Tuesday, June 09, 2015

Why I would be less bothered by a new mosque in my community than a new state college

The conservatives who are so worried about the threat of Islam should look a little closer to home for the real enemies.

If you asked most conservatives to identify the greatest threat to America, they will inevitably point outside the United States, usually to ISIS. Undoubtedly ISIS is a threat, and could some day actually affect the U.S., which it doesn't seem to be able to do right now.

And then there is always the lurking suspicion of Muslims in the United States who, almost without exception, mind their own business and don't bother anyone.

It is hard to figure out why liberals are so indulgent toward Muslims. My theory is that it is easy for liberals to be magnanimous toward Muslims. Unlike Christians, there are not a lot of them. And because of their low representation in the population they don't affect the culture much. In the United States, they're pretty harmless.

Christians are dangerous because they are still culturally influential. That's why Muslims are tolerated and Christians aren't.

But this inordinate fear of Islam is rife among rank and file conservatives. How many times have you heard someone say they believe Obama is a Muslim? Every time I hear a friend say this my response is the same: "We would be a lot better off if Obama were a Muslim. Think about it: He would be pro-life, against gay 'marriage,' and impatient if not condemning of the mindless egalitarianism he and his liberal friends are using to destroy the culture. No Muslim would take the positions Obama takes on issues of cultural significance.

And this brings me to my main point, which is this: We have a lot less to fear from Muslims from faraway places than we do from liberals right here at home.

It isn't Muslims who are destroying American culture: It is liberals who are destroying American culture, which leads me to a corollary observation: The average conservative American has far more in common with the average Muslim than he does with the liberal anchor of the news program he watches every night, or with the liberal professor at the university down the road, or with the liberal bureaucrats who run our government, or with the drug-riddled, serially monogamous, animal rights activist celebrity who appears on his television set every night. 

In fact, one uncomfortable fact we don't want to face is that many of the excuses used by radical Muslim groups to oppose the United States are perfectly valid. We hear all about how how Arab Muslims are upset with the United States because of our over-involvement in their internal affairs. But that is not the main reason America is hated overseas by so many people—Muslims and non-Muslims.

When I hear people talk about "exporting democracy" to other countries, I just laugh. Is that really what we export to the world? Here's what we export to the world: pornography and rap music written by misogynist thugs. And then we give them lectures on how to treat women!

If you are a person in a traditional community living in a foreign country and you saw the garbage America was sending into your country, how would you feel? The world—and the underdeveloped world in particular—has become the cultural trash dump for America.

This is not a justification for the violence perpetrated on Americans. If Americans are killed, we should go after the perpetrators and destroy them. But it sure does make it a lot harder to occupy the moral high ground when you are giving these people legitimate reasons to stir people up.

The only thing saving us from being hated worse than Isis is that Isis cuts peoples heads off and enslaves women and doesn't apologize for it. Fortunately most people think that's worse than self-righteous Americans who simply corrupt their culture and pretend they're doing them a favor.

I mentioned to a friend the other day, after having seen a very large new mosque just outside of Toledo, Ohio, that I would be less bothered by a new mosque moving into my town than by a new state college. Even if the mosque contained Islamic radicals, it could not come close to matching the cultural destruction perpetrated by the class of people occupying academia who seem determined to destroy the very beliefs, traditions and customs that have always held our society together.

I'm less concerned about what Hillary Clinton let Al Qaeda radicals do to Americans in Libya than I am about what Hillary Clinton would do to America from the Oval Office.

Go watch a Muslim wearing a burkha, bowing down and peacefully saying his morning prayers. Then go watch a man in a gay pride parade, in dark leather and metal spikes (before the police crack down on him for public lewdness). And then ask which thing bodes most ill for American culture.

Are you more disturbed to know someone is shouting "Allah Akbar" 5,500 miles away, or someone saying "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western culture's got to go!" a half an hour down the road?

The barbarians aren't at the gate. They're inside the gate pretending to manage the defenses.

6 comments:

Cindy D said...

Well-said, Martin

Old Rebel said...

Then there's this:

"Wherever one looks along the perimeter of Islam, Muslims have problems living peaceably with their neighbors. Muslims make up about one-fifth of the world's population but in the 1990s they have been far more involved in intergroup violence than the people of any other civilization."

Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations, p. 256

Unknown said...

Hmmm. This post reminds me of this one over at What's Wrong With the World. McGrew claims that, at least in absolute terms, Islam is not better than "decadent liberalism". I suppose that one might agree with McGrew but then still claim that the article spawning the present thread refers only to relative danger given the domestic circumstances.

Martin Cothran said...

I guess my point is that, if you're living in Iraq, ISIS is more dangerous than Hillary. But not if you're living here.

Rob Mattheu said...

These posts are hysterical. Please. Keep them coming.

Seamus said...

Go watch a Muslim wearing a burkha, bowing down and peacefully saying his morning prayers.

"His" morning prayers? Are there many Muslim cross-dressers?