This whole topic is mostly nasty mud wrestling and is way beneath you and hopefully me.

Yup, likely there are many millions of peaceful Muslims. I hope so. Of course, the claims that some polls show that ballpark 50% of Muslims in the US favor Sharia law would concern me, but I'll put that aside for now.

Your view of freedom of religion is deep and delicate. Freedom of religion is fine with me, but I don't want to call radical Islamic terrorism devoted to an international enemy of the US, e.g., ISIS just a religion.

Your description of how refugees get vetted on their way into the US conflicts with my (casual) understanding of the process. Indeed, supposedly we have already admitted refugees from Syria or nearby after less delay than you mention. Besides, there are reports of the refugees bringing TB and, what was it, measles into the US. Good vetting would stop at least TB and likely measles.

On your spirit of the US Constitution and immigration, I hope you don't believe that that spirit means we necessarily should admit people. My understanding is that the usual legal immigration process is very long, slow, and careful, ballpark 10 years, and that's fine with me.

> What makes you any more right then the centuries of people that expressed that opinion before you (and about a markedly different culture from today at the time, as well)?

I don't accept the idea that the US should continually foster a long term melting pot. Instead the US should admit people when has a really good reason to do so. Now the usual reason seems to be that the candidate is extremely well qualified, and that has been the case with immigrants I've known. One I know is from France, is a darned good mathematician, a student of Choquet, a member of Bourbaki. Glad to have him!

> The problem here is that Trump, given behavior from a judge he doesn't like, latched on to the most likely reason, or at least the reason he felt comfortable discussing on national television, being because of the judge's heritage.

Well, at least the heritage, but maybe also some of the judge's political stuff. But, again, we have to be careful: Trump was not saying that all judges with Mexican background would be unfair to him. Instead he said that, from the judge's ruling, this judge was clearly being unfair and then looked for the judge's motivation and noticed the judge's background, interests in pro-Mexican political causes that conflict with some of Trump's campaign positions, etc.

Maybe Trump is correct. Maybe Trump is trying to defend himself against a campaign season political attack (e.g., consider the plaintiff law firm). Maybe Trump is just trying to do his best as a defendant. Maybe Trump is looking for media attention. Even if Trump is just blowing smoke, I suspect that he is within his rights. But I don't think that Trump is racist.

> As to what their culture is like apart from that, I don't think your opinion matters.

No, sadly my opinion likely does matter: We don't want new ghettos where police are afraid to go. Supposedly there are such in Europe now.

Even if in the past we had Native American, African, Irish, Italian, or Chinese ghettos, we are not obligated to have more ghettos now, Muslim or otherwise.

> Should we target Islam, or the actual dangerous groups within it?

Of course, we don't want to target all of Islam. But apparently we very much need to target some groups within Islam.

Of course there is the issue of the open border with Mexico: Anyone who can get to Mexico can just walk across the border -- no vetting of any kind.

You seem to be for immigration unless there is some really strong reason to say no. Basically I'm for saying no unless there is some really strong reason to say yes. For Muslims, I'm especially eager to say no if only because their culture is so darned different that they typically are darned slow to assimilate. If some Saudi prince wants to go to Harvard, maybe okay. But some Saudis who want to learn to fly the big jets, fly, yes, land, no, no thanks.

There are a lot of people in most of the more industrialized countries I can admire and would welcome to the US, maybe as citizens, certainly as visitors. In many other countries, generally, no, and nearly all the Islamic countries are in that category not really just because they are Islamic (although that concerns me) but because they are backward, too close to or actually just Medieval. Admit people from backward countries?

That's just botheration we in the US don't need.