Still, I find the editorial as a whole deeply wrongheaded, in large part because it strips away or ignores indispensable context. And I hope its authors will reconsider.

* * *

The most glaring flaw in the editorial is its characterization of what befell green-card holders, which I wrote about in “A Betrayal of Legal Immigrants Who Followed the Rules.” To say that “confusion” surrounded whether these legal, permanent residents would be affected, and that it took 24 hours “to clarify” that it was not the case, implies that the Trump administration never meant to bar their entry.

It would be more accurate to say that the executive order erected a new barrier that kept green-card holders from entering the U.S.; that the Department of Homeland Security and a senior White House official both stated that green-card holders would be barred; that John Kelly, the new head of the Department of Homeland Security, reversed that position on green-card holders in a statement issued on Sunday evening; and that the reversal doesn’t clarify that green-card holders were never affected by the executive order, it affirms that the order covers them, but adds that the new waivers they must now request if they travel abroad will be granted.

Now a question for the editors of National Review.

If not for the public-interest attorneys and journalists rushing to airports to speak with the family members of green-card holders about their unconscionable treatment, the legal challenges filed by non-profit organizations funded by the public, and the masses of outraged Americans who gathered at those same airports to protest, are you sure that the Trump administration would’ve reversed course?

The fact that the reversal on green-card holders occurred suggests at least the possibility that the people who congregated in hopes of that outcome were sober in their assessment of reality, and that the real knee-jerk response here is National Review’s temperamental aversion to anything that smacks of leftist street protests, especially when the protests are informed by a belief that the U.S. government is engaged in bigotry. In various instances I have critiqued charges of bigotry. Here I am baffled by National Review’s confidence in dismissing the possibility that this executive order springs from anti-Muslim bigotry, and is an attempt to ban Muslims to the extent possible in a nation that would resist a naked, total attempt.

I agree we cannot call that established fact.

And the conservatives declaring that this is “not a Muslim ban” are correct in noting, as I’ve done in my coverage, that the executive order doesn’t affect people from many majority Muslim countries, like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and that even with respect to the affected countries it is billed as a temporary measure to make sure adequate security measures are in place, not a permanent ban on those nationalities.