clearances, but in 2014 someone else committed an act of sabotage at the plant by opening a valve, draining lubricant from a turbine and causing it to burn out. The plant was never in danger but had to shut down for four months, and the damage cost between $100 million and $200 million."

Donald Trump Finds New City to Insult: Brussels

Note the Date of article -January 28th, 2016.

LONDON — He incensed Paris and London by saying that some of their neighborhoods were so overrun with radicals that the police were too scared to enter.

He raised Scottish tempers by threatening to pull the plug on his investments there, including his luxury golf courses, if British politicians barred him from entering Britain.

Now Donald J. Trump has upset the already beleaguered people of Belgium, calling its capital, Brussels, “a hellhole.”

Asked by the Fox Business Network anchor Maria Bartiromo about the feasibility of his proposal to bar foreign Muslims from entering the United States, Mr. Trump argued that Belgium and France had been blighted by the failure of Muslims in these countries to integrate.

“There is something going on, Maria,” he said. “Go to Brussels. Go to Paris. Go to different places. There is something going on and it’s not good, where they want Shariah law, where they want this, where they want things that — you know, there has to be some assimilation. There is no assimilation. There is something bad going on.”