You know it's a good article...
... when the subtitle is something like
Over at Salon.com, Doug Marlette has published a nice little rant on the 'cartoon controversy.' (Teach the controversy, perhaps?)
The fact that Salon is opposed to the appeasement practiced by so many of those who claim to be intellectuals should not be surprising. The fact that it is speaks volumes about way the rest of the left-of-centre media have handled the entire affair.
Why does it keep surprising the Left that it can't win elections, when it continually allows the Right to be right (bad pun, I know) on these kinds of issues? Why the mealy-mouthedness? After all, Islamic fascism is just as big a problem as Christian fascism.
Personally, I think it's a knee-jerk reaction: Christian fascists hate Islamic fascists (although that happy state of affairs only lasts until a juicy democratically-minded secularist enters their sights, then they're more than ready to set aside their differences just long enough to rip off your head and piss down your neck), so 'the enemy of my enemy must be my friend,' right? Wrong.
Why should we allow the fact that we will be joined in our condemnation by the less than savory Christian bigots to deter us from attacking the less than savory Islamic bigots? We shouldn't. It's bad policy. It's ideologically indefencible. It's gonna keep costing us influence.
The Right can and will keep scoring cheap points on this kind of issues as long as the Left allows knee-jerk reactions to dominate our attitude towards Islam.
An aside: The terms 'Right' and 'Left' which I have applied throughout the post are actually mislabelings. While they provide convenient rethorical handles, and while the issue of how to best democratizise Islam has, regrettably, polarized along those lines, this is not a Left/Right-issue. It's a fascism/anti-fascism issue. You can be opposed to both Ann 'Banshee Wail' Coulter and Pat(wa) Robertson without having to defend fascist Moslims like Abu Laban and Abdul Wahid Pedersen.
Even blind hens can find grain, and even neo-con fascists can (on extremely rare occasions) actually be right. And when they are, it is not just bad tact to attack them, it's bad tactics as well.
By caving in to fanatics over the Danish cartoons, the West has shown that it is not only gutless but brainless.
Over at Salon.com, Doug Marlette has published a nice little rant on the 'cartoon controversy.' (Teach the controversy, perhaps?)
The fact that Salon is opposed to the appeasement practiced by so many of those who claim to be intellectuals should not be surprising. The fact that it is speaks volumes about way the rest of the left-of-centre media have handled the entire affair.
Why does it keep surprising the Left that it can't win elections, when it continually allows the Right to be right (bad pun, I know) on these kinds of issues? Why the mealy-mouthedness? After all, Islamic fascism is just as big a problem as Christian fascism.
Personally, I think it's a knee-jerk reaction: Christian fascists hate Islamic fascists (although that happy state of affairs only lasts until a juicy democratically-minded secularist enters their sights, then they're more than ready to set aside their differences just long enough to rip off your head and piss down your neck), so 'the enemy of my enemy must be my friend,' right? Wrong.
Why should we allow the fact that we will be joined in our condemnation by the less than savory Christian bigots to deter us from attacking the less than savory Islamic bigots? We shouldn't. It's bad policy. It's ideologically indefencible. It's gonna keep costing us influence.
The Right can and will keep scoring cheap points on this kind of issues as long as the Left allows knee-jerk reactions to dominate our attitude towards Islam.
An aside: The terms 'Right' and 'Left' which I have applied throughout the post are actually mislabelings. While they provide convenient rethorical handles, and while the issue of how to best democratizise Islam has, regrettably, polarized along those lines, this is not a Left/Right-issue. It's a fascism/anti-fascism issue. You can be opposed to both Ann 'Banshee Wail' Coulter and Pat(wa) Robertson without having to defend fascist Moslims like Abu Laban and Abdul Wahid Pedersen.
Even blind hens can find grain, and even neo-con fascists can (on extremely rare occasions) actually be right. And when they are, it is not just bad tact to attack them, it's bad tactics as well.
posted by JS at 02:34
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