A couple of weeks ago, I saw a prominent American — foreign-born — in the airport. I have thought of her again in the last couple of days.

Years ago — like 20 — she was at a dinner party with a colleague of mine. Suddenly, she turned to him and said, “Tell me, what is your religion?” My colleague was a bit flustered. He commented later, “Americans don’t do that.”

Some Americans do, I know — but my colleague had a point, about an ethos.

Donald Trump has a habit of bringing up his opponents’ religions, when those opponents are challenging him in the polls. He doesn’t do it in a nice way. I mentioned this in a Corner post yesterday.

Funny, but I’ve never thought of Trump as particularly religion-oriented. It seems to me that his god is himself.

One of the most frustrating things about Trump’s candidacy is that it’s known as “conservative.” I guess Trump thinks of himself as conservative, and I guess his followers feel the same way: about their man and themselves.

Leaving Trump’s policy positions to one side (his enthusiasm for “takings” and the Kelo decision, for example): What about the question of character?

For years, the Left has charged that conservatism and loutishness go together. And whenever you pointed to someone such as Bill Buckley or Irving Kristol, they said, “Yeah, but those are rare exceptions.” You know something about the Right? Many of them actually agree with the Left that true conservatives are indeed louts, à la Trump.

Mitt Romney may call for “self-deportation.” But unless he does it loutishly — as vulgarly and nastily as possible — is he really a conservative?

In TrumpWorld, Trump and the Trumpsters are conservative, and George F. Will, say, is not. Will knows more about conservatism in a follicle of his hair than the Trump army does collectively.

TrumpWorld is not so much conservative as Wallace-ite — and I mean George Wallace, of course, not Henry (who was worse).

By the way, do you remember what Trump said about Romney and the Republicans after the 2012 election? “Republicans didn’t have anything going for them with respect to Latinos and with respect to Asians. The Democrats didn’t have a policy for dealing with illegal immigrants, but what they did have going for them is they weren’t mean-spirited about it. They didn’t know what the policy was, but what they were is, they were kind.”

Romney, said Trump, “had a crazy policy of self-deportation, which was maniacal. It sounded as bad as it was, and he lost all of the Latino vote. He lost the Asian vote. He lost everybody who is inspired to come into this country.”

Uh-huh.

One more thing: After a particularly deranged and hateful outburst from Trump, Ben Carson said, “Pray for him.” Now that is American.

(Disclosure.)