PD Editorial: Donald Trump's fear mongering is dangerous

These are frightening times - the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, a Russian jetliner bombed in mid-air, a terrorist massacre in Paris, followed by another in San Bernardino.

It’s no wonder that people are on edge or that demagogic leaders are appealing to their worst impulses.

But the last thing America needs is a fear-monger-in-chief.

Yes, we’re talking about Donald Trump and his latest outrage. On Monday, the real estate tycoon turned reality TV star turned politician called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on” - even U.S. citizens who have traveled abroad. Sorry, if Trump has his way, you aren’t welcome home.

On Tuesday, amid widespread denunciations of his outlandish and unconstitutional proposal, he doubled down, citing as a precedent President Franklin Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese-Americans and the restrictions placed on German and Italian citizens living in the United States during World War II.

“This is a president highly respected by all; he did the same thing,” Trump said on MSNBC.

Roosevelt made a grave misjudgment, and history hasn’t been kind to him for overlooking his own words: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

In his first inaugural address, Roosevelt identified a “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” He was talking about the Great Depression, but his words ring true today as Americans confront the threat of vicious attacks mounted by, or as appears to be the case in San Bernardino, inspired by radical Islamic groups such as ISIS and al-Qaida.

Just as Roosevelt’s executive orders failed to distinguish between loyal Americans and genuine threats to national security, Trump’s outlandish proposal lumps all Muslims together and assumes that they hate America or, at a minimum, that they’re shielding jihadists intent on harming this country.

“We want you to practice vigilance,” he said Tuesday. “We want you to turn in the bad ones.”

Everyone needs to be vigilant, and, perhaps it’s news to Trump, but in this country, Muslims aren’t the only people who associate with other Muslims. Nor is there a universal Muslim point of view - not even within a family.

Case in point: The brother of Syed Farook, one of the killers in San Bernardino, is a U.S. Navy veteran who received two medals for his contributions to “the global war on terror.”

To declare all Muslims a threat to the United States, to practice religious discrimination, as Trump crudely suggests, plays into the hands of our real enemies - the radical Islamists who have declared war on the West.

As President Barack Obama warned Sunday in his Oval Office address: “We cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam. That, too, is what groups like ISIL want. ISIL does not speak for Islam. They are thugs and killers, part of a cult of death, and they account for a tiny fraction of more than a billion Muslims around the world - including millions of patriotic Muslim Americans who reject their hateful ideology.”

The proper response is to fight ISIS at its source, to cut off its funding and to counter its recruiting efforts by maintaining the sharp contrast between its twisted ideology and our free, open and multicultural society.

Trump doesn’t understand America’s ideals, or he doesn’t care. The rest of us can’t afford to fall into his trap.