Stuart's Thoughts 12/9/2015

Latest Trump Faux Pas !  or Was It?

Donald Trump has been blasted from all sides since his suggestion of placing a temporary moratorium on allowing the entrance of foreign Muslims into the United States, i.e., until the U.S. gets its act together in being able to detect those with terrorist or otherwise hostile intentions.  He has been characterized from both the left and the right as a horrible bigot and has been declared totally unsuitable to be a presidential candidate.

While I may have serious questions and concerns about Mr.Trump’s suitability as a presidential candidate, I’m not sure his suggestion is so unreasonable, although it may have been a bit clumsy and poorly presented.  Perhaps if he had suggested a temporary moratorium on all foreign entrants into the U.S. from a selected list of Mid-Eastern and Asian countries until our government is able to implement a nearly fool-proof process for identifying those with evil  intentions, he would probably have been subjected to far less criticism. By leaving religion out of the equation, his statement may have been considerably more palatable to many of his critics.

 There is some merit to such an idea.  As Art Laffer pointed out, if you were offered a bowl of 100 jelly beans and told that 5 of the 100 were deadly poisonous but the other 95 were perfectly safe, would you want to take the relatively small risk and eat one before an instrument was available that could positively identify the poisonous jelly beans.  It turns out to be a question of probability and risk. How much risk are you willing to take when it’s a matter of life and death.  

Our security people, including the FBI, have stated that the U.S. is not yet able to do a good job of identifying terrorist risk.  If we were doing a better job, fourteen innocent San Bernardino  residents may still be alive.