— personified in the person of Peter Beinart, who uses Rep Peter King as his object of high-minded, indignant loathing:
Republicans like to claim that Democrats are the “European” party: the party that wants a big welfare state, believes in international law, and doesn’t think America is an exceptional nation. But I’ve noticed a certain Europeanification of the GOP of late, as regard to Muslims. For years, Republicans have explained that their brand of patriotism has nothing to do with blood and soil. Unlike right-wing European parties, which often fashion themselves bulwarks against the Muslim menace, Republicans—in their telling—defend the universal ideals of unfettered capitalism, traditional morality, and bucketloads for defense. They welcome anyone who adheres to those principles, no matter their complexion and faith (except perhaps if they don’t have one).
It would be nice if someone explained that to Representative Peter King. King, a Long Island Republican, will hold hearings this week on terrorism by American Muslims. Think about that for a second. King isn’t holding hearings on domestic terrorism; he’s holding hearings on domestic terrorism by one religious group.
[…]
[…] anti-Muslim bigotry is not a fringe view in today’s GOP. Most of the party bigwigs denounced the “ground zero mosque,” insisting that Muslims should have the good taste not to practice their religion in a place where non-Muslims might be offended, no matter how irrationally. Across the country, Republicans are rushing to head off the threat that America will soon be governed by Sharia (Islamic law). What’s next? The threat represented by Halacha (Jewish law)? After learning that the University of Michigan offers foot-washing stations to facilitate Muslim prayer, Mike Huckabee recently declared that “the accommodation we’re making to one religion at the expense of others is very un-American.”
In case you missed it, Beinart has now declared it “anti-Muslim bigotry” to take notice of what groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and others have explicitly told us they are up do, both strategically and tactically; it is “anti-Muslim bigotry” to notice that the most visible of today’s pro-Muslim advocacy groups are oftentimes front groups for those who support terrorism — and tell us so. It is “anti-Muslim bigotry” to recognize that a strain of Islam — the Islamist strain, which commingles religion and politics and declares the two inextricably linked — is being actively insinuated into communities here in the US, with the attendant problems that such an insinuation is designed to cause.
Whereas, it is back-clapping time if you can manage to convince people that the bigger threat to the US are those awful conservatives who, in the midst of their hate hate hate, insist on taking notice such things, particularly if taking notice means not blindly and self-importantly adopting the precepts of political correctness and then feigning OUTRAGE over the fact that others have noticed problems where you have been trained not even to look.
Ironically, Beinart brushes right up against the point — and has it right there in reach — before his desire to put on display his ostentatious and empty “tolerance” pulls him down into the sticky fluff of liberal shibboleths. That is, he acknowledges — albeit in a glancing way — the precise problem with radicalized Islam in Europe (where, you’ll recall, many European leaders are coming to the belated conclusion that the leftist project of “multiculturalism” has failed) that King and many others are hoping to forestall from taking deep root here in the States. But rather than connect his own dots, Beinart instead uses the moment to try to gin up an instance of Republican HYPOCRISY: how can the GOP claim to “defend the universal ideals of unfettered capitalism, traditional morality, and bucketloads for defense” while at the same time looking into an entire religion? (After all, isn’t the job of demonizing religious groups the bailiwick of “progressives” like Amanda Marcotte?)
Yawn. Insert faux OUTRAGE here.
Here’s a question for Mr Beinart: is there in fact a Muslim menace, of the kind that is infecting Europe, where entire territories of modern European countries have devolved into no go zones for police, and are being run under Sharia law? If so, how is taking notice of — and suggesting that we need be able to talk candidly about — the ideology that foments such radicalization, a form of bigotry rather than an empirical observation? How is reality “hate”?
Conversely, if there is no radicalized Muslim menace in Western Europe, is Beinart then accusing those European countries of inventing a problem that unfairly scapegoats a portion of its own population (the Germans, for one, have done so before)? That is, does Beinart believe that such a threat is real and actual?
Peter King believes the threat real, and he’s looking into how best to combat it. Beinart? He’s looking for a way to buy some cheap grace — avoiding the unpleasant work of leading while basking in the canned glow of the kind of predictable self-aggrandizing that comes from having adopted the “correct” views.
Beinart has been so fully assimilated by the multiculturalist project that he believes his anti-assimilationist stance somehow brave and on the side of the angels.
Useful idiot.
You’re forgetting that Mr. Beinart is a cultured, cosmopolitan chap who buys his copy of the Post from Mr. Shalabim’s newsstand, therefore shut up.
In case anyone missed it – Multiculturalism v Diversity.
You might think Peter King would understand that not all the terrorist sympathizers in America are Muslim.
You might think that Beinart would that these aren’t exactly people who epitomizes the American ideal.
? After learning that the University of Michigan offers foot-washing stations to facilitate Muslim prayer, Mike Huckabee recently declared that “the accommodation we’re making to one religion at the expense of others is very un-American.”
Yes, back to the foot-washing stations. Someone explain why we can’t have religious symbols in public spaces, but we can have foot washing stations?
Has the atrophied mind of Peter Beinart ever expressed anything that wasn’t a dessicated social-progressive cliche?
Serious question (okay, half serious), because I’ve never found Beinart interesting enough to merit reading.
I believe, though he was born with the disadvantage of not having a chin, and therefore he looks like he has lips on his neck, and so he wears a 1970’s detective show mustache to delineate regions on a normal face, Eric Holder would call the reluctance to ask a nearby Muslin “what the hell is going on with your people” a non-act of racial cowardice.
. Someone explain why we can’t have religious symbols in public spaces, but we can have foot washing stations?
Because the foot-washers get ‘splodey when they feel slighted. Oh, and shut up! That’s why.
Because sometimes the Establishment Clause means that we can’t accommodate a particular religion on account of it making that religion seem like it’s being favored by the State, and sometime it means we must accommodate a particular religion on account of…well…
Can anyone translate “Allahu Ackbar” into Latin? I wanna see what my coins are going to look like.
I can supply all the moist and steamy cow dung for anyone who wants to garnish these foot washing stations.
can supply all the moist and steamy cow dung for anyone who wants to garnish these foot washing stations.
Pig dung would be preferable.
What makes you think the mottos on your coins are still going to be in Latin, Squid?
Anyways:
Deus Optimus Maximus God the Highest the Greatest.
It’s an old formula.
Islam = The Borg.
But without the cool technology.
the OUTRAGE!!111!!
is easily explained, being based on criteria employed by the left since the formation of the KGB controlled Communist Party USA and the “moral equivalence” propaganda arguments used to justify and excuse Communist genocides and human right violations.
The first criterium is that Muslims, being Middle Easterners for the most part, have brown skin. This makes them defacto victims of white skin priviledge, the RACISM inherent in Capitalist societies and Western Imperialism. Nevermind that Islamic Fascism is a political-religous supremacist ideology.
The other criteria is just as old and was also used by Yasser Arafat and the KGB trained PLO against Israel and the USA. Radical Islam is hostile to Western style individual rights and condemns the west using the same terminology that the Marxoid leftists use, thus validate the need for common cause amongst leftists and Islamists against the USA.
Radical Islam is also one of the leftovers of the cold war where leftwingers can relive the glory days of hating on the western society that makes their freedom to do so possible.
Or if you want to get really florid
Deus Optissimus Maxissimus God the mostest highest mostest greatest
By the way, you remember our friend Biggus Dickus? You should meet his cousin, Gaius Longissimus Latissimus.
Since when?
It’s “blood for oil” we object to, numbnuts.
If Beinart gets his way, we will have shooting in the streets on a massive scale before this is over. Eventually the Islamists will want all of us to live under their law, and that isn’t going to happen without a fight.
*sigh*
Another boring pronouncemnt by another juice-box progressive shill; albeit a credentialed one, who is actively ruining minds here at an academy in NYC even as we speak.
I mean, who ever declared him to be a foreign policy expert anyway? And how acquire such a designation without ever having been actually involved in foreign policy or even serious foreign policy making?
And his outrage-du-jour is especially ridiculous in light of the pronouncements by 3 European leaders that “multiculturalism has failed”, as Jeff pointed out.
But actual practice, experience, and empirical evidence? Pshaw…
Multiculturalism has yet to fail…at the academy.
It’s failed there too. Beinart is just another useful idiot with a credential granting unearned and undeserved legitimacy to grievance mongers.
The “Blood and Soil” line is merely an obscure reference to the Nazi doctrine of “Blut und Boden”
Yet another tired attempt to equate Nazi with Republican.
[…] looking for “backlash” Jeff G. provides some in response to the claims of “anti-Muslim bigotry.” In case you missed it, Beinart has now declared it “anti-Muslim bigotry” to take notice […]
I’m pretty sure Nazis ate and shit too.
Yeah, I’m just like a Nazi…
LBascom, Beinart is a credentialed academic and as such, Beinart figures he can slide in a sly reference that will only be understood by the credentialed elite.
Can’t have the lower class rise above their station by breaking the language code.
What’s cool is that white people are in the minority as far as terrorists go. And people complain “What’s up with whitey hatin’ on the muslim terrorists? Not all muslims are terrorists.”
It’s kinda like white people whining, “what’s up with the slaves hatin’ on their slave masters? Not all slave masters are white you know. Why you gotta lump?”
h/t Rev Jess Jack
Blake, all I know is that blood and soil is kinda the essence of patriotism, and the reason republicans revere our military men and women protecting our nation.
Who are these “Republicans” that “have explained that their brand of patriotism has nothing to do with blood and soil”?
I hate false premises.
LBascom, I deconstructed the statement a different way.
I’m working from the premise that Beinart is a typical academic who thinks Republican = Nazi. And that’s why Beinart says: “Republicans have explained their brand of patriotism has nothing to do with blood and soil.”
I see what you’re saying from the patriotism angle. I don’t think Beinart is attacking patriotism with his reference. I think Beinart is going for the old Nazi standby.
Because that’s what liberals do.
If I’m not mistaken, Fascism is considered to be part of the “European Right” which Beinart also mentions.
Your mileage may vary.
Carin, of course not all the terrorist sympathizers in the US are Muslim. Bill Ayers isn’t a Muslim, after all.
This is intended to allude to the point that various objective observers like the SPLC consider the Tea Party to be terrorists.
Kill . GOD. sort….sorry for being “unhlpful”. I need a cupcake…or a nuke
On the life side? Carin? Again TY TY TY….Ysabelle is 2 years old yesterday, and you helped me through it all.
*&Eventually the Islamists will want all of us to live under their law, and that isn’t going to happen without a fight.*
At which point our friends in the California and New York bubbles will blame us for inciting violence.
I wonder about the conundrum for the Left if an muslim terrorist blew up an abortion clinic. Which side would they choose?
Well, as an abortion clinic could only possibly be used to abort the spawn of the infidel (*), why would a jihadi ever blow one up? I’d imagine it’s a ‘win’ in their book.
(*) The hard-liners have a simplified form of abortion, wherein they kill the mother for being a dirty, dirty whore. Two birds, one stone. (Possibly literally.) A very efficient people.
What the notion of “anti-Muslim bigotry” and hostility toward illegal immigration in general have in common is that the stupidity of the left is baked into the cake. People on the left are incapable of understanding this. It makes an effeminate twerp like Beinart feel better about himself to cast foolish aspersions, but were the left not so complicit in fostering the opposite of assimilation, the right wouldn’t have to so vigorously voice opposition and raise so many questions.
You know, an enterprising reporter could do something simple that would do much to clarify this question into terms we could all understand and relate to.
For instance, they could go into the archives and figure out in World War II how many instances of foreign intelligence operatives operating on US soil can be credibly documented. Hell, they could throw in the Great War as well, since that’s the next set of stacks at Fort Meade.
Then, they could overlay that with the DoJ records of Islamist anti US activity–primarily active plotting, terror finance and Fort Hood–on our soil.
The results, laid out as such, would be very, very hard for a Peter Beinart to mock.
I think the proper term is self-lefteous, not righteous.
Peter Beinart is a moron. But Peter King is a scum sucking IRA loving, anti-Second Amendment pile of crap. But then again, he is right about Islamist terror.
Conflicted.
[…] And yet, it’s these self-satisfied liberal geniuses who keep getting caught on video making self-satisfied asses out of their self-satisfied selves — while stroking would-be terrorists in a show of self-satisfied “tolerance.” […]