Leftism and Political Correctness – Page 52

My Rabbi

I am not now, and never have been, a Jew either religiously or ethnically, and it is certain that I shall never become one ethnically, and exceedingly probable that I shall never become one religiously. But if I were a Jew, and if Dennis Prager were a rabbi, then I should like to have him as my rabbi.

He often remarks, rightly, that there is no wisdom on the Left. He's right. But there is wisdom in him and his broadcasts. Tune into his 'Happiness Hour' sometime. And then try to dismiss conservative talk radio as 'hate radio' as so many contemptible liberals do.

I have in my hands Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America (Henry Holt 2009, color-coding in original). On the frontispiece: "To complainers everywhere: Turn up the volume!" The book does contain some worthwhile observations, but only a liberal could employ a subtitle and motto like these. (Even if the publisher chose the title, Ehrenreich had to approve it.) Here we see a fundamental and unbridgeable temperamental difference between conservatives and leftists, between adults and perpetual adolescents. Yes, I do mean that polemically. There is a place for polemic. More polemic later.

The Liberal Debating Manual

From the The Liberal Debating Manual (San Francisco: PeeCee Publishers, 2010):

No matter what position your conservative opponent takes on any issue, choose one or more epithets from the following list and label him with it:

Racist, bigot, fascist, sexist, intolerant, homophobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic.

Mix and match, and repeat as necessary. Never ever engage conservative arguments. To do so is to admit that your enemy is a rational being with a point of view worth considering. Never credit a conservative with reason, moral decency or intellectual insight. The smear is extremely effective if repeated often enough. Never miss an opportunity to play the race card. Insult and demean. Tea-Partiers are 'teabaggers.' If they reply in kind, act shocked and insist on the double-standard: we are morally and intellectually superior people while you are scum. How can you object when we call you what you are: bigots, racists, scumbags?

Keep your eye on the prize and never forget that winning is all that counts. The end justifies the means. Example here.

Oikophobia

Here.

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.

More on ‘Suicide Bomber’/’Homicide Bomber’

I have been receiving e-mail about my earlier post on this topic. Here is one letter:

I fear you may have been a little harsh on Bill Keller in your recent post about the virtues of calling suicide bombers 'homicide bombers'. Whilst I accept the conceptual and definitional analysis of the terms, surely the simple point is that ANY bomber who kills other humans is a homicide bomber, but it is only the suicide bomber who kills himself/herself and other humans. The term 'suicide bomber', in my opinion, is perfectly apt as it emphasises that this individual was prepared to kill himself/herself in the pursuit of killing others (rather than planting a bomb and detonating it remotely, for example). It may not be conceptually neat, but it's a worthy distinction to make, and one that is obscured by the term 'homicide bomber'.

Since the point I have just made is so simple and luminous, it is reasonable to conjecture that you were blinded to its alethic luminosity by your right-wing bias, a bias that is reinforced on a quotidian basis by the crowd you run with.

I really enjoy reading the blog.

Very clever. I see your point, but let's think about it a bit more. There are three cases: (1) the bomber who kills himself while killing others; (2) the bomber who kills himself without killing others; (3) the bomber who kills others without killing himself. In all three cases the bomber is a homicide bomber. In the first two cases, the bomber is a suicide bomber. Because 'suicide bomber' applies in both the first and the second cases, the term 'suicide bomber' does not distinguish between them. To that extent 'suicide bomber' is not sufficiently precise.

You write, ". . . it is only the suicide bomber who kills himself/herself and other humans." Not so: you are ignoring case (2). Case (2) splits into two subcases: (2a) the bomber intends to blow only himself up and succeeds; (2b) the bomber intends to blow himself and others up, but succeeds only in blowing himself up.

Consider an example. A Palestinian Arab walks into a Tel Aviv pizza parlor and detonates his explosive belt killing himself and 100 Israelis. It would be misleading to say that this man has committed suicide even though he assuredly has, given that suicide is the intentional taking of one's own life. It is misleading because he hasn't merely killed himself, he has killed himself in order to commit mass murder.

As a conservative, I detect left-wing bias in the use of 'suicide bomber' in a case like this. It is biased because it plays down the element of mass murder of others. It puts the emphasis on the poor terrorist — a product of oppressive circumstances we will be told — instead of where it belongs, on the slaughter of civilians. So from my conservative point of view, 'homicide bomber' seems more apt. This is reinforced by the linguistic fact that when one hears 'suicide' one does not usually think of homicide even though suicide is a form of homicide. The word 'homicide' in ordinary English carries the connotation of the killing of others. If a man commits suicide we typically do not say that he committed homicide, and if a man commits homicide we do not normally think of the case in which he commits homicide by committing suicide.

I will concede to you, though, that since 'homicide bomber' covers all three cases, it fails to convey the notion that the terrorist killed himself in order to kill others. So we may have a stand-off here: neither of us can compellingly show that the other's usage is incorrect or to avoided.

‘Suicide Bomber’ or ‘Homicide Bomber’?

Bill Keller is the Executive Editor of the New York Times. I saw him on C-Span 1 on the morning of 1 September 2004. In response to a caller who brought up the issue of liberal bias in the NYT, Keller rightly pointed out that political opponents often try to seize control of the terminology in which debates are couched in order to gain an advantage over their adversaries. As one might expect, the examples he chose favored his liberal tilt. Thus he mentioned the Republican use of 'death tax' to refer to what is more commonly known as the estate tax, as well as the fairly recent tendency of Republicans and conservatives generally to use 'Democrat Party' instead of the more traditional 'Democratic Party.' I'll return to these examples in a moment; it is Keller's third example, however, that inspired this post.

Keller took exception to the practice of some conservatives who label what are more commonly known as suicide bombers as 'homicide bombers,' claiming that 'suicide bombers' is the correct term. Keller claimed in effect that a person who blows himself up is a suicide bomber, not a homicide bomber.

This is a clear example of muddled thinking. Note first that anyone who commits suicide ipso facto commits homicide.* If memory serves, St. Augustine somewhere argues against suicide using this very point. The argument goes something like this: (1) Homicide is wrong; (2) Suicide is a case of homicide; ergo, (3) Suicide is wrong. One can easily see from this that every suicide bomber is a homicide bomber. Indeed, this is an analytic proposition, and so necessarily true.

More importantly, the suicide bombers with whom we are primarily concerned murder not only themselves but other people as well. As a matter of fact, almost every suicide bomber is a homicide bomber not just in the sense that he kills himself, but also in the sense that he kills others. There are two points here. As a matter of conceptual necessity, every suicide bomber is a homicide bomber. And as a matter of contingent fact, every suicide bomber, with the exception of a few solitary individuals, is a homicide bomber.

Keller missed both of these points. Had he seen them, he would have appreciated that 'homicide bomber' is a perfectly accurate expression free of ideological taint. He would have seen that every suicide bomber is a homicide bomber, though not conversely. He would have grasped that suicide bombers are a proper subset of homicide bombers. (S is a proper subset of T iff S is a subset of T but S is not identical to T.)

Since the points I have just made are so simple and luminous, it is reasonable to conjecture that Keller was blinded to their alethic luminosity by his liberal bias, a bias that is reinforced on a quotidian basis by the crowd he runs with. As to the other two examples, I am willing to concede that 'death tax' is inaccurate. It is not the event of dying that is being taxed, but the transfer of wealth that occurs on the occasion of dying when the wealth is greater than a certain amount. But calling the Democrat Party the Democrat Party is as accurate as can be. For it makes it clear that 'Democrat Party' is a proper name as opposed to a description. 'Democratic Party,' however, suggests that there is a description satisfaction of which is necessary for 'Democratic Party' to have a referent – which is false. 'Democratic Party' refers to what it refers to even if the referent fails to be democratic. They are a pack of elitists, scarcely democratic. Dropping the '___ic' makes this clear.

_________________

*Since the reference class for the sake of this discussion is human beings, we needn't consider such counterexamples as that of the nonhuman extraterrestrial who commits suicide, or the terrestrial nonhuman (a dolphin perhaps) who does so. If Star Trek's Mr. Spock or Dolly the Dolphin commit suicide, they do not thereby commit homicide.

What Explains Islamist-Leftist Collaboration?

An analysis by Daniel Pipes. Excerpt:

Why, then, the formation of what David Horowitz calls the Left-Islamist "unholy alliance"? For four main reasons.

First, as British politician George Galloway explains, "the progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same enemies," namely Western civilization in general and the United States, Great Britain, and Israel in particular, plus Jews, believing Christians, and international capitalists. In Iran, according to Tehran political analyst Saeed Leylaz, "the government practically permitted the left to operate since five years ago so that they would confront religious liberals."

Listen to their interchangeable words: Harold Pinter describes America as "a country run by a bunch of criminal lunatics" and Osama bin Laden calls the country "unjust, criminal and tyrannical." Noam Chomsky terms America a "leading terrorist state" and Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a Pakistani political leader, deems it "the biggest terrorist state." These commonalities suffice to convince the two sides to set aside their many differences in favor of cooperation.

Second, the two sides share some political goals. A mammoth 2003 joint demonstration in London to oppose war against Saddam Hussein symbolically forged their alliance. Both sides want coalition forces to lose in Iraq, the War on Terror to be closed down, anti-Americanism to spread, and the elimination of Israel. They agree on mass immigration to and multiculturalism in the West. They cooperate on these goals at meetings such as the annual Cairo Anti-War Conference, which brings leftists and Islamists together to forge "an international alliance against imperialism and Zionism."

Third, Islamism has historic and philosophic ties to Marxism-Leninism. Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian Islamist thinker, accepted the Marxist notion of stages of history, only adding an Islamic postscript to them; he predicted that an eternal Islamic era would come after the collapse of capitalism and Communism. Ali Shariati, the key intellectual behind the Iranian revolution of 1978–79, translated Franz Fanon, Che Guevara, and Jean-Paul Sartre into Persian. More broadly, the Iranian analyst Azar Nafisi observes that Islamism "takes its language, goals, and aspirations as much from the crassest forms of Marxism as it does from religion. Its leaders are as influenced by Lenin, Sartre, Stalin, and Fanon as they are by the Prophet."

Moving from theory to reality, Marxists see in Islamists a strange fulfillment of their prophesies. Marx forecast that business profits would collapse in industrial countries, prompting the bosses to squeeze workers; the proletariat would become impoverished, rebel, and establish a socialist order. But, instead, the proletariat of industrial countries became ever more affluent, and its revolutionary potential withered. For a century and a half, author Lee Harris notes, Marxists waited in vain for the crisis in capitalism. Then came the Islamists, starting with the Iranian Revolution and following with 9/11 and other assaults on the West. Finally, the Third World had begun its revolt against the West, fulfilling Marxist predictions—even if under the wrong banner and with faulty goals. Olivier Besancenot, a French leftist, sees Islamists as "the new slaves" of capitalism and asks if it is not natural that "they should unite with the working class to destroy the capitalist system." At a time when the Communist movement is in "decay," note analyst Lorenzo Vidino and journalist Andrea Morigi, Italy's "New Red Brigades" actually acknowledge the "leading role of the reactionary clerics."

Fourth, power: Islamists and leftists can achieve more together than they can separately. In Great Britain, they jointly formed the Stop the War Coalition, whose steering committee includes representation from such organizations as the Communist party of Britain and the Muslim Association of Britain. Britain's Respect Party amalgamates radical international socialism with Islamist ideology. The two sides joined forces for the March 2008 European Parliament elections to offer common lists of candidates in France and Britain, disguised under party names that revealed little.

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.

Islam’s Role in the Etiology of Terrorism

WARNING: Free speech and political incorrectness up ahead!

Our man on the ground in Afghanistan, Spencer Case, writes:

Here at Forward Operating Base Thunder, the captain has recently returned from leave, bringing with him his propensity for political debate. One hot subject in the office, the Ground Zero mosque, has led to a genuine philosophical question which I’d like to see you take up. The question is this: at what point is it appropriate to credit/blame an “-ism” for the deeds/misdeeds of professed adherents?

To me it seems perfectly correct to say that Islam causes terrorism, that 9/11 was an Islamic attack, and that Islam as an overarching worldview is responsible for certain evils. The captain thinks 9/11 was simply a crazy or evil attack. The fact that the attackers happened to be Muslim, rather than Christian, Buddhist, Communist or what-have-you is purely accidental (Allahu Akbar! notwithstanding).

First of all, the 9/11 hijackers were not 'crazy' or insane or irrational. They displayed a high degree of instrumental rationality in planning and carrying out their mission. It is a big mistake to think that evil actions are eo ipso crazy actions. People who say or suggest this (typically liberals) simply do not take evil seriously or the free will that makes it possible. They think that people who commit mass murder must be out of their minds. No! Mass murder can be an entirely rational means for the furtherance of one's (evil) goals. The 9/11 terrorists knew exactly what they were doing, did it deliberately and freely and consciously and rationally (in terms of instrumental rationality), and they dealt us a severe blow from which we are still reeling. It is also a mistake to call Muhammad Atta and the boys 'cowards' as Bill O'Reilly and others have done. On the contrary! They displayed great courage in carrying out their evil deeds. The fact that courage is a virtue is consistent with an exercise of courage having an evil upshot.

And your captain is certainly wrong if he thinks that it is an accidental fact about the 9/11 hijackers that they are Muslims. Intentional actions derive from and reflect beliefs. People do not act in a doxastic vacuum. And what they believe cannot help but influence their actions. A convinced pacifist is highly unlikely to be a suicide bomber. Compare the number of Buddhist terrorists to the number of Muslim terrorists. There are many more of the latter than of the former, to put it in the form of an understatement. Obviously, the content of Buddhist/Muslim beliefs plays an important role in the etiology of pacifist/terrorist acts.

Continue reading “Islam’s Role in the Etiology of Terrorism”

Don’t Mess With Texas: After 9th DWI, Texas Man Gets Life

News accounts like this one give me hope that there is still some common sense left in this crazy country dominated as it is by the politically correct. The sentence is just. Think about it. This is the miscreant's 9th conviction. The road to conviction is long. First there must be an apprehension, then a trial, then a conviction. How many times was this dude tried without being convicted? How many times did he drive drunk without being caught? Perhaps hundreds.

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.

Yet More on the Mosque and Matters Muslim

Malcolm Pollack e-mails from Gotham:

That was an excellent post about that damned mosque. [. . .]

I have meanwhile been arguing, back at my place, with Bob Koepp over burqa-banning – an excellent discussion of which was written at NRO yesterday by Claire Berlinsky. I think you would find it interesting; it's here.

Very interesting indeed, and I agree with you that Berlinsky 'nails it' when she writes:

Because this is our culture, and in our culture, we do not veil. We do not veil because we do not believe that God demands this of women or even desires it; nor do we believe that unveiled women are whores, nor do we believe they deserve social censure, harassment, or rape. Our culture’s position on these questions is morally superior. We have every right, indeed an obligation, to ensure that our more enlightened conception of women and their proper role in society prevails in any cultural conflict, particularly one on Western soil.

I also noted in particular this paragraph of yours:

In the six years I have been running this weblog, I have distinguished between moderate and militant Muslims. Some of my more conservative friends have criticized me for this distinction, and I am currently re-evaluating it. This is an open question for me. Perhaps 'moderate Muslim' is as oxymoronic as 'moderate Communist.' Communists used our institutions and freedoms to undermine us, and that's a fact. It is at least an open question whether Muslims are doing the same, with so-called 'moderate Muslims' being like 'fellow travelers' who are not actively engaged in subversion but provide support from the sidelines.

I've done some re-evaluating too; my own views have evolved considerably since 9/11. Prior to that awful day, I had only a general familiarity with Islam, and made a very clear distinction between "radical" or "fundamentalist" Islam and what I imagined to be "mainstream" or "modernized" Islam. After all, like you, I had Muslim friends and acquaintances, and my exploration of the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff (whom my father actually knew, by the way) had led me some distance into esoteric teachings that derived in part from Sufism.

After 9/11, however, I made it my business to learn more, and I read a great deal about Islamic history and theology – with the effect that I came to understand, as Recep Erdogan has put it, that there is no such thing as "moderate" Islam; there is just Islam, and "moderates" – meaning, in particular, those who see Islam as fully compatible with life under a secular, pluralistic government – are, on any coherent interpretation, heretics and apostates.

See here for what Erdogan said and analysis by Daniel Pipes.

This realization has made it increasingly clear to me that Islam is not, as fuzzy-minded liberals (and even most conservatives) would have it, just another religion, and a peaceful one at that, that has been "hijacked" by "extremists", but an expansionist, totalizing ideology, a highly infectious mind-virus – and one that is not only utterly incompatible, in anything resembling its pure form, with Western norms and Western culture, but is also its sworn and implacable enemy.

I don't know whether you are right about this, Malcolm, but it is clear to me that this question must be honestly addressed, and political correctness be damned.

This is, of course, far beyond the pale as far as polite society is concerned, but the threat is, I think, so serious and so clamant that it must be said, and people here need to get used to hearing it. Very few people are saying it yet; Lawrence Auster is perhaps foremost among them, but his audience is small.

The lesson of 1,400 years is very clear: Islam always expands, unless it is made to contract or withdraw by force of arms. It is doing so in Europe, and in Britain, and it will do so here, if we let it. Terrorism is the least of it.

Anyway, sorry to ramble on so. Living here in the bulls-eye, this stuff is on my mind a lot lately.

Good luck with your battle against the D.O.J.!

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.

More on the Ground Zero Mosque

This from a long-time reader:

As a follower of your blog—in all its iterations throughout the years—I have a tremendous amount of respect for your opinions, philosophical and otherwise. Yet in your recent post on the Cordoba House building plan—apparently now called park51–I found myself disagreeing with you on several points of your discussion. When I have had this discussion with others—namely my parents and grandparents, all of whom share your opposition to the plan—I found little more than shrill arguing going on. I recognize that intelligent and thoughtful people exist on both sides of this, and I want to understand the rational arguments available to both, not just the blustering rhetoric being bantered [bandied] about. Hopefully in discussion with you I can find a more rationally driven discussion than I found elsewhere.

I'll give it my best shot.

Continue reading “More on the Ground Zero Mosque”