Senator Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) condemned a recreational gun range that banned Muslims from their facility, during a presidential forum with Fox News host Megyn Kelly.
One member of the audience asked Rubio about the incident, where a Muslim-American army reservist was denied access to the facility in Oklahoma, and asked for his reaction to the incident.
“The story you just told me is wrong. It’s immoral. We should not be doing that to people,” Rubio said. “The bottom line is there are millions of patriotic Muslim Americans.”
A lawsuit against the gun range was filed by 29-year-old Raja’ee Fatihah, a board member of the Oklahoma chapter of the Muslim Council on American-Islamic Relations. The gun range owner argues that Fatihah was denied service because he was “belligerent” and that the “Muslim free” signage in his business was protected by free speech.
First of all, this is America. Property rights trump feelings; or at least they should. While you do not expect Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton to recognize or respect this fact, you would expect a Republican to do so, at least nominally. The gun range owner has a right to keep anyone off his property that he chooses, for any reason whatsoever. If anyone presents a valid reason for removal from a gun range, it’s a belligerent-acting individual (Muslim or not). If you are a paying customer at a gun range, do you want the owner to disregard a gun range patron’s irrational behavior – merely because he’s a Muslim, and that might offend other Muslims? This would be no different, in principle, from letting a belligerant-acting person through airport security because he or she is Muslim, and we do not wish to appear discriminatory. Is this what we’ve come to – that even one of the leading Republican candidates for president is this much of a self-conscious, posing lightweight that he lectures private business owners for doing what they have every right, and obligation to their customers, to do?
“Our issue is not with patriotic Muslim Americans. It’s not even with Islam. It is with radical jihadis. It with radical Islam, which is a politicization and a radical ideology that threatens Islam,” Rubio said.
How can you separate the two? We don’t separate Nazism from the actions of Nazis. We don’t separate the ideology of racism from the actions of white supremacists. We only seem to do this with Islam. But why? The vast majority of patriotic Muslims to which Rubio refers do not demonstrate, protest, or even appear to whisper in support of America. If they were as fervently in favor of American values, such as individual rights and separation of church and state, as Rubio insists, you’d hear more fervent outcries against brutality done in the name of Islam than you would from Donald Trump or any right-wing blogger.
Rubio lectures the gun range owners about morality. How morally responsible is it to fail to protect your property and, by extension, your other customers on that property? Especially when the activity taking place on the property involves firing deadly weapons?
Rubio cited ISIS as a threat to not only Americans, but to Muslims who refused to practice their radical form of the religion.
This is kind of like saying, “Hitler’s Nazi regime is a threat not only to America and Europe, but to those peaceful Nazis who want to practice their ideology in freedom and peace.” Obviously, such a statement would be absurd, because Nazism is not only a collectivist and hateful ideology, but also a political one. It seeks to impose its will by force, or at least attempted to do so back in the 1940s. Islam is no different. It’s not merely or primarily a religion; it’s a political ideology.
No, I’m not suggesting that in a free country you round up all the Muslims, any more than you would round up and jail people simply because they are Nazis, white supremacists, black supremacists or anyone else with irrational ideas. But you would expect your government, who’s charged with protecting you from enemies, to call an evil ideology by its real name.
Political correctness has long since overtaken and irredeemably corrupted the Democratic Party. It now appears that ideological cancer has metastasized on the Republican side, as well. The current form that cancer takes is Marco Rubio. He will not win against Hillary Clinton, because in this key respect he’s the same. And even if he does win, it will not matter. We’re not safe with people who hold these moronic types of ideas in charge.
Follow Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael Hurd” (Rehoboth Beach DE). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on Twitter at @MichaelJHurd1
Dr. Hurd is now a Newsmax Insider! Check out his new column here.