Trump's order on immigration and the wacko liberal response

But you don't have freedom of religion. Secular laws have always trumped religion when there is conflict. You cannot stone people to death for working on the Sabbath. You cannot sacrifice humans to your gods. Native sacred sites were never respected. Those who considered King George III to be their ruler by divine right were excluded from politics and described as traitors at the beginning of your national history. You have long operated immigration restrictions against followers of the "last great religion", Marxism.Those who are arguing against Trump on freedom of religion grounds might end up defending people who believe that their god would want them to fly aeroplanes full of people into skyscrapers full of people.Mohammed, like Moses, was firmly against religious freedom. Trump, if he was smart enough, could point that out.

How is the latter achieved without doing the former? U.S. immigration and citizenship policy has never been about giving a carte blanche (or verre) to all beliefs equally, as I pointed out in the first post.The Islamic god doesn't encourage the equal treatment of people who believe the "wrong" things, either. Quite the opposite.

The U.S. will have been discriminating against believers in certain sub-sects of Islam for some time in its immigration policy. Where were the courts?

What about banning someone who believes in banning Catholics on religious grounds? But, as I pointed out, a religious believer in the divine right of King George to rule would be banned from office, and Marxists would be turned away by immigration officials.

The religion of Moses would certainly be excluded, then, wouldn't it?

The loyalists were considered traitors. Marxism can and has been described as a non-theist religion, and is certainly a belief. When I first went to the U.S. "are you or have you ever been a member of the communist party" was a standard question.What about someone who believes that the laws of their god super-cede all laws made by man? Could Trump claim that it is valid to refuse such a person entry to the U.S. as they would not accept the rule of U.S. law? Or would the courts be right to overrule him on the grounds that he was practising religious discrimination (which he certainly would be doing)?Is it always easy to understand?

An individual has this religious belief that you'll happily defend, but if you were a U.S. immigration official and you knew of this religious belief and refused him entry due to that religious belief, are you being unconstitutional?

Groups like the Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS etc. aren't just political organisations. They are theological sub sects, and their theologies are very important to them. I'm assuming that if someone is known to be a believer in one of these sects by the U.S. government, they will certainly face discrimination if attempting entry into the U.S., and this would have been happening for a long time.Is this unconstitutional?The problem for your courts is getting Trump without implicating his predecessors.

In the bit you quoted, the "religious belief" is the specific one that the individual's god would want him to fly aeroplanes into skyscrapers, not just any Muslim. The individual has done no crime. If he's refused entry, aren't the courts obliged to defend his rights?

Indeed. And I personally would not want to live in a country with a written constitution which would prevent discrimination against them. The U.K. sometimes refuses entry to members of sects like the KKK and Nation of Islam.I'm a great believer in religious discrimination!

I don't quite see how, and I think it's problematic for them. I'm sure the individual would be refused entry, but it's because of this kind of case that I think the courts might have trouble with Trump, and I was questioning some of the rejoicing on this thread.

You seem to agree with the point I've made to others; that there is already discrimination against certain religious beliefs in immigration policy. So far, the constitution has allowed it.Trump is certainly on dodgy ground in singling out nations, apparently, because of a 1965 law that forbids discrimination in immigration based on nationality. That only applies to immigrants, though, and not other travellers It would be quite easy to devise a restriction that would officially apply to all religions and ideologies but would only in fact affect Islam.What about a temporary complete ban on any religion or well defined ideological group if members of the group have committed more than twenty separate lethal attacks on unarmed civilians in more than twenty different countries in this century? Sounds quite reasonable on the face of it.Apparently the U.S. law can assess the spirit of Trumps actions, so his silly twittering about Muslims would be helpful against something like the above.

It's hard to believe that the freedom of religion bit in the U.S. constitution is merely saying that Americans can have what humans have always had in any society: the freedom to privately believe whatever we want. Without the minimum action of stating what we believe, no-one else knows. And it's hard to believe that the freedom of religion bit is about the freedom of Americans to state their beliefs, because that's covered by free speech. It certainly can't be about equal treatment by the state of all known religious beliefs, because someone who is known by the C.I.A. to be a believer in the ISIS Caliphate will not be treated in the same way by immigration officials as an Anglican.Do you see why I think it might be difficult to do Trump for religious discrimination on immigration? It's already being done.I'll look up what the constitutional freedom of religion actually is, because I haven't read it for decades.

Exactly. Different religious beliefs are treated differently, because they differ. We discriminate as individuals and so does the State. That's what Trump stands accused of.If all religious beliefs were identical, there wouldn't be any religious discrimination, would there?Sweeping laws against religious discrimination are always problematic.

Now we're getting somewhere. Religious discrimination can be justified in certain cases. So, Trump's restrictions cannot necessarily be overturned on the basis of discrimination alone.