« About Those Interogation Techniques | Main | "Pope Must Die" Says UK Muslim, Organizer Of February's "Behead" Rally In London »

September 18, 2006

About Those 'Head-in-the-Sand Liberals'

When you read or hear something like this:

Given the degree to which religious ideas are still sheltered from criticism in every society, it is actually possible for a person to have the economic and intellectual resources to build a nuclear bomb -- and to believe that he will get 72 virgins in paradise. And yet, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism.

... coming from a died in the wool liberal, you've surely got to wonder if the writer isn't undergoing some form of enlightenment or has just completed a course in "reality." After all, this isn't your usual leftie moonbat fair.

So who is this "liberal" and what does the clear-headed side of the blogosphere say about him?

Ed Lasky writes at The American Thinker, "The Los Angeles Times publishes an absolutely remarkable column written by died-in-the-wool liberal Sam Harris. His message is pinted and telling: his fellow liberals have become delusional and worse. Blue Crab Boulevard says, " His assessment is brutal. He does not come up with this opinion out of thin air. Rather it is based on years of correspondence with people from every type of political bent." Hot Air describes it by saying, "It's sprinkled with the usual equivalence about religious lunatics over there versus religious "lunatics" over here, but stick with it. Pure gold."" Ace of Spades writes, "He writes of liberals' fantasy that Jihadists are driven by the same sorts of inputs liberals imagine they, like all other "repressed" peoples, should be driven by -- the desire for more economic hand-outs from the West, increased opportunities for education, etc. -- rather than the single input the actually are driven by -- a xenophobic interpretation of Islam that would make the KKK itself blush."" The Political Pit Bull writes, "... a liberal himself, in today's L.A. Times which argues that liberals need to awaken to the threat of jihadism. And given what's going on with the Pope right now, it's particularly felicitous."

So enough already with accolades and the introduction; here's a taste of what you'll find in Sam Harris' piece at the L.A. Times, "Head-in-the-Sand Liberals":

... my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world -- specifically with what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith.

On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.

This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that "liberals are soft on terrorism." It is, and they are.

A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world -- for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a "war on terror." We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise.

This is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims. But we are absolutely at war with those who believe that death in defense of the faith is the highest possible good, that cartoonists should be killed for caricaturing the prophet and that any Muslim who loses his faith should be butchered for apostasy.

Unfortunately, such religious extremism is not as fringe a phenomenon as we might hope. Numerous studies have found that the most radicalized Muslims tend to have better-than-average educations and economic opportunities.

Go read it all...

As Kevin at Dean's World frames Harris' piece, "It's quite a good article and I'm surprised to see it come from a man I so vehemently disagree with on pretty much every other issue. He seems to agree with something I heard comedian Lewis Black once say, "Republicans are the party of bad ideas. Democrats are the party of no ideas."

And that about sums up liberals in general. However a commenter goes one better at The Political Pit Bull:

Whether those on the left like it or not:

1. The Left promotes toleration of everything but Christianity!
2. The Left promotes public policies which are passionately anti-Christian in nature.
3. The Left wants everyone to understand and tolerate extremism by Islamic militants, Palestinians, homosexuals, abortionists, those promoting euthanasia, etcetera; but even speech in the public square by Christians is not tolerated and in fact, the Left has aggressively passed legislation restricting Christian speech anywhere in America except in the pulpit, and if those things said in the pulpit speak against behavior which Scripture condemns, the Left is increasingly passing laws making such sermons a form of hate speech.

Posted by Richard at September 18, 2006 9:27 PM