President George W. Bush sounded like the voice of reason in the days immediately after 9/11.

We aren’t fighting Islam, the president said. We are fighting those who have perverted a great religion, he added. “Islam means ‘peace,'” he cautioned.

The response today among some of the individuals seeking the Republican nomination for president? Let’s keep eyes on all Muslims. Kids. Moms and dads. Old folks. All of ’em!

Let’s mount an aggressive “surveillance” campaign against them, says Donald Trump.

OK, so let’s all live in abject fear, shall we?

To do that we’ll need to stay away from schools, churches, movie theaters, shopping malls … places where violence has erupted in this country already. As near as I can tell, none of those incidents involved foreign terrorists. They all were done by home-grown, corn-fed good old American terrorists, who sought to exact revenge on innocent people.

Would those who comprise today’s Republican base believe the rational views — about the identity of the enemy we are fighting — expressed by the president who took us to war in the first place?

My gut tells me “no.”