At the New York Times, Canadian-born commentator David Brooks writes one of the most illogical statements made lately by a supposed "conservative" (although, granted, the list of absurdities is long and distinguished this election cycle):

Donald Trump is abhorrently wrong in implying that these [Islamic terrorism] attacks are central to Islam. His attempt to ban Muslim immigration is an act of bigotry (applying the sins of the few to the whole group), which is sure to incite more terrorism. His implication that we are in a clash of civilizations is an insult to those Muslims who have risked and lost their lives in the fight against ISIS and the Taliban.

We'll tackle the low-hanging fruit first.  Given how ISIS is supposedly vastly outnumbered in the Middle East by so-called "moderate Muslims," why haven't these "moderate Muslims" put up much of a real fight?  There are large numbers of supposedly "moderate Muslims" with advanced militaries in nations all around ISIS controlled territory.  Why aren't they coming to the direct defense of "moderate Muslims" attacked in this region?

Imagine if all the other forces of good – assuming that's what these "moderate Muslims" are – just ran away whenever the fight came their way.

Imagine if Britain's entire population sailed across the Atlantic and tried to claim refugee status in the U.S. and Canada rather than standing to fight the Nazis?  And why aren't all the "moderate Muslims" in Europe and North America clamoring to go back and fight ISIS – armed, of course, by the "moderate Muslim" nations in the Middle East – and reclaim their "homeland" from the "Islamic extremists," rather than hiding in the West?

To ask these questions is to obtain the answer.  If you are not willing to fight for your freedom, and die for it, you don't deserve it.  The West should not be doing the dirty work for the "moderate Muslims."  A shocking afterthought: Perhaps these aren't "moderate Muslims" after all.

As Sarah Palin wisely said, "let Allah sort it out."

We are indeed in a clash of civilizations between the Christian West and Islam and its precursors.  This has been ongoing for millennia, and it never ended.  The West already paid in plenty of blood and treasure for its freedom over the past several centuries.  If "moderate Muslims" really do value the type of freedoms our ancestors and current freedom fighters died for in the West, they can fight for it back in their homeland, rather than running away.  If we in the West had run away from our fights for freedom, there would be no free West for the "moderate Muslims" to hide in.

The time for freeloading is over.  Freedom is never free, and the millions of "moderate Muslims" pouring into the West need to go back to the Middle East and fight for the freedoms they supposedly cherish.  These are tough statements, but we live in difficult times.

Back to Brooks's claims: He states that if the United States attempts to ban Muslim immigration, this will result in more terrorism.  If so, doesn't that prove the point that these are exactly the type of individuals we do not want living in the West?

What kind of people will resort to terrorism against a nation that refuses to let them immigrate to it?  I'll answer the question for Brooks: they are terrorists.  What Brooks has unequivocally admitted is that the United States is being blackmailed by Muslim immigrants, who are saying, "Let us in or we will kill you."  This translates into blackmail by terrorists posing as "moderate Muslim" immigrants.

Thus, what Brooks has finally done is give politicians such as Trump another piece of ammunition for why all Muslim immigration should be halted until we "can figure out what is going on."  The immigrants that the West wants are those who will not kill us if we don't let them in.  By the way, many in the West have also been killed by Islamic terrorists whom we did let in as immigrants, so Brooks's argument fails on all possible angles.

In our current state, we have Scott Baio – yes, Chachi from Happy Days – who has perhaps best said what everyone reasonable in the West is thinking:

[President Barack Obama's reluctance to say] Islamic terror [means] he's dumb, he's Muslim or he's a Muslim sympathizer ... And I don't think he's dumb ... [what is the] end game? ... Is it to totally eliminate the United States as it was created and founded and the way it is now? I'm baffled by the lack of anything happening.

And now word is coming out that the Attorney General will be "scrubbing" the 911 calls made by the Orlando Islamic terrorist of any reference to Islam.

The days in the West grow dark, indeed.