Category: Current Affairs

The Last Refuge of a Liberal

The last refuge of a liberal are charges of bigotry and intolerance. Charles Krauthammer:

. . . promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

— Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

— Disgust and alarm with the federal government's unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism. [and racism and xenophobia]

— Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.

— Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.

For just one example of what Krauthammer is rightly protesting, read Robert Reich's Anatomy of Intolerance.  You will note that here as elsewhere in liberal screeds there is no attempt at engaging conservative arguments.  What is offered is name-calling and psychologizing.  According to Reich,

Most Americans approve of Arizona’s new law allowing police to stop anyone who looks Hispanic and demand proof of citizenship.

This is plainly false and looks to be an outright lie.  A man as intelligent and well-informed as Robert Reich cannot possibly be unaware at this late date of the content of AZ SB 1070.  The law does not allow the the police to stop anyone who looks Hispanic to check citizenship status.  It disallows this.  See The Misrepresentations of Arizona SB 1070 Continue.

Robert Royal on the GZM

Here. Excerpt:

If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard enough about the mosque. But the problem for me is that what I’m hearing doesn’t seem to address the main question. When NY Mayor Bloomberg says it’s a tragedy if 9/11 results in the loss of religious liberty – as if Islam were being curtailed here – I feel like I’m listening to a political class that’s taken leave of its senses. To put the matter baldly, some of us now think America is merely a matter of legal precedents, not a human community.

Two things are clear: 1. in America, religious liberty is an unshakeable right and houses of worship may be built, allowing for local zoning laws and other reasonable restrictions; 2. there is reason for doubt whether the mosque should be built, as last week even President Obama was forced to acknowledge.

Liberals have suddenly discovered a virtual absolute right for religion – primarily Islam – to be assertive anywhere, any time. Strange, because the Left has for decades sought to minimize religion in the public square.

Latest example:  Utah crosses ruled unconstitutional. 

Hats Off to Hentoff: “Pols Clueless on Ground Zero Mosque”

Here.  Excerpts:

Imam Rauf has refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization and had no comment when, on Aug. 15, Mahmoud al-Zahar, its co-founder, strongly supported the Imam's mosque near Ground Zero, saying, Muslims "have to build everywhere" (Associated Press, Aug. 16). Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the support by Hamas of the Imam's mosque carried no weight because "Hamas is a terrorist organization."

How's that for bizarro reasoning? Any normal person would take Hamas support for the GZM to be worrisome indeed.  But not Schumer the liberal.  No bigot he.  He takes the fact that Hamas is a terrorist organization as somehow giving us a reason to ignore its support!

This imam – widely lauded in much of the press as "a moderate" Muslim – is not reticent, however, in his firm commitment to Sharia (Islamic law), which regards women as far less than fully human. In the Dec. 9, 2007 Arabic newspaper Hadi el-Islam, Rauf insisted:

Throughout my discussions with contemporary Muslim theologians, it is clear an Islamic state can be established in more than just a single form or mold. It can be established through a kingdom or a democracy. The important issue is to establish the general fundamentals of Sharia that are required to govern.

I would greatly appreciate it if Imam Rauf explained, maybe Pelosi will ask him, more fully what he meant in his 2004 book, "What's Right With Islam is What's Right With America." In it he declares: "American Constitution and system of governance uphold the core principles of Islamic law." Rauf says Sharia law is a core principle of Islamic law. Does that also include a core principle of our Constitution?

The Ground Zero Mosque: The Controversy Continues

And it seems to be heating up as the anniversary of 9/11 approaches.  I suspect dialogue with liberals on this topic is impossible due to what I call the 'two planets problem':  conservatives and liberals live on different planets.  You could cash out the metaphor by saying  that we differ radically in temperament, sense of life, values, and assumptions. But I am getting e-mail from decent and well-intentioned left-leaners who disagree with me about the GZM, so here goes one more time. 

Let's be clear about what the issue is.  To put it as crisply as possible, it is about propriety, not legality.  No one denies that Imam Rauf et al. have the legal right to build their structure on the land they have purchased.  The point is rather that the construction in that place is improper, unwise, provocative, insensitive, not conducive to comity.  To put it aphoristically, what one has a right to do is not always right to do.  But that is to put it too mildly:  the construction of a mosque on that hallowed ground is an outrage to the memories of those who died horrendous deaths on 9/11 because of the acts of Muslim terrorists, terrorists who didn't just happen to be Muslims, but whose terrorist deeds were a direct consequence of their Islamist beliefs. 

Now at this point you either get it or you don't.  A majority of the American people get it, but Obama doesn't.   Lacking the spine to address the real issue — the issue of propriety, not legality — he gave us a lecture on freedom of religion and the First Amendment.  Besides being b-o-r-i-n-g, his pathetic homily amounted to the logical fallacy of ignoratio elenchi.  This fallacy is committed when, mistaking the thesis your interlocutor is advancing, you respond to a distinct thesis that he is not advancing.  We who oppose the GZ mosque do not maintain that its construction is illegal; and because we do not maintain this, Obama and his leftist cohort commit ignoratio elenchi when they insist that it is legal.

Here again we note the 'two planets' problem.'  Leftists just cannot grasp what the issue is as conservatives see it.  Since they do not feel the impropriety of a mosque's being built near Ground Zero, they cannot believe that conservatives feel it either; and so they must interpret the conservative response in some sinister way: as an expression of xenophobia or 'Islamophobia' or nativism or a desire to strip Muslim citizens of their First Amendment rights. 

Supposedly, a major motive behind the construction is to advance interfaith dialogue, to build a bridge between the Muslim and non-Muslim communities.  But this reason is so patently bogus, so obviously insincere, that no intelligent person can credit it.  For it is a well-known fact that a majority of the American people vehemently oppose the GZM.  Given this fact, the construction cannot possibly achieve its stated end of advancing mutual understanding.  So if Rauf and Co. were sincere, they would move to another site.

Here is a little analogy.  Suppose you and I have a falling out, and then I make an attempt at conciliation. I extend my hand to you.  But you have no desire for reconciliation and you refuse to shake hands with me.  So I grab your hand and force you to shake hands with me.  Have I thereby patched things up with you?  Obviously not: I have made them worse.  Same with the GZM.  Once it became clear that the the American people opposed the GZM, Rauf and Co. either should have nixed the project or else had the cojones to say:  we have a legal right to build here and we will do so no matter what you say or how offended you are.

As it is, we have reason to suspect Rauf et al. of deception.

 

Illegal Immigration and Liberal Irresponsibility

Peggy Noonan, America Is at Risk of Boiling Over:

To take just one example from the past 10 days, the federal government continues its standoff with the state of Arizona over how to handle illegal immigration. The point of view of our thought leaders is, in general, that borders that are essentially open are good, or not so bad. The point of view of those on the ground who are anxious about our nation's future, however, is different, more like: "We live in a welfare state and we've just expanded health care. Unemployment's up. Could we sort of calm down, stop illegal immigration, and absorb what we've got?" No is, in essence, the answer.

Exactly right.  One cannot have both an ever-expanding welfare state and a tolerant attitude toward illegal immigration. 

An irony here is that if we stopped the illegal flow and removed the sense of emergency it generates, comprehensive reform would, in time, follow. Because we're not going to send the estimated 10 million to 15 million illegals already here back. We're not going to put sobbing children on a million buses. That would not be in our nature. (Do our leaders even know what's in our nature?) As years passed, those here would be absorbed, and everyone in the country would come to see the benefit of integrating them fully into the tax system. So it's ironic that our leaders don't do what in the end would get them what they say they want, which is comprehensive reform.

Unfortunately, we cannot take at face value what our so-called leaders say they want, especially when they employ gaseous phrases like 'comprehensive immigation reform' which  mean nothing definite.  Obviously, Job One is to stop the influx of illegal aliens.  But try to get someone like Janet 'The System Works'  Napolitano to admit that.  She won't, not in a million years.  It's not in her interest, since illegal aliens are most of them 'undocumented Democrats,' i.e., potential members of her party.  Recently she dodged the fence question with the asinine response, "You can't stop 'em all."  On her JackAss (Democrat) logic, if you can't stop 'em all –which is true — then there is no point in enforcing the border so as to stop more than are being stopped now.

Once Job One is done, then we can advance to the question of how to normalize and integrate the 10-15 million whom we have allowed to enter illegally.  Noonan is absolutely right: we are not going to deport them, nor — I would argue — should we.  Conservative bomb-throwers such as Ann Coulter who call for deportation are almost as irresponsible as Obama and Co.  (To set forth my reasons why we ought not deport  millions of otherwise law-abiding illegals who contribute to our economy and have children who are U S citizens requires a separate post.)

Lest my conservative friends fear that I am turning into a squishy bien-pensant latte-sipping liberal, let me throw this into the mix: the law that allows the U.S. -born offspring of illegal aliens to gain immediate citizenship needs to be changed. 

 

Paradoxes of Illegal Immigration

Philosophers hate a contradiction, but love a paradox.  There are paradoxes everywhere, in the precincts of the most abstruse as well as in the precincts of the prosaic.  Here are eight paradoxes of illegal immigration suggested to me by Victor Davis Hanson.    The titles and formulations are my own.  For good measure, I add a ninth, of my own invention. 

The Paradox of Profiling.  Racial profiling is supposed to   be verboten.  And yet it is employed by American border guards when they nab and deport thousands of illegal border crossers.  Otherwise, how could they pick out illegals from citizens who are merely in the vicinity of the border?  How can what is permissible near the border be impermissible far from it in, say, Phoenix?  At what distance  does permissibility transmogrify into impermissibility?  If a border patrolman may profile why may not a highway patrolman? Is legal permissibility within a state indexed to spatiotemporal position and variable with variations in the latter?

The Paradox of Encroachment.  The Federal government sues the state of Arizona for upholding Federal immigration law on the ground that it is an encroachment upon Federal jurisdiction.  But sanctuary cities flout Federal law by not allowing the enforcement of Federal immigration statutes.  Clearly, impeding the enforcement of Federal laws is far worse than duplicating and perhaps interfering with Federal law enforcement efforts.  And yet the Feds go after Arizona while ignoring sanctuary cities.  Paradoxical, eh?

The Paradox of Blaming the Benefactor.  Millions flee Mexico for the U.S. because of the desirability of living and working here and the undesirability of living in a crime-ridden, corrupt, and impoverished country.  So what does Mexican president Felipe Calderon do?  Why, he criticizes the U.S. even though the U.S.  provides to his citizens what he and his government cannot! And what do many Mexicans do?  They wave the Mexican flag in a country whose laws they violate and from whose toleration they benefit.

The Paradox of Differential Sovereignty and Variable Border Violability.  Apparently, some states are more sovereign than others.  The U.S., for some reason, is less sovereign than  Mexico, which is highly intolerant of invaders from Central America.  Paradoxically, the violability of a border is a function of the countries between which the border falls.

The Paradox of Los Locos Gringos.  The gringos are crazy, and racist xenophobes to boot, inasmuch as 70% of them demand border security and support AZ SB 1070.  Why then do so many Mexicans want to live among the crazy gringos? 

The Paradox of Supporting While Stiffing the Working Stiff.  Liberals have traditionally been for the working man.  But by being soft on illegal immigration they help drive down the hourly wages of the working poor north of the Rio Grande.  (As I have said in other posts, there are liberal arguments against illegal immigration, and here are the makings of one.)

The Paradox of Penalizing the Legal while Tolerating the Illegal.   Legal immigrants face hurdles and long waits while illegals are tolerated.  But liberals are supposed to be big on fairness.  How fair is this?

The Paradox of Subsidizing a Country Whose Citizens Violate our Laws.  "America extends housing, food and education subsidies to illegal aliens in need. But Mexico receives more than $20 billion in American remittances a year — its second-highest source of foreign exchange, and almost all of it from its own nationals living in the United States."  So the U.S. takes care of illegal aliens from a failed state while subsidizing that state, making it more dependent, and less likely to clean up its act. 

The Paradox of the Reconquista.  Some Hispanics claim that the Southwest and California were 'stolen' from Mexico by the gringos.  Well, suppose that this vast chunk of real estate had not been 'stolen' and now belonged to Mexico.  Then it would be as screwed up as the rest of Mexico: as economically indigent, as politically corrupt, as crime-ridden, as drug-infested.  Illegal immigrants from southern Mexico would then, in that counterfactual scenario,  have farther to travel to get to the U.S., and there would be less of the U.S. for their use and enjoyment.  The U.S. would be able to take in fewer of them.  They would be worse off.  So if Mexico were to re-conquer the lands 'stolen' from it, then it would make itself worse off than it is now.  Gaining territory it would lose ground — if I may put paradoxically the Paradox of the Reconquista.

Exercise for the reader:  Find more paradoxes!

 

Still More on the Ground Zero Mosque

Dorothy Rabinowitz, Liberal Piety and the Memory of 9/11:

In the plan for an Islamic center and mosque some 15 stories high to be built near Ground Zero, the full force of politically correct piety is on display along with the usual unyielding assault on all dissenters. The project has aroused intense opposition from New Yorkers and Americans across the country. It has also elicited remarkable streams of oratory from New York's political leaders, including Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

"What are we all about if not religious freedom?" a fiery Mr. Cuomo asked early in this drama. Mr. Cuomo, running for governor, has since had less to say.

Messrs. Cuomo and Bloomberg need to be reminded that one cannot derive a 'freedom of unlimited construction' from freedom of religion.  Yes, we Americans are for freedom of religion.  It is enshrined in our Constitution in the very first clause of the very first Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."  Those Muslims who are U. S. citizens enjoy the right to the free exercise of their religion.  But that is not to say that they can do anything anywhere or build anything anywhere.  Or do they have special rights and privileges not granted to Jews and Christians and Buddhists?  Is one of these rights the right to offend with impunity the majority of the citizens of a country that is the most tolerant that has ever existed?  Correct me if I am wrong, but would the Islamic Republic of Iran tolerate the building of a huge synagogue in Teheran? Is there perhaps a double-standard here?

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser—devout Muslim, physician, former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy—says there is every reason to investigate the center's funding under the circumstances. Of the mosque so near the site of the 9/11 attacks, he notes "It will certainly be seen as a victory for political Islam."

Exactly right.  You are very naive if you assume that being conciliatory toward a person or group of persons will in every case cause that person or group to be conciliatory in return.  Not so!  There are people who take conciliation and tolerance and respect for diversity as signs of weakness.  These people are only emboldened in their aggressiveness by your broadmindedness.  It is therefore folly to be too conciliatory.  Jasser is right: a mosque near Ground Zero will be taken as a victory for political Islam.  It will embolden Islamists worldwide.  It may even contribute to there being more Islamo-terrorist attacks in the U.S. and in the West generally.

One of the problems with liberals is their diversity fetish.  It is on clear display in Thomas Friedman's recent NYT commentary on the GZM debate.  He thinks that blocking construction amounts to resistance to diversity!  A slap in the face of openness and inclusion!  What liberals like him can't understand is that diversity, though admittedly a value, is not an absolute value: there are competing values.

It looks as if the mosque will be built.  Well, if it helps defeat the Left in Novermber, then it will have served a worthwhile purpose.

Mel Gibson, Misplaced Moral Enthusiasm, and Real Threats

Mel Gibson is in the news again.  What I said about him on 1 August 2006 bears repeating:

What's worse: Driving while legally drunk at 87 miles per hour in a 45 mph zone, or making stupid anti-Semitic remarks? The former, obviously. And yet a big stink is being made about  Gibson's drunken rant. I call this misplaced moral enthusiasm.

Calling a Jew a bad name won't kill him, but running him over in your speeding 2006 Lexus LS 430 will. On the one hand, offensive words that no reasonable person could take seriously; on the other hand, a deed that could get people killed.

Here is what Gibson said: "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," and, addressing the arresting officer, "Are you a Jew?" Now compare Gibson with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who repeatedly has called for the destruction of the State of Israel. Ahmadinejad's is speech that incites unspeakable violence, unlike Gibson's drunken rant which is no threat to anyone. So let's forget about Gibson, and concentrate on real threats.

Can Federalism Save Us?

I fear that we are coming apart as a nation.   We are disagreeing about things we ought not be disagreeing about, such as the need to secure the borders.  The rifts are deep and nasty.  Polarization and demonization of the opponent are the order of the day.   Do you want more of this?  Then give government more say in your life.  The bigger the government, the more to fight over.  Do you want less?  Then support limited government and federalism.  A return to federalism may be a way to ease the tensions, not that I am sanguine about any solution. 

Federalism, roughly, is (i) a form of political organization in which governmental power is divided among a central government and various constituent governing entities such as states, counties, and cities; (ii) subject to the proviso that both the central and the constituent governments retain their separate identities and assigned duties. A government that is not a federation would allow for the central government to create and reorganize constituent governments at will and meddle in their affairs.  Federalism is implied by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." 

Federalism would make for less contention, because people who support high taxes and liberal schemes could head for states like Massachusetts or California, while the  conservatively inclined who support gun rights and capital punishment could gravitate toward states like Texas. 

The fact of the matter is that we do not agree on a large number of divisive, passion-inspiring issues (abortion, gun rights, capital punishment, affirmative action, legal and illegal immigration, taxation, wealth redistribution, the purposes and limits, if any, of governmental power  . . .) and we will never agree on them.  These are not merely 'academic' issues since they directly affect the lives and livelihoods and liberties of people.  And they are not easily resolved because they are deeply rooted  in fundamental worldview differences.  When you violate a man's liberty, or mock his moral sense, or threaten to destroy his way of life, you are spoiling for a fight and you will get it.

Worldview differences in turn reflect differences  in values.  Now values are not like tastes.  Tastes cannot be reasonably discussed and disputed  while values can.  (De gustibus non est disputandum.) But value differences, though they can be fruitfully discussed,  cannot be objectively resolved because any attempted resolution will end up relying on higher-order value judgments.  There is no exit from the axiological circle.  We can articulate and defend our values and clarify our value differences.  What we cannot do is resolve our value differences to the satisfaction of all sincere, intelligent, and informed discussants. 

Consider religion.  Is it a value or not?  Conservatives, even those who are atheistic and irreligious, tend to view religion as a value, as conducive to human flourishing.  Liberals and leftists tend to view it as a disvalue, as something that impedes human flourishing.  The question is not whether religion, or rather some particular religion, is true.  Nor is  the question whether religion, or some particular religion, is rationally defensible.  The question is whether the teaching and learning and practice of a religion contributes to our well-being, not just as individuals, but in our relations with others.  For example,  would we be better off as a society if every vestige of religion were removed from the public square?  Does Bible study tend to make us better people?

For a conservative like Dennis Prager, the answer to both questions is obvious.  As I recall, he gives an example something like the following.  You are walking down the street in a bad part of town.  On one side of the street  people are leaving a Bible study class.  On the other side, a bunch of  Hells [sic] Angels are coming out of the PussyCat Lounge.  Which side of the street do you want to be on?  For a conservative the answer is obvious.  People who study the Bible with its Ten Commandments, etc. are less likely to mug or injure you than drunken bikers who have been getting in touch with their inner demons  for the last three hours.  But of course this little thought experiment won't cut any ice with a dedicated leftist.

I won't spell out the leftist response.  I will say only that you will enter a morass of consideration and counter-consideration that cannot be objectively adjudicated.

My thesis is that there can be no objective resolution, satisfactory to every sincere, intelligent, and well-informed discussant, of the question of the value of religion.  And this is a special case of a general thesis about the objective insolubility of value questions with respect to the  issues that most concern us.

Another  sort of value difference concerns not what we count as values, but how we weight  or prioritize them.  Presumably both conservatives and liberals value both liberty and security.  But they will differ bitterly over which trumps the other and in what circumstances.  Here too it is naive to  expect an objective resolution of the issue satisfactory to all participants, even those who meet the most stringent standards of moral probity, intellectual acuity, knowledgeability with respect to relevant empirical issues, etc.

Liberal and conservative, when locked in polemic, like to call each other stupid.  But of course intelligence or the lack thereof has nothing to do with the intractability of the debates.  The intractability is rooted in value differences about which consensus is impossible.  On the abortion question, for example, there is no empirical evidence that can resolve the dispute.  Empirical data from biology and other sciences are of course relevant to the correct formulation of the problem, but contribute nothing to its resolution.  Nor can reason whose organon  is logic resolve the dispute.  You would have to be as naive as Ayn Rand to think that Reason dictates a solution.

Recognizing these facts, we must ask ourselves: How can we keep from tearing each other apart literally or figuratively?  Guns, God, abortion, illegal immigration — these are issues that get the blood up.  I am floating the suggestion that federalism and severe limitations on the reach of the central government are what we need to lessen tensions. 

Example:  Suppose Roe v. Wade is overturned and the question of the legality of abortion is returned to the states.  Some states will make it legal, others illegal.  This would be a modest step in the direction of mitigating the tensions between the warring camps.  If abortion is a question for the states, then no federal monies could be allocated to the support of abortion.  People who want to live in abortion states can move there; people who don't can move to states in which abortion is illegal. Each can live with their own kind and avoid having their values and sensibilities disrespected.

I understand that my proposal will not be acceptable to either liberals or conservatives.  Both want to use the power of the central government to enforce what they consider right.  Both sides are convinced that they are right.  But of course they cannot both be right.  So how do they propose to heal the splits in the body politic?

A Mosque Grows Near Brooklyn

Here.  Where is the money coming from?

Sarah Palin calls the building of this mosque an "unnecessary provocation."  As opposed to what, a necessary provocation?  But don't let Palin's infelicitous language distract you from the serious point she is making.  It is indeed  a  provocation, and the Islamists are testing us to see how far they can go and to see how weak and supine we are.  Will New Yorkers, sophisticated liberal fools that  many of them are, put up with this abomination a couple of blocks away from where their fellow citizens died horrible deaths because of a terrorist attack fueled by Islamist ideology?

The fact that the building of this mosque will be perceived as a provocation by a majority is sufficient reason to block its construction.  How can its construction do anything to improve relations between decent Muslims and the rest of us?

The first clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the "free exercise" of religion.  True.  But is Islam a religion?  You will say, "of course!"  But perhaps you should be a bit more thoughtful.  Islam is a political ideology as much as it is a religion, and in this respect it is unlike Buddhism, or Christianity, or Judaism.  I have never heard any Jew call for the destruction of any Islamic state.  Muslims, however, routinely call for the destruction of the Jewish state.  When I lived in Turkey in the mid-nineties I was warned that preaching Christianity there could get one thrown in prison — not that I was about to do any such thing.  And Turkey in those days was a relatively 'enlightened' country compared to the rest of the non-Jewish Middle East. 

Muslims aren't very 'liberal,' are they?    They are intolerant in their attitudes and their behavior.  Now the touchstone of classical liberalism is toleration.  Toleration is good, but it has limits.  (See the posts in the category Toleration.)  So why should we tolerate them when they work to undermine our way of life?  The U. S. Constitution is not a suicide pact.  We are under no obligation to tolerate the intolerant. 

I said above that Islam is as much a political ideology as a religion. That is reflected in the fact that they have nothing like our church-state separation.  And please note that church-state separation has a good foundation in the New Testament at Matthew 22: 21: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to God the the things that are God's."  Please point me to the Koranic verse that enshrines the same idea.

Apologists say that Islam is a religion of peace.  Now 'peace' may be one of the meanings of Islam, but its dominant meaning is 'submission to the will of Allah as revealed to the propher Muhammad in the Koran.'  Let us also not forget that Muhammad was a warrior.  Was Jesus a warrior?  Buddha?  A religion founded by a warrior.  An interesting concept, that.  Somehow, I am more drawn to a religion whose founder says, "He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword."

So here is something to think about. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion.  But to apply the Amendment, one must raise and answer the logically prior question, What is a religion?    I rather doubt that the Founders had Islam in mind when they ensured the right to the free exercise of religion.  So we need to ask the question whether Islam counts as a religion in a sufficiently robust sense of the term to justify affording it full First Amendment protection.  To the extent that Muslims work to infiltrate and overturn our institutions and way of life, to the extent that they violate church-state separation, to the extent that they demand special privileges and refuse to assimilate, to that extent they remove  themselves from any right to First Amendment protection.

Addendum and Corrigendum (7/22)

I made a mistake in the last paragraph that I will now correct.  Although the sentence "I rather doubt that the Founders had Islam in mind when they ensured the right to the free exercise of religion" was true when I wrote it, expressing as it did a fact about my mental state, I now see that it is simply false that the Founders did not have Islam in mind.  See The Founding Fathers and Islam.  I thank Mark Whitten for the correction. 

But I do not retract my main point, which is that we ought to give careful thought to the question whether, as I put it above, "Islam counts as a religion in a sufficiently robust sense of the term to justify affording it full First Amendment protection. "  I am raising this as a question.  So-called liberals, however, being politically correct and therefore opposed to truly open discussion, will no doubt haul out their list of abusive epithets: racist, xenophobe, Islamophobe . . . .

I should point out that 'Islamophobe,' a term employed by the benighted Karen Armstrong, the renegade nun, is a particularly silly expression that only a liberal could love.  A phobia is an irrational fear.  If you use the word in any other way you are misusing it.  Fear of militant Islam is a rational fear.  One would hope that Armstrong, a Brit, would have a better grip on the English language.  These' -phobe' constructions are a dead giveaway that one is dealing with a PC liberal.  Take 'homophobia.'  Those who oppose homosexual practices neither fear it nor fear it irrationally.  Some have arguments against it.  In this case, then, the construction is doubly idiotic.  As for 'xenophobe,' that is a real word of English, but our benighted liberal pals seem not to know what it means.  It means 'irrational fear of foreigners.'  It does not mean 'someone who combats liberal-left nonsense.'  As one who has travelled the world and has lived for extended periods in Austria, Germany, and Turkey, I am hardly one who could be called a xenophobe.  Someone who opposes the infiltration of  his country by militant Muslims is not a xenophobe:  his fear is rational and it is directed not at Muslims qua Muslims but at Muslims qua militant subversives.

Over at Gnosis and Noesis, Professor Richard Hennessey rather pedantically and uncharitably picks at my "Muslims aren't very 'liberal,' are they?"  Do I mean that no Muslim is liberal?  Of course not.  A universal proposition can be refuted by a single counterexample.  (And it is worth noting en passant that a necessary universal proposition can be refuted by a single merely possible counterexample.)  Since it is obviously false that no Muslim is liberal, it is uncharitable to take my sentence as expressing that proposition.

One cannot assume that a sentence of the form Fs are Gs is always elliptical for a sentence of the form All Fs are Gs, or that a sentence of the form Fs are not Gs is always elliptical for a sentence of the form No Fs are Gs.  For example, 'Old people go to bed early' would not naturally be taken to mean that all old people go to bed early, which is plainly false, but that most do, or that old people tend to go to be early, or something similar.

Professor Hennessey seems also to be ignoring the context of my remarks, which is the construction of  mega-mosque near Ground Zero.  That, I submit, is an outrageous  provocation, a bit like building a Japanese  Shinto shrine in close proximity to the U.S.S. Arizona. (See here.)  I don't see how any rational person can fail to see that or fail to see that such a project cannot possibly bring together moderate Muslims and the rest of us.  And so it is reasonable to interpret the project as an initiative on the part of militant Muslims to take advantage of our tolerance and naivete in order to spread their religion and culture whose values are antithetic both to the Judeo-Christian tradition and to our Enlightenment values.

So that is the context in which a sentence like "They are intolerant in their attitudes and their behavior" is to be read.  The 'they' refers to militant Muslims: Muhammad Atta and the boys,  their enablers and supporters, those who flog and stone to death adulterers, those who would would impose Sharia, the clitorectomists, the Muslim fathers who murder their own daughters for adopting Western ways.  Our constitution forbids "cruel and unusual punishment."  Perhaps Hennessey can point me to the passage in the Koran that does the same.  And then there are Muslim taxicab drivers who refuse to pick up blind people with seeing eye dogs because of some lunatic Muslim aversion to dogs.  Others won't transport a person who has an alcoholic beverage in a closed container. That sort of fanaticism has no place in America.  I could go on, but the point is clear.

Just at the threat to the West in the 20th century was Communism, the threat to the West in the 21st is radical Islam. Both are totalitarian and internationalist.  Both are extremely skillful in recruiting young fanatic followers.  In one way the threat posed by militant Islam is far more dangerous than that posed by the Commies.  The Commies, being atheists and materialists, had a good reason not to deploy their nukes.  Muslims have no such reason.  (And it seems clear that they will soon be getting nukes thanks to Obama the Appeaser.) They are eager to move on to their crude paradise wherein they will disport endlessly with black-eyed virgins and get to wallow in the sensuousness that is forbidden them here.

For more on this delightful topic, see my Islamism category.

Is Rhode Island in Violation of the Supremacy Clause?

Rhode_island%20coin Rhode Island is already doing what Arizona is fixin' to do come the end of this month. As William A. Jacobson, Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Cornell Law School,  reports over at Legal Insurrection, ". . . Rhode Island already has implemented the critical piece of the Arizona law [S.B. 1070], checking the immigration status of people stopped for traffic violations where there is a reasonable suspicion, and reporting all illegals to federal authorities for deportation."

Will Eric Holder and colleagues at the DOJ be going after Rhode Island?  If not, why not?  I'm not legally trained, but isn't there supposed to be something wrong with selective enforcement? Isn't there something objectionable about suing Arizona for a violation of the Supremacy Clause of the U. S. Constitution while turning a blind eye to Rhode Island, not to mention those sanctuary cities such as Los Angeles which are, because of their sanctuary laws, really in violation of the Clause in question?

One gets the impression that the reasons adduced in the complaint are just a smokescreen to hide venal and  'political' motives.  A need to curry favor with Hispanics in order to stay in office?  A desire to flood the country with potential Democrats so as to secure a permanent victory for the Left?

Actually, the latter is what this is all about to anyone astute enough to penetrate the thick veil of liberal-left mendacity.  Obama and the boys have no desire to control the border or solve the problem of illegal immigration. This is why they mouth and hide behind the vacuous phrase 'comprehensive immigation reform.'  Like 'change,' it means nothing definite.  To them, that is a virtue allowing as it does for maximal obfuscation.


Gallup Poll: Americans Oppose Federal Suit Against AZ Immigration Law

Here.  The notion that the Obama Justice Department would waste millions suing  a state for passing a law that mirrors the content of a Federal law is absurd on the face of it, especially when the same Justice Department turns a blind eye to sanctuary laws which actually do violate the Supremacy Clause; but also from a purely political standpoint the suit is idotic harming as it does the Dems' chances in the November elections and beyond.

By the way, did you see Sarah Palin on The O'Reilly Factor tonight?  Mr. Bill did a good job grilling her and exposing the shallowness of her thinking about illegal immigration. She has obviously given little thought to the problem of the 12 or so million illegals already in the country, many of whom stay out of trouble, have jobs, and have children who are U. S. citizens.

The Empty Suit Suit: U.S. vs. Arizona

The ridiculous lawsuit the DOJ is bringing against Arizona could be called the 'empty suit suit' inasmuch as  behind it are a bunch of empty suits in line behind the Empty Suit in Chief. See Lawrence Auster, The Gravamen of the DOJ's Case Against Arizona.

It is nice to know that not everything in The Arizona Republic, the local rag of record, is liberal-left buncombe.  See Chuck Coughlin, Secure Border Can Provide Big Dividends.  But the journalistic crapweasels of The AZ Republic really do deserve our contempt.  How many weeks did it take them before they began correctly reporting the content of S.B. 1070?  Like Eric Holder, Janet Napolitano, and Obama, they apparently believed that one can speak responsibly about something about which one knows nothing.  But I do admit that the aforesaid journalistic crapweasels have cleaned up their act somewhat.  One wonders what goes on in the J-schools around the land.  I'm not sure I want to know.

While I'm on the illegal immigration topic, let me draw your attention to Heather Mac Donald's The Illegal Alien Crime Wave.  Here is but one of her astute observations:

But however pernicious in themselves, sanctuary rules are a symptom of a much broader disease: the nation’s near-total loss of control over immigration policy. Fifty years ago, immigration policy might have driven immigration numbers, but today the numbers drive policy. The nonstop increase of immigration is reshaping the language and the law to dissolve any distinction between legal and illegal aliens and, ultimately, the very idea of national borders.

That's certainly right: the numbers now drive the policy.  And it may be  too late to stop the illegal immigrant juggernaut which is of course aided and abetted by the intellectually irresponsible elision of the legal/illegal distinction by its  liberal-left enablers.