Last night former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was on Sean Hannity’s television show. Unsurprisingly, the topic of the Islamic terrorist (yes, I know, that’s a redundant term) attack on a crowd in Nice, France, came up. Gingrich, knowing he was not in the running to be the vice-presidential éminence grise in a Trump administration,

Transcript:

HANNITY: I don’t want to really tie this into politics, but every issue America is now dealing with, every issue that we have discussed in recent months and years about the Islamization of Europe, about refugees, about immigration, about open borders — it seems to come together, and also political correctness and not recognizing radical Islamic terrorism as the enemy and evil in our time. From your perspective, what does this tragedy, this evil attack tonight, mean for that conflict and debate?

GINGRICH: Well, first of all, Sean, as you know, I was in Paris just last weekend talking with people who are deeply involved in trying to deal with the Iranian government and other sources of terrorism. And let me also say Daniel Silva has a remarkable new novel called Black Widow, and the entire opening section is on the systematic Islamic attack on Jews in France, which is the worst it’s been since the Nazis. So let me start with where I’m coming from, and let me be as blunt and as direct as I can be.

Western civilization is in a war. We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background, and if they believe in Sharia, they should be deported. Sharia is incompatible with Western civilization. Modern Muslims who have given up Sharia, glad to have them as citizens. Perfectly happy to have them next door. But we need to be fairly relentless about defining who our enemies are. Anybody who goes on a website favoring ISIS, or Al Qaeda, or other terrorist groups, that should be a felony, and they should go to jail. Any organization which hosts such a website should be engaged in a felony. It should be closed down immediately.

Our forces should be used to systematically destroy every internet-based source. And frankly if we can’t destroy them through the internet, we should destroy them with kinetic power, using various weapons starting with Predators, and frankly just killing them. I am sick and tired of being told that the wealthiest, most powerful civilization in history, all of Western civilization, is helpless in the face of a group of medieval barbarians who, for example, recently burned 20 young women to death — burned them to death because they wouldn’t have sex with them. A group which beheaded recently in the Philippines two Canadian businessmen.

And we’re told to be reasonable, to be passive, to not judge. Well I just want to tell you tonight, everybody who watches this video, this is the fault of Western elites who lack the guts to do what is right, to do what is necessary, and to tell us the truth, and that starts with Barack Obama.

HANNITY: That’s a powerful statement. I agree wholeheartedly. Let me go back to the beginning of your statement. You said Western civilization is at war, and you said Sharia is incompatible with Western civilization. Here’s my question because it goes to the heart of the refugee debate. Statements made by Donald Trump that until we’re able to vet people coming from countries that practice Sharia, they shouldn’t be allowed into the country. So it’s a big part of our national security debate heading into the election. So my question is if you have a clash of cultures and people believe they can tell women how to dress, whether they can work or drive or go to school, and they treat women like second-class citizens, and you can’t build a temple, and you can’t build a Christian church, and so they’re against women and gays get murdered for being gay. So there’s attacks against women, gays, Jews, and Christians. How do we ascertain — how do you possibly ascertain whether or not that person really wants assimilation, really wants a new life, or whether or not they want to expand that caliphate, which is what we’re at war against?

GINGRICH: Look, the first step is you have to ask them the questions. The second step is you have to monitor what they’re doing on the internet. The third step is — let me be very clear. You have to monitor the mosques. I mean if you’re not prepared to monitor the mosque, this whole thing is a joke. Where do you think the primary source of recruitment is? Where do you think the primary course of indoctrination is? You’ve got to look at the madrasas. If you’re a school which is teaching Sharia, you want to expel it from the country. We have to understand — we are behaving as though we are insane. We’re like sheep wondering why the wolves keep killing us. These people are opposed to our way of life. They are opposed to our value system. They are opposed to our various religions. They’re opposed to the whole concept of freedom, and they’re very honest about it. They tell us what they want to do. And, again, I just want to cite, because it’s so remarkable, I mean Daniel Silva’s new book, Black Widow, which is a novel, the opening couple of chapters are so scary in being exactly what you just saw tonight in Nice, that I can’t recommend it too highly.

Naturally, this set off a ten-alarm fire on the left where radical islam is something to be coddled and caressed.

As I’ve said before, Gingrich reminds me of the way Lord Allenbrooke described Winston Churchill: every day he has ten new ideas, one of them is brilliant, but there is no way to determine which of them it is.

In principle, I think he’s exactly right in terms of this critique (we are at war and the enemy is actually pretty easy to define) and what we need to do (treat Islam the way we treated communism during the 20th Century). I don’t believe we can get there from here without doing violence to the US Constitution in a way that could see parochial and private Christian schools and churches actively monitored and prosecuted by an Obama-like pro-abort, pro-deviant-sex administration. On the other hand, there is no legal barrier whatsoever to screening prospective Muslim immigrants and barring those who believe that Sharia is a valid legal system. I think his view the Islamist websites should be shut down, by any means necessary (to quote a somebody who might be well known), has a lot of validity though there is the downside that those websites are also a useful source of intelligence. (What is equally clear is that Gingrich is also, either paid or freely, flogging a new bestseller. Notice the practiced way in which he uses the “billboard” method of mentioning it both at the beginning and the end of his comments.)

So long as law enforcement agents are not actively intimidating or disrupting religious services, I don’t see the objection to saying mosques should be under surveillance. Mosques are places of public accommodation and can no more object to the presence of law enforcement than they can to the presence of other kafirs.

Gingrich is not a dumb or impulsive guy… despite having three wives to his credit… he knows that some of this is really out there and he’s playing to Hannity’s audience, which is also Donald Trump’s audience. But the gist behind his proposal is spot on. This nation was built on a specific set of values that developed in Western Europe, and more particularly, Great Britain, over a millennium. Islam is not part of that culture and, if practiced in its native form, it is inimical to the principles under which this nation operates. Sharia is only one part of that incompatibility but it is a good place to start stamping out radical Islam.