Redstate

You tell me whether this makes the news tonight.

With respect, why should it?  So a Muslim isn't actually appalled at the bombings.  I don't see why the views of some random guy in a car soemwhere in Leeds is news.

Why is this news?  Anyone want to clue Brian in?

It will eventually show up, in the context of a convoluted psychological exegesis of why some young Muslims in Britain are reacting to the bombings with glee -- because, you see, they have been persecuted there.  Calls for greater sympathy and tolerance will be trumpeted from the rooftops, long reminders of the terrible sense of shame and guilt that Westerners should feel will be promulgated, and new social services will be arranged with dispatch to address and correct this latest manifestation of institutional minority abuse and racism.  Obviously the correct response is for Britons to condemn themselves.  After all, they have only themselves to blame.

Interesting. We read an account that indicates sneering laughter at the murder of innocents, and The Brian translates that into "isn't actually appalled."

I don't see why the views of some random guy in a car soemwhere in Leeds is news.

Because, (1) he is not "some random guy" but a member of the community in which the first post-bombing arrests were made, and (2) the views may reflect the broader opinion within that community.

News? Nah. Let's go back to Michael Jackson and hurricanes.

You ask the average teenager and they are likely to give a pretty crappy response.

There's a lot of editorializing and conclusion-drawing regarding Muslims communities in general based on an undisclosed tape of a single car-load of individuals, who are alleged to "know[] them all" (all the bombers?).  It's unwarranted.  Indeed, assuming that Trevino's source is reporting the matter correctly, it's somewhat akin to drawing conclusions about the Basque community's reactions to the recent bombings in northern Spain by interviewing the Basque separatists who planted the bombs.  

It seems to me that the better reaction would be:  What haven't these guys been questioned?  They know the freakin' bombers, at least according to this tape.  And let's get the tape to Scotland yard, pronto, rather than argue on a blog post.  Etc.  Etc.

I'll readily agree that the significant numbers of Muslims need to experience the Enlightenment, and that there are cells of al Quada operatives and sympathizes worldwide, some of whom are drawn from their local communities.  But the breathless description set forth above is not useful; it's not targeted; and, if taken to its implied extreme, will result in evil.  

Indeed, it's not "foolish goodness," as Trevino suggests, to be proportional and measured in our reactions.  It's prudence.  It's wisdom.  It's  thinking before we act -- and not drawing our courage from ignorance.

(It's my tagline.)

It appears that they knew the bombers.

or dump it on a public ftp so we can all see it ourselves?

Is this some reporter doing random street interviews?  If so then it'd be kind of hard to dismiss the obvious conclusions though no doubt some will go to any lengths to rationalize it away.

That's where we part ways.  I don't think we've done that much at all.

And no, I'm not speaking of overreacting.

That he is a part of a system of muslim communities that are producing people who will kill themselves and you and yours?

How is it possible to pretend it is not news?

that the people in the car were simply scamming the reporter for money.  

on the bike in the car.  Makes perfect sense.

I'll have the tape in a couple of days, hopefully.  Sorry for the wait.

I can't really say what's going on.  

I can say that there are several possible answers.  You seem to already know the answer.

I didn't translate anything.  The dude said he was appalled.  I acknowledged the obvious fact that he wasn't.

Because, (1) he is not "some random guy" but a member of the community in which the first post-bombing arrests were made, and (2) the views may reflect the broader opinion within that community.

I'm sorry, but that pretty much sounds like "some random guy" to me.  If there is evidence that a) he actually had something to do with the bombings, or b) represented a majority of British Muslims, trevino did not provide it.

I'm not sure how your link supports the idea that his "views may reflect the broader opinion within that community." The article makes it clear that, despite a significant amount of restlessness among Muslim youth, those wanting to engage in violence are still a minority among Muslims.

Because it's one guy, and it's easy to find one guy who will say anything.  Again, if there is evidence that this one guy is indeed "part of a system of muslim communities that are producing people who will kill themselves and you and yours," it was not provided in the story.

How can you spread this stuff without backing it up with the video? Why is it so important that you say this now?

Yes, how could Trevino possibly resort to unnamed sources? The gall of this guy! No serious news organization ever uses unnamed sources in its . . . oh, wait: they do so all the time.

....if there is evidence that this one guy is indeed "part of a system of muslim communities that are producing people who will kill themselves and you and yours"....

If?  Where have you been since 9/11/01?  Or since 1979, really?

The dude said he was appalled.  I acknowledged the obvious fact that he wasn't.

According to the post, he said he was "traumatized," not appalled. But I see why you used that formulation now. My mistake.

How can you spread this stuff without backing it up with the video?

Easily.  I trust my man.

Why is it so important that you say this now?

You prefer it tomorrow?

Thank the source by the way.  Hopefully he/she is far enough removed so it can't be traced back to him/her.  If there's any risk whatsoever I, for one, won't hold it against anyone if it's never released here on RS.  

the video before drawing conclusions should lead one to assume I already have the answers.  You on the other hand have already postulated it's youth gone wild or a con job.  Good job with that soapbox.

plenty of teenagers I knew after 9-11 weren't giggly or sarcastic.  Most I knew were pretty horrified.

With respect, why should it?  So a Muslim isn't actually appalled at the bombings.  I don't see why the views of some random guy in a car soemwhere [sic] in Leeds is news.

The driver of the car, far from being some random guy, is recommended to the interviewer by the guy on the bike b/c "[he] knows all of them [the homicide bombers]."  Given that connection it would seem newsworthy that acquaintances of the murderers were visibly amused at the suffering of innocents.  The reaction and responses of this individual reveal the very real likelihood that the community would not only conceal future terrorists but also may very well abet in said future crimes.

The plainly visible contempt for the society that allows them immensely improved liberties and freedoms is not only newsworthy - it should be required viewing for all of us who cannot help but be engaged in a global struggle with Islamofascist terrorists.

Passenger (through smirks and half-concealed laughter): No comment. Haha. (tries to compose himself, but fails)

Passenger: (tries again to compose himself; fails) We are. (looks away, concealing a grin).

Puff-puff and pass the composure...

According to the post, he said he was "traumatized," not appalled.

My bad.  I had "appalled" on the brain from trevino's comment that "No cause for worry, though, Sir Iqbal Sacranie is appalled."

I do not care to guess how the British will respond to rush-hour slaughterers from the next neighborhood over, but I have no doubt that Americans will, at some point, say, "Enough is enough."

I do fear, though, that the response will not be bloodless. The longer our leaders continue to utter the tired peities about Our Friends The Saudis™ and Islam, The Religion Of Peace™, the more likely it will be, I think, that the American reaction to these creches of death cultists will be of Jacksonian character.

Again, with respect, there's a big difference - a gaping moral and legal chasm - between not showing appropriate traumatization, and killing me and mine.

I don't see how this guy is guilty of anything more than mouthing off to a reporter, albeit in a particularly crass way.

So a Muslim isn't actually appalled at the bombings.  I don't see why the views of some random guy in a car soemwhere in Leeds is news.

"Muslim Youth Thinks Brits Got What They Deserved" - You're right, there's no story there. (Is it because we think they're incapable of decency, or that, deep down, we feel that their hatred of us is justified?)

This is the headline I'm waiting for: "Muslim Leadership, Community Decry Indiscriminate Violence". So far, the silence is deafening.

At least in America.  Jacob Morely in the WaPo.

From the clip provided, it's not clear who "them" are.  And even if the bike rider did mean "them" to be the bombers, it's not clear that he's a reliable source for that information, since the bombing suspects have not yet been identified by name.

The headline isn't quite what you wanted, but the response has been strong:

The other important difference between the London bombings and 9/11 has been the response of the world of Islam. For months after 9/11, I kept writing that it was sad and disturbing that Muslims were reluctant to condemn the attacks. This time is different. Major Muslim groups in Britain have unambiguously denounced the bombings. Even the so-called fundamentalist organisations have condemned it. The Muslim Association of Britain, a hard-line group with alleged ties to militants in the Middle East, called the bombings "heinous and repulsive" and urged Muslims to help the emergency services and police. "We have faith in Britain and British people that we as a country will not be defeated by this," said its spokesman, Anas Altikriti.

The response outside Britain has also been much stronger than ever before. The grand imam of Al-Azhar, Shaikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, condemned the bombers but went further, rejecting the argument that this attack could be justified as an attempt to force Britain out of Iraq. "This is illogical and cannot be the motive for killing innocent civilians," he said. More striking have been the condemnations from radical groups like Hamas, Hizbullah and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, all of which have denounced the bombings. Many of them have, of course, coupled their attacks on the terrorists with denunciations of American and British policies in the Middle East, particularly regarding Iraq and the Palestinian territories. But that kind of rhetoric is old news. What is new here is the fact that no one, not even Hamas, can continue to condone or even stay silent about these barbarities. September 11 shocked the Arab psyche. For months afterward, Arabs and many Muslims went through phases recognisable to psychologists: shock, denial, anger. (Remember those absurd claims that 9/11 was a Mossad plot?) They are finally, slowly, moving toward recognising that there is a great dysfunction in the world of Islam, which has allowed Muslims to concoct wild conspiracy theories, blame others for their problems and, worst of all, condone grotesque violence.

By itself it is, of course, "proof" of nothing. But it is an indication that the Muslim community in that area consider themselves Muslims or Arabs first and Britons second. The openness of American society to immigration has been predicated historically on the belief that the new immigrants will by and large assimilate themselves into our culture, accepting our basic beliefs (respect for life, individual liberty, religious tolerance, and human equality) as their own. If a particular new immigrant community is unwilling to do so, and in fact revels in the slaughter of innocents, then that should have a dramatic impact on our immigration policy. Note again that I by no means claim the video is "proof" of that. There can be no one simple piece of "proof" of such a complex idea. But it is evidence of the community attitude.

in the local community for sure.  Fox News cited a Sky News report that the parents of one of the suspected terrorists had reported him missing to the authorities.

Later I watched video of the Scotland Yard press conference where they explicitly state that at least one of the bombers was reported to the Casualty Department (emergency room / 911 equivalent in Britain I think).

Both of those facts imply that parents had exhausted their local search for a missing son.  It would seem to be a safe assumption that the parents called the sons friends and checked with their neighbors and probably called the local police department too.  It's almost surely a little known secret who the aforementioned bomber is.

Also noteworthy is that there is not an explicit freedom of the press in the UK.  The government can, and I'm sure does, cite national security to prevent journalists from publishing information that they deem vital to their investigation.  I'm of the opinion that the bomber's identity (the single bomber mentioned in my first two paragraphs) would have already been mentioned in the USA along with the cited CCTV videos showing the 4 bombers meeting at King's Cross Rail Station prior to embarking on their murderous errand.

~Big Tom

the hair, teeth, and eyeballs of four others are scattered over parts of London.

Whenever I read the Khaleej Times, I turn straight to the sports pages.

Commentaries on the bombings in London from the Left in Britain (and elsewhere) I can suggest this article, where you will find links to The Guardian, the Telegraph, the Socialist Worker's Party, some group called "Solidarity Online" (which is now experiencing mysterious problems with its MySQL database), the Movement for a Socialist Future (which explains, helpfully:  Terrorism cannot be defeated by the "war on terror", which only deepens the problem because it refuses to address the causes of terrorism. All those opposed to these barbarous attacks should redouble their efforts to campaign for deep-going democratic political change"); an explanation of how the BBC voted for the "T" word before it voted against it...

Anyway, please read the article for yourselves, there are about a dozen other links that are more worthwhile to read for yourself than anything I could convey in this short space.

According to this:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,162290,00.html

A recent poll showed that 13% of the Muslim respondents in Britan thought that "more attacks are justified".

And I suspect that the percentages are probably close to the same in Muslim communities here in the States.

So tell me one thing, all of you oh-so tolerant and politically correct folks who keep announcing that "Islam is a Religion of Peace".  Tell me how many Americans are going to have to die before you are willing to confront the fact that there are in all probability a large number of suicidial maniacs in our midst who will gladly blow themselves up if they can kill a bunch of us in the process.

And then tell me what you would suggest that we do about it when it starts happening.  Because it is going to.  And I will offer the opinion that there is going to come a point at which, if there is not a fairly effective "official" solution in place, it will in fact come down to some very ugly vigilante stuff.

I'd sincerely hate to see us stoop to that level.  But if the officials won't act, and it gets going the way it seems to be headed, I predict that the time will come when the people who feel they are being targeted will have had enough.

Better to discuss the potential in advance than to deny that it exists.  That way lie some fairly nasty outcomes.

September 11 shocked the Arab psyche. For months afterward, Arabs and many Muslims went through phases recognisable to psychologists: shock, denial, anger.

He forgot ululation and celebratory gunfire.

I understand the frustration that would cause you to write your update.  But I don't see any practical action that you can take.  What exactly are you suggesting?

The problem is that there are too many innocents in these neighborhoods that you are talking about.  Peolpe who are just trying to do the best they can.  I can't imagine that there are more than a handful of people that have evil intentions in their heart.

Or, let me ask it another way.  How is what you are suggesting different than what they are doing?  They are trying to make violence between cultures.  How does what you are suggesting not help them get what they want?

I realize that this post is pretty confrontational.  I am being sincere and not trying to be a wise-ass.  It is just that when you say things like "the question of what to do with those communities moves to the fore," it makes me squirm.  That has no place in the moral code that I was taught, one that I identify with being American.

....if you think that's un-American, I think you're unfamiliar with a great deal of our history.

Director of the "London Center for Islamic History".

http://memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=748

He says that:

"The term "civilians" does not exist in Islamic religious law. Dr. Karmi is sitting here, and I am sitting here, and I'm familiar with religious law. There is no such term as "civilians" in the modern Western sense. People are either of Dar Al-Harb or not."

So it's apparently OK to kill any of us you can, if you are a good Muslim of his sect.

I'm as tolerant as most anyone is, but when people start blowing up around me, I get a little bit on the "intolerant" side fairly quickly.

If you want to be more tolerant, they can blow up in your yard.  But I suspect that my patience is going to wear out eventually.

Tolerant is not equal to suicidial in my book.  When tolerance starts looking like a death wish, it's about time to start re-evaluating.

Tell me Josh. What do you recommend we do? Concentration camps? Massive shippings of folks back to countries their parents were born in? What?

You're good at stirring up fear and anger, but you stop short of recommending a solution. Isn't it about time you did that?

...but I figured I'd answer anyway.

These "men" are the enemy, and they're walking free in the streets right now because the liberals are too busy defending them with their "free speech" and "right to dissent" BS. (clue for the moonbats - you don't have a right to dissent if it means you're taking sides with the enemy - that's TREASON).

This is a perfect example of what's wrong with the ragheads. Jihad Joe here and his buddies are confirmation of everything we've been trying (with mixed results) to communicate to the world: most Muslims hate non-Muslims and will support any effort to kill other non-Muslims.

If there had been a bombing in a Muslim part of the UK you'd see us all lining up in solidarity here, because a person is a person, even if he is a Muslim. Christian churches would line up behind the Muslims in decrying the attack. But there's two problems: one, Muslims love it when we (non-Muslims) die; two, Muslims are very rarely targetted in terrorist attacks. Sure, some of them died in the WTC, but there were more Christians than Muslims there, and Christians were the targets.

These guys are the perfect example of the enemy we aren't fighting - they may not be actively blowing themselves up to kill us (yet). But they won't support us in the fight against their brethren BECAUSE THEY AGREE WITH THE TERRORISTS. That makes them little different from the jackals who murdered our people on 9/11 and 7/7.

Just my thoughts.

(first time poster, long time reader - just tossing a "big hello" out to all of you :-) )

-noraa.

I know that it has happened before, like during WWII when we had the Japanese internment camps.

But the original settlers came here to escape persecution for their religous beliefs in Europe.  That is why to this day we hold religous freedom to be one of the most important.

And I realize I am mixing culture and religion.  They kind of go hand in hand in this case.  You are free to explain to me what else I am missing.  How is it American?

But you ignored most of my remark.  While history is interesting, I don't think it applies here.  It isn't like there are open hostilities with a country that must be defeated.  Show me a time in history where there have been no terrorists.  By their very nature there is an endless supply.  But that doesn't me that we can round up whole communities and ship them off to internment camps for the rest of their lives, and their children's lives, etc.  How is that working out for Israel?

Yes, it worked during WWII.  Innocents were sent away, just as those who would have posed an intelligence or sabotage threat.  And I think it was the right thing to do in that situation.  But for the one we have now it is not.

If you have another example, I would like to hear it.  I honestly don't think it right to do.  You are free to disagree.  I welcome the debate.  Change my mind.

That someone cannot comment upon the existence of a problem as a matter of news without proposing an instantly workable solution to the problem?

The snarky tone of your very first comment does not bode well for a long tenure here. Please try and show a little more respect.

Thanks for contributing, but we generally frown on the usage of the term "ragheads" here, as it is pretty clearly a racial slur, which is against the posting rules of this site (you may examine them at your leisure by clicking on the "posting rules" button).

Also, I think your post generalizes a bit too much, but I'll let those you are debating with deal with that point.

Josh and I go back years on this. I've been asking him to clarify his solution for years. The "snarky" tone as you call it will be more than understood by him. Thanks for your advice though.

Good to see you again, and we'll make a note of it so that AGAG's torture squads -- complete with precedent-chocked memos -- can round you up. Say hi to Kimmitt. He'll be in the bright red jumpsuit. Makes him an easier target.

I'm sure Josh isn't pushing for concentration camps or mass ostracisms. Rather, he's setting the paving stones for genocide. Great catch.

Didn't know who you were except that this was your first post here, I'll leave it to Josh to deal with you.

Cheers.

....here's your one and only warning, for racist content.  Shame.

I go to church -- church! -- with Arabs.

I've had this discussion in other places, and it seems to come down to the same thing most times.

The patrons of tolerance and civility say "you CAN'T do this".  And you "CAN'T" do that.  And so on and so forth, in a very tolerant and multicultural voice.

And on a lot of levels, I'd love to be able to agree with them.  Because, be it noted, I'm no fonder of the outcomes that I'm predicting than they are.  But I'm a pragmatist.

And you tell me.  How many suicide attacks by members of the local Muslim community are going to occur in Detroit, or LA, or London, or wherever, before the tipping point is reached?  Like I said, I'm a pragmatist.  And I can assure you that it will eventually be reached, unless there is a plan in place in advance.

Sooner or later, if it goes on, the majority of the population is going to start looking at these people just like they do at child molesters.  And for the same reason.  Too many of them seem to want to murder babies for their own gratification.

If that becomes the public perception, what do you think is going to happen?  Best to have a plan in place to pre-empt that outcome, don't you think?

I've been asking him to clarify his solution for years.

And you've been getting answers for years.  Not sure why they are forgotten so swiftly.

In any case, Leon is right: one does not need a solution to identify the problem.

It's simply time for Josh to declare what solutions he thinks are appropriate. He's been stirring up fear and anger for too long to hide behind the excuse that he's merely discussing the issue any longer.

Oh, and when the goon squads come for me, do wear a red rose or something so I can pick you out of the mob...and I do mean "pick you out." ;-p

I'll admit that since I've never posted before I didn't bother to read the rules, for which I sincerely apologize (I'm kind of a do-it-yourselfer - "I don't need no stinking instruction manuals"). I just read them, so I'll stick to them from now on.

I won't debate calling "ragheads" a racial slur, except to say that we use it at work and with company all the time. We don't use the n-word, as we all agree that one is utterly inappropriate, but no one I know considers the word I used a racial slur. I guess it's just an example of different standards for different company. Might make an interesting diary about how "PC and how the liberals are enslaving us with their language" or some (more articulate) thesis.

Either way, I apologize, and I won't use it again.

-noraa.

that's irresponsible.

You're shouting "fire" in a movie theate with lines like "the question of what to do with those communities moves to the fore."

Stands out better in the torchlight.

Edward and Trevino are pretty familiar with each other, so it really isn't as bad as it looks.  He's also a pretty sensible guy, regardless of the makeup of his blog :D
-bro

... but I wasn't talking about Arabs in general - I was speaking more about Muslims and their Jihad against Christianity, which these individuals are a perfect example of (which - I thought was trevino's point - it's been a long day, and perhaps I just need to go to bed). I've withdrawn my overbroad language, but I think some of my generalizations hold up, given the facts, and given this example.

-noraa.

And, if you want to do such a diary, you are certainly welcome. This, however, is not such an instance. "Ragheads" is a term that is clearly offensive (and designed to be) to virtually everyone of Arab descent.

A good rule of thumb is that if the term ceased to be a term solely of distinction and wanders into the area of derision, it's not something that should be used.

that bombing civilian transportation was verboten.  Apparently I was the only one that thought the irony noteworthy.

It was cited in an article along with others condemning the attacks.  I'll track it down again if you want.  Leaders have spoken out against the attacks.  There's no denying that.  You can argue how sincere the speakers were but they did atleast speak.

he could put up a post like this and not have me overreact...consistency is important.

All the same, I think the Muslims in the footage were atypical. I've lived in England and know plenty of Muslims there who were sincerely more than horrified at the attacks.

It reminds me of the interviews with folks in Eric Rudolph's hometown.

are jihadists out to destroy Western Civilization.

There is at least one Muslim that posts here, and he most certainly isn't a jihadist.

When you shout "fire" in a theater, the solution (to most people) is pretty intuitive.

Yes, Edward.  I've been doing that.  Not the persons under discussion.  Heavens, no.  They've been stirring up -- well, tolerance!

I only wish that last sentence was a joke.

People acting intuitively. It's rarely the best response to any situation.

radical US citizens started bombing other US citizens the less radical muslims among us would start standing up to them.

It isn't that there aren't muslims here in the US who wouldn't participate, I just think there are a lot of muslims here in the US who wouldn't put up with it, and I don't think they would sit around making excuses for them.

I mean honestly what excuse can you make for a US citizen bombing a subway in the name of Allah?

is a bad idea?

This latest jihad attack in London again makes us have to confront what policies to put in place to prevent future attacks.

We are in an undeclared war with radical islam (not all islam), so radical islamists, to the extent that they can be identified, cannot be allowed to have freedom of movement in the USA. Deportation of radical islamist is not the death penalty and it is not permanent internment.  They can continue to be islamofascist in their country of origin.

Sadly, what other choice is there?

any good solutions that are palatable to the populace.

The problem he brings up is a real one, and it is one that may not ever have a good answer.

Do you deny the problem?  Or do you have your own solution?  What is it?

Did you read the interviews of folks in Eric Rudolph's hometown. They were just as protective, dismissive of the strangers asking, and more or less defensive of his actions. It was simply folks protecting their own. To outsiders it was horrifying, but after taking a deep breath and considering it in context, it wasn't as dangerous as it might have first seemed.

In other words, don't magnify one small group's reaction into a systemic community-wide problem.

....I see no need to not state the obvious.  Which is, in this case, that Muslim communities in the West contain within them significant sources of danger to the societies of which they are a larger part.  All the idiot braying about how these are merely a few among many, or how the villains aren't "real" Muslims, fails to alter this basic fact.

Now, you want solutions?  They are easy enough.  Halting or radically restricting immigration of Muslims is a start.  Stepped-up policing and intelligence-gathering within the relevant communities -- included the dreaded profiling -- is a start.  Refusing to grant rhetorical or symbolic succor to the relevant ideologies in the public square is a start.  Subjecting the relevant beliefs and ideologies ot the same level of ridicule that, say, orthodox Catholics receive in popular culture would be a start.  Note, please, that all these things can be done without violating the basic rights of any law-abiding, loyal person.  Note further that I would advocate the same measures for any dangerous social stratum prone to produce violent members, including Southern whites pre-1980.

Oh, sorry, you thought I meant genocide, didn't you?

most definitely.

Deportation of radical islamists is not the death penalty and it is not permanent internment.

Amen!

Is that when people hear "fire" their basic instict is to get the heck away from the fire.

Which is pretty sound, if you ask me. What you are complaining about is not the instict itself, but the technique with which the instinct is to be obeyed.

I'd agree with two of your suggestions:

• Stepped-up policing and intelligence-gathering within the relevant communities
  
• Subjecting the relevant beliefs and ideologies ot the same level of ridicule that, say, orthodox Catholics receive in popular culture  (although if you watch Mad TV, you'll note that already exists here in the US).

I can't agree to the others, though:

• Halting or radically restricting immigration of Muslims (it must be across the board if restrictions are enacted)
  
• Profiling (not at all sure why this doesn't strike you as a violation of their basic rights)

what I'm complaining about is the example of someone who stands in the middle of a theater shouts "fire" vs. the person who stands and suggests everyone move quickly through the exits without saying any more than that. One is the hallmark of civilized people.

in another comment.

I agree there's a problem. I'm actually more inclined to be harsh on the Muslim communities (within limits) than most people. But I think you do it politically, through channels that encourage Muslim leadership to do the dirty work, and not in ways that lead nonMuslims to feel they need to take up pitch forks and torches.

Halting or radically restricting immigration of Muslims (it must be across the board if restrictions are enacted)

Why, Edward? Why can't we make our immigration policy subject to our national interest and, if we deem it necessary, discriminate against Muslims?

Halting or radically restricting immigration of Muslims (it must be across the board if restrictions are enacted)

Why exactly?  Last time I checked there was no constitutional requirement to allow anyone into the US just because they wanted to come.  I see no problem with subjecting Muslims (or those coming from Muslim nations) to strict scrutiny before they are allowed to enter the US.  Especially given the fact that the INS currently doesn't seem to give a hoot if somebody overstays their visas.

Profiling (not at all sure why this doesn't strike you as a violation of their basic rights)

While I don't think we should be stopping random Muslims on the street to search them, I honestly don't see the reasoning behind subjecting a 70 year old grandma to a body and luggage search while the 20 something middle eastern looking man is given a pass, because they don't want to appear to be profiling.

Last time I checked there wasn't a single 70 year old grandma flying those airplanes into buildings, or strapping on bombs to blow themselves up on a subway.

....you're not pointing out the same exits that I am.  But then, we see different things to preserve here.

Link

The author does have a point.  And it's a vicious, reinforcing circle if left to its own devices.  Chicken or the egg as to which happens first but...each group marginalizes the other leading to more of the same.  I honestly have no idea how one would correct this unless one of the sides took corrective actions themselves.  Needless to say I don't have much faith in either group but less so with regards to political demagogues.

First, where is there any "right" to emigrate to the United States -- or become a citizen?

Second, how on earth does profiling violate rights?  Do you seriously suggest that Midwestern Swedes receive the same attention from the FBI as Saudis in Manhattan?

"discriminat[ion]" will lead to increased alienation and malcontent, two of the current ills that leads British Muslims to align with the terrorists in the first place. You'll be playing into the terrorists hands.

Besides, Britian's Muslim families have as much right as any other group to help their families immigrate. It's human nature, and, again, targeting them for denial of that will increase, not decrease, hostilities.

Someone who yells "fire" and nothing further is better than someone who sits still and says nothing at all.

1. Emigration laws must be fair. See my response to Paul for more about why.
   
2. It needs to appear that they do. Muslims at the airport, for example, need to see as many Midwestern Swedes stopped and searched. One has a right to be treated equally.

everyone has the right in this country to be treated equally. It's really that simple.

"discriminat[ion]" will lead to increased alienation and malcontent

I hate to point this out, but in the present absence of "discrimination," we are getting enough "alienation and malcontent" to slaughter c.50 innocents on their way to work.  To say nothing of three thousand innocents four years back.  Your way, it ain't working.

I further suggest that you may wish to consider that "the current ills that leads British Muslims to align with the terrorists" are not primarily external phenomena, but rather intrinsic to the belief system in question.

Josh stands up and yells, "Fire".

Your response, initially, is to say, "That's really bad form of you to say Fire without proposing a clear and concise exit plan."

THAT was what I called baloney on.

If you would like to now say, "That's really bad form of you, since there is no fire." That's your prerogative, and we can take up the discussion from there.

You're crazy to say such a thing, but everyone's entitled to their own wrong opinion.

Emigration laws must be fair.

They must be "fair" to the societies they purport to protect, not to the prospective immigrant.

It needs to appear that they do.

To spare feelings?  Come now.  No.

You might benefit from a focus on the welfare of, say, the United States, rather than particular individuals who may wish it ill.

Well, let me start by saying that trevino did really put forward a plan.  Just that something needed to be done.  So I don't really feel that obligated to.  As a matter of fact, that is exactly what my original post was asking.

All I know is that when I read the update, I got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.  So I admit that it was a gut and emotional reaction.  That is why I was asking for a discussion (debate) to try and change my mind.

The problem that I see from the extention that I made of using internment camps is: who do you put there?  I would think that in the US, and especially places like Detroit, the muslim community is not limited to those of middle eastern or arab descent.  There are a lot of blacks in the muslim community, and it isn't as if they don't already live in a different world than you and me in the inner cities.

But I degress.  You also have people like (what was his name?) Walker?  That young white kid from California that was caught in Afganistan.  Hell, he even met Bin Laden.  He was just a dumb teenage white boy.  My point is that there is no way to put a stark line around which people should be sent to the camp?  Would you be OK with it if you were included in that group, for whatever reason?

Anyway, I know there is a lot of conjecture there, but so is what trevino implies.

So my suggestion would be to put a lot more resources into covert operations to infiltrate these operations, like that Walker kid did.  I would even be willing to have them break some laws, if they needed to.

So that is my suggestion.  What is yours?

First, and foremost, there most definitely is no absence of "discrimination" in England. That's the most openly racist society I've ever lived in, and Muslims are called the "N" word and worse on a daily basis, so the alientation and malcontent exists. waiting to be directed.

Secondly, they've had that belief system for generations now. If that inherently made them terrorists, we would have seen this before now.

Thirdly, the recruiters have the best selling tool imaginable in the "crusaders" occupying Iraq.

and what about the individuals who wish it no ill at all but simply happen to be Muslim?

They should sacrifice their rights, subject themselves to constant humiliation, all so some 70-year-old granny glides through security?

Hell no!

with how the discrimination will make people feel, so long as it begins the process of removing the potential Muslim terrorists from our country. Removing said Muslims is the only sure way (and a non-violent way!) to eliminate the threat of Muslim terrorism.

Obviously we cannot deport American citizens, but any Muslim immigrant who shows the least sympathy for violent jihad should be deported summarily. As Sandbox said below, it's not internment; it's not even Gitmo. It is the justified precaution of every sovereign nation to pursue its national interest through its immigration policy.

Josh is shouting "fire" based on one anecdote (revealing nothing more perhaps than one derelict smoking a cigarette). You're willing to have untold dozens of people potentially rampled when all that's really necessary is for the usher to address the smoker?

I would not be surprised if 13% of Americans would justify ANYTHING our military did.  

any Muslim immigrant who shows the least sympathy for violent jihad should be deported summarily

I think that's appropriate in any country. I'm at a total loss as to why Parliament doesn't change the UK's laws to chuck out the Imam spouting hate over there.

Zero tolerance for hate speech, and anyone who's not willing to accept the rights of the people of their adopted home to resolve problems politically (versus violently) should be sent back so fast their head's spin.

That's not the same as discriminating against law-abiding Muslims who want to emigrate, though, which is closer to what I understood Josh to be recommending.

In an odd sort of way I think that many of the radical islamists will understand why they are being deported.

Look, you tell them, it's because of your ideology--you want to kill or convert the rest of us.  We read this on your websites, hear it from your radical Imams, etc. ,etc. At first we thought you were just "expressing" yourselves, ranting, so we didn't take it that seriously.  But after 911, Bali (...then just fill in all the other jihad attacks) we have come to the conclusion that you are really serious.  And now we are afraid of you--we are scared--it's only natural to be afraid of someone who wants to kill you--right?  So we don't know what else to do other then send you back.

Also, you will get along better in your country of origin--we can't see it working here in the USA. Sorry.

Terrorists is in the low teens, worldwide. The number of young, Muslim, male terrorists is somewhat higher, worldwide. In a world of limited resources, it sometimes makes sense to allocate resources based on rational probabilities and cost/benefit analyses.

In the context of respecting the civil rights of all, regardless of race creed or color, I'm probably about as far to left as anyone you're going to find here on RS.

The response of the Muslim from Leeds to the reporter's questions may indicate he knows more than he's letting on about the UK bombers, or it may indicate that he is simply extraordinarily resentful toward the English.  We don't know.

The bottom line is this: we have a problem.  The context of the problem is that western nations include large populations of people who neither subscribe to nor accept the traditional western values of pluralism and tolerance.  The problem itself is that this context offers a sympathetic environment for people that want to kill us.

Here is an excerpt from a lesson about Islam, offered up on the website of a Boston area mosque:

For example, simply believing that it is permissible to rule by Western "liberal" and "democratic" laws in lieu of the Divinely Revealed Law of Almighty God makes one a "polytheist". Certainly, a person who does such a thing, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, doesn't ever believe that there is another Almighty Creator and Sovereign Lord. However, for all practical purposes, such a person has take another "god", whether they choose to admit it or not. In this way they are associating partners with Almighty God (Arabic: shirk), and thus become a "polytheist" in a practical sense, regardless of their lip-service to "monotheism".

How do people that believe this ever integrate into a democratic western society?

Folks from a bewildering variety of cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds have found a place for themselves in the US and, to a lesser extent, other western nations.  It's often taken a generation or more for these immigrants to fully assimilate into the culture of their new home.

I, strenuously, do not advocate excluding Muslim immigration.  I do not advocate indiscriminate rounding up of Muslims for interrogation, preventive detention, or other similar things.

I do, however, think it is reasonable to ask folks emigrating to our country to have an interest and willingness to become American, English, Dutch, or what have you.  That means accepting western values of mutual tolerance and respect.  It means not viewing an acceptance of civil law as a condemnable form of polytheism.  

And, certainly, it means not tolerating the presence of people who murder their neighbors.

It is, perhaps, unfortunate, but given the facts on the ground western Muslims must decide where their loyalties lie.  If they cannot in good conscience live in a western society, with its requirements of tolerance and mutual respect for differences, they should not come to the west.  If they can in good faith come to the west, they must not tolerate the presence among them of those who mean us harm.

Again, to be clear, I do not advocate indiscrimately singling out Muslims for discriminatory treatment.  I do call out to Muslims in the west to decide whether they want to be a part of our society, or not.  If so, they must accept that their neighbors may believe differently than they do.  If not, they may want to consider why they want to be here.

In any case, there is simply no room for tolerating the butchering of innocent people who are simply going about their business.  And, there is no room for accepting tolerance of that in others.

Cheers -

And to most Americans, as well as anyone who bothered to read the document.

upset and appalled by the depraved and degenerate radical faction which commits murder in the name of Islam ...

Could someone kindly point out where the fatwa demanding the life of Salman Rusdies has been withdrawn and a fatwa against Osama Bin Laden has taken it's place?

:::sigh::: thought so

Attention dhimmis-in-training, DO let me know when the 'moderate' moslem community does more than apologize for kaffir public consumption.

Until then...apology NOT accepted.

you can treat one segment of the population who've done nothing wrong differently from the others?

I'm glad we agree on at least this, but I also favor a ceasation of all Muslim immigration until such time as we the people become convinced that this jihadist fever has passed (if it ever will pass).

I would much rather the cops focus their resources on the guys who are more likely to be the bombers.

Passing over the guy from Pakistan and searching the 50 year old Swedish looking grandmother to spare the Pakistani's feelings is a waste of resources and puts everyone else on the transportatoin at risk.

There is a good reason to profile in certain situations, and protecting some 200 odd people on an airplane is a reasonable time to profile and who cares about their feelings.

...in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

There's also:

"Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"

And

"Clause 4: To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;"

And an enabling clause:

"Clause 18: To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."

I mean, sillyhead that I am, I took that bit about the Constitution not being a suicide pact seriously.

Before you go muttering about equal protection, ask yourself if every right and every limitation on government is absolute.

Not to worry, Darleen.  Thomas Friedman in today's New York Times said the same thing.  I am sure that once all the moderate muslims read his column the appropriate fatwas will follow.

I don't trust anonymous sources from anyone. Not from someone who has been a journalist for 30 years and certainly not from some stranger on the WWW. You may be able to personally vouch for this person, but I don't even know who you are.

C'mon, just because the liberal media does something doesn't mean we should too.

Good comment. Might I suggest that you are moving ever so slowly toward sanity [grin].

If they cannot in good conscience live in a western society, with its requirements of tolerance and mutual respect for differences, they should not come to the west.

But here is the essence of our problem: They are already here. What should we do about it?

I say part of the solution is reversing the insanity of our immigration policy, and making it clearer to all that our immigration policy is an instrument of our national interest; which national interest, in the current war, must confront the unique difficulties of Islam, and which national interest might, on occasion, have to abandon the ideology of multicultural Liberalism to do so effectively.

who is "your man" and why should I trust him or you? As I said above, I don't know who you are so you have to prove your crediblity if you want any. You posted this info because you wanted people to react in some way. I am simply saying that before people react we need to make sure this is credible.

I would expect you to hold this until you could back it up. That is what I expect from any source, much less one spreading something so inflammatory.

You still haven't answered why this video matters so much. Ok, there are some people who support the attacks. How can that be news to you when we are fighting a war against them?

I don't know if PatHMV would mind, but he makes my point in his post above, I think:

The openness of American society to immigration has been predicated historically on the belief that the new immigrants will by and large assimilate themselves into our culture, accepting our basic beliefs (respect for life, individual liberty, religious tolerance, and human equality) as their own.

emphasis mine

He goes on to make the suggestion that if the community does not conform to these ideals, then immigration policy should be adjusted.  I think that is another good idea.

I take it from your short (and can I say dismissive?) comment that you are suggesting something like what I inferred with the internment camps.  All I am saying is that this does not fit with the concept of individual liberty and human equality.

I would really like to see how you justify that with our history,

....to trust me, as you prefer.  Nor do I need to hew to your expectations.  And I don't.  As for the rest of your queries, they're addressed in this thread.

If he had to do it all over, he would do it all again, including the 15 gunshots, the stabbing, and the throat-slitting.  It was all for his religion:

"I cannot feel for you ... because I believe you are an infidel," he added.

Now this is the Netherlands, one of the kindest and most liberal societies on the face of the Earth, where the proscutors had to separately demand that not only this man go to prison for life, but that he also be stripped of his rights to run for public office and to vote.  I'm not familiar with Dutch law, but apparently being a murderer sentenced to life in prison doesn't automatically mean the revocation of those rights.  

Come now.  You know this isn't even slightly true.

Call me a fascist, but if those guys were in America and I saw that tape, I'd work on getting their phone lines and domiciles tapped as quickly as I could. Given that I didn't hear anything interesting in, oh, say a day, I'd kick their door in and comb through their computer files.

....there most definitely is no absence of "discrimination" in England.

You might have a point if the relevant universe of examples were confined to England.  But it's not.

Secondly, they've had that belief system for generations now. If that inherently made them terrorists, we would have seen this before now.

Hoo boy.  Your familiarity with Islamic history is somewhat lacking, I'm thinking.

Thirdly, the recruiters have the best selling tool imaginable in the "crusaders" occupying Iraq.

Yes, nothing like this happened before we invaded Iraq.  Moving on.

One warning.

Citizens have the right to equal standing before the law.  Noncitizens get whatever we extend to them.  Within the pool of citizens, it does not follow that an act perpetrated by the state upon one must be perpetrated upon all others.

Your logic means I get welfare and Social Security, and now.

They'll be quite fine, I think.

You'll find if you travel the world a lot that MANY cultures express embarassment in different ways. This is absolutely NOT a statement in support of moral relativism, but it is a simple fact that in many parts of the world laughter and what might be thought of as smirking in fact is an expression of simple shame. It is like this in Korea and in many parts of the Middle East. Through no shortcoming of our own, Western Europeans don't deal well with it at all.

This is not meant as a contradiction of the main post, as I have not seen the footage. However, I have seem some bad situations get a lot worse very fast because of this basic misunderstanding. Please remember this cautionary note before you go out and try to reproduce the situation exemplified in this OP.

Hey Paul -

Good comment. Might I suggest that you are moving ever so slowly toward sanity

Thanks for the kind words.  Actually, I've been sane since before you whippersnappers were in kneepants, but I appreciate the positive feedback.  ;-)

But here is the essence of our problem: They are already here. What should we do about it?

Find them, and imprison or kill them.

I say part of the solution is reversing the insanity of our immigration policy, and making it clearer to all that our immigration policy is an instrument of our national interest; which national interest, in the current war, must confront the unique difficulties of Islam, and which national interest might, on occasion, have to abandon the ideology of multicultural Liberalism to do so effectively.

My only point of difference with this statement is that I think we do not have to abandon "multicultural liberalism".  We have to insist that folks that want to come here accept it.

And, to be clear, by "multicultural liberalism", I do not mean "whatever you think is OK".  I mean the traditional American, and to a lesser degree broadly western, values of respect and tolerance for different cultures, religions, and points of view, with the proviso that the respect extended must be returned.

We should not change in response to the current threat.  We should demand that those who want to come to the west agree to be like us.

It is more than reasonable to expect immigrants to come here because they actually want to be Americans.  I don't care if folks are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Rastafarian, Santero, pagan, or nothing at all.  If they are willing to accept American, or western, standards of mutual respect and equality under the law, I say welcome.

Cheers -

trevino gives some suggestions downthread.

He says:

I'd agree with two of your suggestions:

Stepped-up policing and intelligence-gathering within the relevant communities

Subjecting the relevant beliefs and ideologies ot the same level of ridicule that, say, orthodox Catholics receive in popular culture  (although if you watch Mad TV, you'll note that already exists here in the US).

I can't agree to the others, though:

Halting or radically restricting immigration of Muslims (it must be across the board if restrictions are enacted)

Profiling (not at all sure why this doesn't strike you as a violation of their basic rights)

as commented on above by Edward.  I think that he makes some good points.

Kowalski,

I was not surprised by Van Gogh's killer saying he would do it again. I think that alot of islamofascists when confronted about their views will admit to them--to judges, police, or immigration officers.  It is because they are true believers, so it may be shameful to deny their own basic mindset.

If this is the case, then to identify confirmed islamofascist may not be as hard as people say it would be.

I've seen it in Asia.  You're quite right.  I hope to post the video in coming days, so folks can judge for themselves.

you used the reaction of one group of people to an outsider reporter to imply the entire community had to be dealt with. You disparaged the statement of one Muslim leader (without suggesting why). You implied MSM complicity.  Again, all from one anecdote of what appears from the transcript to be support of the terrorists, but which is hardly conclusively so.

Yes, you can combine this and other anecdotes or incidents to build the case that Muslim youth are  cause for concern, but it's irresponsible IMO.

Find them, and imprison or kill them.

All fine and good; yet what if they have committed no crime, but would commit a horrible crime like the one last week in London if the opportunity arose, or would aid and abet such criminals, or would endorse said criminals' ideology? Etc., etc.

This is the dilemma. We are all learning now how deeply penetrated London is with terrorist-sympathizers. To a lesser extent, parts of America are as well. These people may not have actually committed a serious crime, but sure could; and would help, in ways small or large, those who have. It is my contention that they should be promptly escorted out of the country.

really?

You'll piss off the Muslims already here, implicate their relatives indirectly, and possibly stir up hate among American's not at all currently inclined to feel like they're anything but another American.

It's foolish.

if I could.  I am glad to see you weighing in here.  Your posts regarding immigration policy were a little hard to take, but you have made some very valid points.

I had hoped that we, as a nation, would not have to deal with these issues here in the US, but I think it is only a matter of time.  And a short time at that.  The London subway is probably only the beginning.  Time to get over being naive.

"5" to Josh too.  

How many RAPES by members of the local MALE community are going to occur in Detroit, or LA, or London, or wherever, before the tipping point is reached?

How many MURDERS by members of the local AMERICAN community are going to occur in Detroit, or LA, or London, or wherever, before the tipping point is reached?

How many CHILD MOLESTATIONS by members of the LOCAL COMMUNITY are going to occur in Detroit, or LA, or London, or wherever, before the tipping point is reached?

I could keep going but you get my point. There has been such a vicious reaction to some unseen video of people who may have supported the attacks in London that killed 50+ people.

Why aren't people this angry about the men, women and children murdered everyday in this country by people we live and work with?

Use this anger to do good things people - that's why we're here!

It's about this site. It and we simply deserve more respect than that.

Another couple of thoughts on immigration.

My father's people have been here for a couple of hundred years.  They were Scot-Irish who came into South Carolina as indentured servants, and later made their way to Georgia to settle around Augusta.  Other than that, I don't know much about the circumstances.

My mother's people, however, came here early in the last century.  My grandmother was born in Italy, and came over sometime around 1902.  I have a picture of the town she was born in, it's near Bedonia in northern Italy.

My grandmother came through Ellis Island.  Not everyone that came got in.  If you were sick with anything more serious than a cold, you went back.  Ditto if you had a criminal history, or if your politics were unfriendly to the US.  They put you back on the boat, and back you went.  I'm actually suprised my great-grandfather got in, in his youth he had run away from the Italian army and joined the circus as a strong man.

These restrictions seem more than reasonable to me.  There are folks that come here for political asylum, and sending them back would be a death warrant.  Short of that, it seems more than reasonable to me that we set certain basic, common sense standards for folks emigrating to the US.

Like Adam, I couple this opinion with the opinion that we expand the current immigration limits so that folks who come in good faith to work and establish homes and families here be allowed to do so within the limits of our ability to absorb them.  

Cheers -

justice system does a fair job of dealing with those issues.  Prison terms, death penalty, and lifelong labelling have deterred some, no doubt.  

The problem with suicide/homocide bombers from the Muslim community lies with the fact that you can't punish a dead person.  You can only do your best to ward off other such attacks by either deporting them, or praying like crazy the intellegence community gets a tip and can thwart those who would do harm.  

I take your point.

I'm not sure where the line is, precisely.  Should the author of the essay I excerpted be escorted from the country?  As it turns out, he is a native born American, so it's problematic.

That said, someone like the Finsbury Park mosque imam -- someone who has vocally, stridently, and publicly called for violence against Britons and the institutions of British government -- has clearly worn out his welcome.  Send him home, or better, don't.  Lock him up for inciting violence against his neighbors and putative countrymen.

Cheers -

It is easier to be angry at terrorists because they do not act of stupidity or greed or petty violent impulse, but because they intend to change the way I live my life.

People who become victims of crime are angry at the perp., and when terrorists strike at one of us with the purpose to change us all, then we all are victims.

That, given that you created an account three days ago, you feel qualified to set the standards for what disrespects the site, and for what the site "deserves."

It's all the more amazing that you are lecturing one of the site's founders about these principles.

Look under the "Blog Roll" part:

Founders

· Ben Domenech

· Mike Krempasky

· Josh Trevino / Tacitus

I don't link things 'cause I like red.

Obviously my opinions aren't based upon this single anecdote, which is being used purely for illustrative purposes.  You know this well.  That you find it "irresponsible" to draw conclusions from consistent patterns is, I think, your own willful blindness at work.

All that because of immigration restrictions.  Well.

"Common criminals" - rapists, murderers, child molesters - have changed all of our lives! From a female perspective, I have been aware that some members of our community would rape me if given a chance. That threat keeps women on guard 24/7 in some mostly subtle but sometimes powerful ways. It damages the relationship that men and women have because we don't know which of you it will be. Sure, most men would never rape a woman but the terror is still real.

For some women that threat becomes a reality and that too has a powerful affect - and often infects their relationships with men for a long time. Many relationships end after the woman or man has been sexually assaulted.

I have worked in rape crisis for a long time and have seen not only how rape affects individuals and families but the entire society. This is terrorism too but few people fight this war.

come around to this view as well-

"I also favor a ceasation of all Muslim immigration until such time as we the people become convinced that this jihadist fever has passed (if it ever will pass)."

C17wife,

You raise a criticial point.  If the Islamikazi also dies in the attack, then there is no punishment for that individual.  Punishment involves, among other things, just revenge.  So how to respond?  After 991 Jihad attacks, the USA went to war in Afghanastan.  The Israelis sometimes engage in targeted assasination as reponse.  Where is the justice if the murderer also dies in the attack?

Yes, that a founder of this site would not adhere to better journalistic practices when members have been admonished to do so time and time again - that is my problem.

I just recently started posting comments but I have been coming here for some time. I have high expectations for this site and was disappointed in this diary. I apologize if that offends you, but I mean it as a sign of respect.

Recall Oklahoma City; not all terrorists who  mass murder are Muslim.

does no one remember the 60s?

Your powers of mental acuity leave much to be desired.

Go back and read the post again - he didn't say, "Criminals don't change people's lives," he said, "Criminals don't do what they do in order to change my life."

If you're incapable of understanding the distinction, perhaps it's time to move on to another discussion.

I must not have been reading his post carefully enough, because I missed it.

if it won't hurt them, it won't hurt you.

You are truly talented at switching the argument you're making in the middle of a discussion, especially when the argument you were previously holding had just been left as a smoldering pile of rubble.

Pertinent to nothing, but thanks nonetheless.

no need to be rude.

I disagree with you. Rape, for example, is about power and control. It is not about sex. If a rapist wanted sex they could get that from a prostitute, wife, girlfriend, etc. Rapists feel powerless and rape to feel powerful. Rape in prison is the best example of that - but it is really all the same. So, yes, they rape because they want to change my life.

Twice, out of the last two times I've flown.

It took some intensive therapy, and several rounds of Prozac, but by the grace of God, I'm beginning to recover.

Perhaps, if we set up a support group for all our Muslim friends who are subjected to this same violation of their very personhood a few extra times, we shall all pass through this tumultuous time intact.

why does it matter whether or not they want to change lives? they do.

you see my point here-

"The problem with suicide/homocide bombers from the Muslim community lies with the fact that you can't punish a dead person."

Justice will never be truly had for the crime once it is committed.  Revenge really isn't even justice, since the person is already dead.  All you can hope to do is send a clear message that the cause and the community as a whole will suffer if such attacks continue.  That message usually only comes from retaliation of some sort.  And you d*mn sure don't give surviving family members a bonus when the Islamikazi succeeds.  (BTW-I like the term, I may have to steal it.  :) )  

Well do I recall that feared band of Negro terrorists led by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Seriously, if you are comparing the plight of communities living under immigration restrictions and rational law enforcement communities to that of the African Americans under Jim Crow, you cannot possibly be well informed on the latter.  In any way.

Seems to me I advocated appropriate scrutiny of Southern whites somewhere up above.

Anyway, when half-Mexican, half-Anglo Orthodox Christians from Texas start killing and beheading around the world, you are free to remind me of this.

That you're incapable of grasping his point, and this discussion as a whole is flying over your head.

I'll try another tactic, then I'm out.

The rapist, certainly, is seeking to affect a change in his victim's life. However, the primary purpose of his actions as a rapist is not to affect a change in the lifestyle of society as a whole through fear. Is that easier to understand?

But he did say this:

 But at some point even the good people, reared on fantasies of universal shared values and the innate benevolence of all peoples and cultures, will tire of rush-hour slaughterers from the next neighborhood over.

What I am saying is that the existance of Muslim terrorists and Muslims who approve of their actions doesn't damn their religion nor their culture no more than the McVeighs of the world damns the larger culture from which he came.

I acknowledge that I might be missing something here.

and our justice system dealt with them quite well.

hitting the rocks, because I didn't even find the word "Muslim" in that sentence.

They are not exclusive of each other, they are distinct, and they are simultaneous:  it's both a war effort and a problem in criminal behavior.  It always has been, and that's what makes it such a difficult thing to come to grips with.  Because if you focus merely on the bombers in London, for example, you might be inclined to think that it's just a criminal problem, albeit a particularly acute and deadly, organized one, empowered by technology in a way that was not possible for it to be empowered say, at the turn of the 20th Century.

And on the other hand, you can also see it, and should see it, as an actual war because of the magnitude of the damage that can be caused.  This is the underlying concept behind asymettrical warfare and the biggest problem we're facing as a group of nations composed of people who are presumably more or less sane is exactly this:  where does that balance lie, and what resources need to be committed to each side of it?

FWIW, I don't think you're going to be able to reliably discern the truly motivated killers from the rest of the population without an enormous investment in intelligence gathering and a completely revitalized focus on figuring out who they are, spying on them, and killing them when necessary.  What else can I say?  Bin Laden and his followers found the Achilles' heel of tolerant, Western societies.  

Factoring in unreported rapes, about 6% of rapists--1 out of 16-- will ever spend a day in jail. 15 out of 16 will walk free (explanation and cite below).

61% of rapes/sexual assaults are not reported to the police. Those rapists, of course, never serve a day in prison. [2003 NCVS]

If the rape is reported to police, there is a 50.8% chance that an arrest will be made.

If an arrest is made, there is an 80% chance of prosecution.

If there is a prosecution, there is a 58% chance of a felony conviction.

If there is a felony conviction, there is a 69% chance the convict will spend time in jail.

So, even in the 39% of attacks that are reported to police, there is only a 16.3% chance the rapist will end up in prison.

Factoring in unreported rapes, about 6% of rapists--1 out of 16-- will ever spend a day in jail. 15 out of 16 will walk free.

[Probability statistics compiled for NCPA from US Department of Justice statistics. See www.ncpa.org/studies/s229/s229.html]

has been the focus of my argument from the beginning Leon, but nice try.

....I was twice subjected to a great whopping deal of extra security scrutiny: first while entering the country, because I had both an official and regular passport; second while leaving the country, because I'd collected a great deal of Palestinian paraphenalia.  The scrutiny was loud and public, and entirely rational on the part of the Israelis.  And you know what?  I cooperated and made it through in both cases.

No therapy, nothing.

I doubt I'll ever explain it in a way that reaches you.

night all.

my point: why does it matter whether the rapist intends to change society? They have a grave affect whether they mean to or not.

"what to do with "those communities"?  And didn't the paragraph that I quoted from point out that the bombers were British Muslims?

You're not hard to understand in the slightest.  You simply labor under the impression that understanding you is ipso facto followed by agreement.

I'm glad that your "most people" aren't in charge.

That's what Yoda says, anyway.

First, there was this. I was in the process of arguing with you over whether it was appropriate to point out a problem without offering a reasonable solution. Your argument having been summarily slain, you switched, midstream, to arguing that there was no problem at all, and pretended that that's what you had been arguing all along.

Then, there was this. Trevino made a point about toughening immigration restrictions. You responded, essentially, that doing such a thing would "piss off the Muslims already here, implicate their relatives indirectly, and possibly stir up hate among American's not at all currently inclined to feel like they're anything but another American." Trevino rightly pointed out that it was ludicrous to assume that a change in immigration laws would produce such a drastic effect, and presto change-o, you're now arguing (as though you had been doing it all along) that discrimination (in the 60's!) is really at issue here.

You're more talented than any girl I've ever seen at this tactic. And that is really saying something.

I'm actually more inclined to be harsh on the Muslim communities (within limits) than most people.

What a load of bull hockey.  You are among the most persistent denial-of-reality types where Islam is concerned that I have ever seen.  I've lost count of your incredible rose-tinted statements on the subject.

That you don't understand Joel's point?

I think that's what I've been saying all along.

I was wrong, you do get it. You said, "However, the primary purpose of his actions as a rapist is not to affect a change in the lifestyle of society as a whole through fear."

That was my point. Why doesn't society react and change to this type of terror?

How does robbing 7-11 on MacArthur Blvd in Bethany Okla change my life or anyone's life outside of (to be wildly generous) Oklahoma?

How does John Doh's rape of Gertrude Smith-Parker give MrDoh the power to change your life?

Johnny Rottenstein didn't kill his drug dealer because he wanted you to do or not do anything.

Abu bin Terror-Jones did blow up a bus because he wants you to worship the one true God, and to stop offending modest men across the world by leaving your hoome on the wrong week every month, and driving cars, and selling agricultural equipment to jewish farmers.

Remember, bin Terror-Jones and his boys planned their crime to influence the nation, Rottenstein didn't plan his crime, he was lucky enough to find a really sharp knife in his gramma's kitchen when he stole thirty bucks last Tuesday, and because he forgot to pawn it, he had it on him when he needed it because his drug dealing pal bought an extra taco and tried to short him on the goods.

Just so you know, the reason I run yellow traffic signals is to end slave labor in China.

that, instead of the rapist successfully shattering the life of one woman, we should all feel the shattering effect on our lives in the same way?

Call me naive, but isn't that giving rapists an obscene amount of power over society that they don't deserve?

"fair" in my post.  Not good, but fair.

And I'll submit that rape and suicide/homocide bombing are two completely different issues and thus should be dealt with quite different.  Each has its own twisted psychology to be sure, but one is easier dealt with than the other.

and agree with it.

My point, one more time: why is it that "we are all victims" and are willing to suspend some pretty important rights when 50+ Londoners die but when women are tortured here everyday and not punished (see cites I posted earlier)we can't be bothered? Why?

worrying about being raped.

I too am a woman, and I can't say that I spend much time worrying about the rapist next door.  I do things that hopefully will ward him off (and hopefully my two very large dogs will help in that regard), but I don't assume every man out there is out to rape me, why do you?

some feminist has gotton ahold of you a bit too much.

Sure rape is about power and control, but once they have raped and controlled you, they generally either leave you for dead (ala Ted Bundy) or they head on to their next victim.

They do not rape, because they want you to convert to their religion, or to stop watching Oprah.

swith "rapist" to "terrorist" in your post and please get back to me.

I think this is a very interesting discussion and appreciate your willingness to participate. I am open to what you are saying and hope you are open to me as well.

that our society has done nothing to address rape? That it hasn't changed in any way to adapt to the problem of rape?

These guys would probably disagree with you.

As would these guys and pretty much this whole industry and let's not forget that we also have these now as well.

They have a grave affect whether they mean to or not.

When a terrorist straps on a bomb and blows people up, they always intend for it to affect you, and their desire isn't just to affect you, but to effect your culture, and not just that, but to change your culture.

YOu seem overly obsessed with rape-do you know how rape in many Islamic countries is dealt with?  Are you interested in appeasement to the point that those same laws apply to you?  See that is the difference between joe schmoe american rapist, and the terrorist who wants to kill us.

that local authorities already do not cooperate with federal authorities on immigration.  Also that hundreds of cities/municipalities state they won't cooperate with Patriot Act enforcement.  And that law enforcement is good at enforcing the law in a retrospective, rather than proactive, manner.  And that even then they are notoriously hit and miss.  And that the incitement that is the easiest to trace and monitor blurs the free expression line.  And that any intuitive steps taken(like profiling*) will be fought tooth and nail.  Etc.  Etc.

(like profiling*)

I had a humongous post with a snarky foot note but decided to delete everything but the first paragraph.  I overlooked the link to the snark.  Sorry.

You're absolutely correct, and we're on the same page as far as that goes.

BUT, you're still missing Joel's essential point. The rapist does what he does basically for his own personal benefit.

The terrorist, by intention wreaks his havoc and destruction in a manner specifically intended to cow large parts of the populace, and to induce political coercion.

To the extent that they are successful (see the economic results of 9/11, or the election results in Spain), they are a unique kind of problem that needs a unique sort of solution.

This does not mean that we shouldn't stop trying to stop rapists. It's just that the local "SUV" detectives (can't get enough of that show) aren't really going to do much good tracking down Zarqawi, or getting rid of Hamas.

The US Department of Justice figures clearly state for themselves that most rapists never spend a day in prison. I am just the bringer of bad news.

I said I have worked in rape crisis for a long time. A few people are doing something.

Now, I have stated my point several times here already - please look for it as I am having a hard time keeping up - but am doing pretty well, no?

I should say so.

My goodness, I am not buying any steel bloomers just because some little frat boy wants to be Mr Bigtime and beats on a woman.  Throw his backside in the clink for some remedial therapy and move on.

We do have criminal law, and I think that is sufficient remedy for the lickspittle criminals.  Sure, I would love to expand the death penalty to include lots of folks who have done lots of bad things, but I suspect that would actually harm society more than just building big brick cages and stocking them with malcontents.

The difference with the 'terrorist' type of criminal is that he or she is just as happy to be in stir or dead or in Hamburg with a new manual on Timex and Cemtex and their uses.  Criminal sanction means nothing to him, or his bank-rollers.  Even the mob doesn't like to be in jail for too long at one time, but AQ don't care.  They would all live in jail if it meant burkas were on stage in Paris this spring.

what is fair about any of those stats?

...but one is easier dealt with than the other? I have no idea what that means, which is which? This is interesting, thank you.  

and almost four (she was searched when she got on her first leg, and was going to get searched for the second and she made an "again?" comment and they let her pass).  She certainly looked just like a terrorist at 65 with her graying hair and grannywear.  Those grannies are real quick to strap on those bombs.

Sorry but I think searching 60 year old women is a complete waste of security resources and time.  Until 60 year old women start to strap on bombs, how bout airport security consentrate on those who fit the profile of the guys who strap on the bombs.

respect, this post is not about comparing and contrasting the ill effects of rapists vs. terrorist homocide bombers.  While both crimes are horrible in and of themselves, you are off on a tangent and no longer really contributing to the thread discussion.  If you want to debate the differences, I would suggest writing a new diary instead.

Just a thought.

Before this gets run any further into the ground, I'll just let you know what my policy is on posts that seem to be over the top.

I'm on the alert for people who are not really here to debate and discuss issues.  One thing that the far left loves to do is to characterize conservatives as being racists (while claiming innocence on the racist effects of programs like welfare, abortion-on-demand, and race-based school admissions and hiring).  If you want to say that you're concerned that England (and the rest of the Western world) is not reacting aggressively enough to the real threat of Islamofacism, that's fine.  Name calling is appropriate only on a bigot's blog and I assure you that this blog is not for bigots.  

I won't tolerate leftists who come here just to pretend to be racists and thereby drive away people who might otherwise be interested in this site.

I haven't figured out whether you're a sincere "truth-seeker" or someone who is pretending to be a racist conservative in order to try to put a stain on this site.  Please don't think that you can post epithets and get away with it.

I realize that I'm beating a dead horse, but this just happens to be my favorite website, and I don't like it when people use slurs when they post.  I have Arab friends and I won't stand idly by if someone thinks it's funny to use a slur to refer to them.

I thought we might be closer than we thought.

I agree with everything you say so let's take it one more step. Terror is in the mind of the one who is terrorized, right? Some people were terrorized after the attacks in London, some were not. Even some good Londoners were not terrorized. Upset, angry, sad? Sure. Terrorized? No, especially not Londoners. That is what they have been telling us.

I think we are both saying it is up to the victims to determine whether they have been terrorized or not. Right? And we are saying to be terrorized you have let the terrorists win, right?

what do you think?

pretty damning of the militia/fringe/right wing nut groups.

After McVeigh's actions, I don't know that too many people were feeling warm fuzzies about the militia people-especially the racist fruitloop neo nazi kinds.

I believe your point is that since banning Muslims won't stop all terrorism we shouldn't do it?

Or that it is unfair to stop Muslim terrorists by stopping Muslims entering the country because we don't stop Catholic terrorists the same way?  

And it would be unfair to correlate the numbers of Muslim terror deaths to Catholic terror deaths in reaching this decision?

church-going Christian after the Oklahoma City bombing and this particular guy kept laughing and smirking about it.

Honestly, I think that Muslims in England would be doing themselves a big favor if the imams(?) would get together and form an anti-terrorism group that encouraged its members to report those who are known or suspected of being terrorists or terrorist-affiliated.

They could turn the perception that they are complicit with the bombings on its head.  Without this type of leadership, peaceful Muslims in England and the U.S. will be forced to endure the heavy hand of an unsympathetic public.

this is a great discussion about the level of anger produced by a tape that nobody here has even seen. Things were getting very ugly. That is where it began way back at the start of this diary.

This part of this discussion has now come full circle and we are discussing human reactions to violence. It's all on topic.

I think we are having a respectful and interesting discussion. I have learned something, haven't you?

on a scale from poor to good in terms of the criminal justice system taking care of the perps.

Make no mistake, nothing about rape is fair to the victim, even when the justice system works.

want(too lazy) to click 'parent'.  How exactly would one go about cutting off all "Muslim immigration"?  I presume by cutting off all immigration from predominately Muslim countries?  But then what about from countries where they are a minority?  What about Arab agnostics/atheists who come here and then find religion?  I don't know.  I don't have any particular problem with a rational immigration policy but somehow I don't think it'd be as easy to implement nor universally successful as some are making it out to be.  It'd definitely be an improvement over now though.

Anyways, I'd rank legal immigration a ways down the list of priorities at present.  Hardcore jihadis with camp/prison records aren't going to come through LaGuardia; they're going to come through Laredo if they come at all.

Some of you have asked some great questions, most of which I have answered already.

Here is my point, please think about it and I will start a diary in a day or so where we can discuss further if you want to - or you can ignore :)

Terrorists may intend to terrorize you but only you can let them. Yes, it is horrific, like all other violent crimes. Why is it that we allow a few people across the world to change our society when we have thousands (millions?) here who terrorize us on a daily basis and we do little about it (see the Justice Dept. stats above)?

Those are my questions. I will post a diary soon and hope you join me there for more interesting discussions. So far I think we have all been respectful, and I appreciate that.

Please continue to reply to my comments here if you wish, I will consider them for my diary. Thanks and goodnight to all.

concerned with terrorism not to follow your example of "being on guard against rape 24/7"(paraphrased of course since I'm not reading your posts twice(!!))?  Thanks for the heads up now please make your diary and stop posting in this thread.  Thanks.

I don't have any easy answers.  Well, I have one, but my husband has deemed it totally unacceptable, so I'll not utter it here.

I must say, I have read Paul's posts regarding the immigration issue and all of the criticism he has taken over his stances.  At some point, I want to go back and read them again, because my hunch is I probably agree with him more than I wanted to admit.

Today's revelations make me sick.  Sick.  And they should serve as a HUGE wake up call to us here in the US as well.  How many times did the alarm go off before 9-11?  We hit hit the snooze bar several times before we woke up.  I don't think we can afford to that again.

How the BLEEP do you factor in "unreported" anything?  If they are unreported, then you don't know if they happened, or how many there were.

So what?  You just pick a number that sounds good -- or inflates the scope of your issue, to drum up more donations/political attention?

How's this, then: "factoring in unreported instances of shoplifting, every single person in America is a shoplifter."

Ridiculous, right?  I'm making up numbers that NO ONE can know, or verify -- to further some agenda.  So are you, or so is your source.

STOP with the bogus "unreported" BS.  Sure, in your particular example there ARE unreported rapes.  But you CAN NOT know how many there are, so stop trying to factor in your GUESSES and pretend they are facts.

Now, my napkin calculator says if we remove your "61%" fudge number, each reported rape case has a  15% chance, not a 6% chance, of leading to a jail term for some perp.  Not great.  In fact, quite alarmingly low -- so alarming, that one must wonder WHY the 2003NCVS felt the need to add their 61% dartboard-selected fudge factor.

Sorry for the OT...

That you come to someone else's website, and expect them to adhere to your arbitrary standards of web-ethics.

Maybe you should post your standards on some site or other so that potential bloggers can know whether you'll be respecting them?

In talking about the situation, we have to be honest and not PC.

Is there a problem in Britain? Certainly. Sun reports that all four suicide bombers went to Pakistan for six months of "religious training." One guy was a "handful" always getting into trouble until he got "religious." His family was relieved.

Implication: his family and friends certainly knew he was becoming a radical Muslim, preferred that to the usual troublemaking. The local Mosque is doubtless a center for jihadis as well, he didn't get "religious" by browsing at the Christian Science Reading Room.

Is there a problem in the US? Certainly, although unlike the UK we have the Patriot Act (thank God). The Lackawanna 6 were arrested for both conspiracy (to blow up Americans); and material support for terrorists (attending "religious training" camps in Pakistan affiliated with Al Qaeda). Sound familiar? Even better the Lackawanna 6 are all native born US citizens.

Same with the Lodi group, the younger one is a US citizen, his Father a Pakistani Immigrant (along with the others indicted and held). The Mosque and the various family members seem to have been complicit. This is also the case with the 1993 WTC bombers and the Blind Sheikh Abdul Rahman terror ring also in NYC operating after 1993, and perhaps involved in the 1993 bombings and killings.

The pattern is clear, in at least eight separate incidents (if you include the Netherlands plotters of which Bouyeri was part, they plotted to kill Ali and Gert Wilders and other government officials; and the 9/11 hijackers, 3/11 folks). Young native born citizens of Muslim families drift into religious extremism with the knowledge and often support of their families and friends. They find at local Mosques a center of Islamic extremism and various terror organizing figures. They are recruited by figures inside the Mosque who bring them into a secret cell organized for terror. They commit brutal acts of terror that kill lots of people. This is a huge problem, but it is solveable.

Moreover, these are people who would appear "westernized," as noted they are native born citizens, often middle class or wealthy (one London suicide bomber drove a Benz). They appear unable to resist calls to terrorist acts that are designed to get them killed, and their families do not stop them.

Here in this country I am hopeful that various lawyers will start sueing the families of terrorist operatives for every penny they can. A strong financial incentive (don't stop your son from being a terrorist, you lose everything and are penniless) will drive a lot of anti-terrorist behavior in the family.

Yes, ironically we need lawyers. Lots. To sue every terrorist family in sight. And Mosques. Seize every asset, and ask for punitive damages (sue in Mississippi or Alabama).

We need the Patriot Act to be expanded, so that Mosques are monitored for hate speech the way the FBI monitors the Klan. Mosques that operate with hate speech get closed down and assets seized pre-emptively (a powerful incentive to stick to the spiritual and leave the temporal "rage" alone).

We also need a lot of high profile prosecutions and summary deportations to nasty places for non-citizens. This is also a powerful incentive against provocative hate speech and things like it broke the Klan.

Lastly, politicians need to be honest and upfront with both the general population and the Muslim community about what and why they are implementing these measures.

There is no doubt that Al-Qaeda will continue to try and kill as many Americans and Britons as they can. If they find willing helpers in the home countries of the US and UK, well the reaction will not be good. Democracies are required by their citizens to keep their people safe. No populace will tolerate forever a perceived fifth column. When scared Democracies can do terrible things (Manzanar is an evil place believe me). The worst thing we can do is allow PC and Multiculti nonsense override solid, common sense, and limited in scope measures and instead do nothing until terrible things happen to end up generating a spastic response like the Japanese Internment.

I believe Britain is headed down that road. The UK gov't and Press seems incapable of communicating to the general public the scope of the problem, or to the Muslim Community that self-policing is better than internment or summary deportation and that Mosques and enabling families are a serious problem that needs fixing. Which if the UK turns into Israel's experience, yes I expect something far more ruthless than the Wall. Contrary to public opinion, the Israelis are far more restricted than say the Brits. Don't forget Bomber Harris felt honestly he was just helping Hitler and the Germans reap what they'd sowed.

Other than to paint a picture that the entire Muslim community supports terrorism and inspire further disdain for a culture, the article really has no value.  How many people did they talk to before finding someone less then serious?  Why were the people smirking?  Was it due to the questioning or other circumstances?  Is it so unlikely to find people in the middle of other business that they struggle to compose themselves?

Obviously the point that is being made is that Muslims are supportive of attacks.  Maybe this is true, maybe it isn't.  Finding one example with a seemingly predetermined narrative added to the interview just isn't going to do it for me.

But we have seen it is successful at envoking emotional anti-Muslim responses.  This is very evident by some of the choice terminology in the comments above.  I thought Redstate was a bit above that.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Even the narrowest reading of this must surely preclude religion-based immigration statutes.

I don't know whether to be relieved that you guys are dismissing the possibility of prison camps out of hand (my grandmother-in-law, as Trevino knows, was wrongfully imprisoned by the U.S. government on account of her ethnic background in the 1940's), or disturbed that intelligent Americans, presumably well-schooled in our nation's fundamental liberties, would seriously entertain the possibility of banning people from seeking out the American Dream on the sole basis of their spiritual beliefs (as opposed to the practical implications of those beliefs, which do not include condoning terrorism for many, many Muslims).

If the goal is to further alienate Muslims all over the world and at home, brilliant plan!  If the goal is to reduce incidents of terrorism, well, I suppose I can think of more idiotic policies (the aforementioned prison camps, for instance), but this is still pretty dumb.  Any gains you make in keeping this or that would-be bomber out would be offset many times over by the heightened insularity and distrust of authorities that would take hold in existing Muslim communities, providing even more fertile ground for those terrorists who do manage to slip in, or even for those who feel increasingly persecuted by their own nation to take up arms against it (a development not without precedent in our nation's history).

It took four men to carry out the attacks in London.  They probably had a support network, but we still aren't talking about a lot of people.  What immigration policy is going to keep four people in a nation the size of England, to say nothing of a nation the size of the U.S. from getting it into their heads to carry out such an attack?  Yes, we need to be careful about who we let through our borders, but labeling a billion people as potential terrorists and barring them indiscriminately at the borders just to keep out four, or forty, or even four thousand?  That's lunacy.  And this isn't even to address how you would implement such a fundamentally un-American policy in practice.

And once we have our inevitable first attack under this new anti-Muslim immigration policy, up will go the barbed wire.  I don't think it will come to this, but only because I think most Americans will recognize the blacklisting of an entire religious group for the small-minded religious bigotry (to say nothing of counterproductive policy) that it is, and reject it emphatically.

you'd like to see an increase in the percentage of rapists jailed. Of course, since your statistics include rapists who are not convicted, we'd have to do away with trials for rape: an accusation will be sufficient to lock people up. And since the stats also include rapes that are never reported to the police, we'll have to come up with some sort of massive network of spy cameras, informants, etc., to make sure that unreported rapes can be detected and punished too.

Yes, we'll get right on it.

If you really think this is the only available example, you haven't been paying attention.  Don't confuse an illustrative anecdote with the totality of evidence.

It might tell law enforcement something rather useful about that Christian's particular church, yes?  In a sane world.

Or that it is unfair to stop Muslim terrorists by stopping Muslims entering the country because we don't stop Catholic terrorists the same way?  

And it would be unfair to correlate the numbers of Muslim terror deaths to Catholic terror deaths in reaching this decision

I don't think my point was as much about immigration as it was about "what to do with the groups that are already here" (and perhaps citizens).

As far as correlation of say, the number commiting terrorist acts per 100,000 (or your favorite way of providing a metric) would be useful, though it would be all so tempting to set up catagories in a way to give us the answer that is consistent with our current thinking.

As far as McVeigh's "larger culture" I wasn't referring to the "nut job" subculture but to the fact that he professed to be a Christian.  

Can't Muslims have "nut job" subcultures too?  I think so.

Even the narrowest reading of this must surely preclude religion-based immigration statutes.

Quite wrong.  As the history of Mormonism, Scientology and Santeria demonstrates, the United States government has long assumed a role in arbitrating the validity of faiths and their practices within society.  Democracy presupposes a set of common values; as such, it is entirely rational that the state would wish to promote those values.

....my grandmother-in-law, as Trevino knows, was wrongfully imprisoned by the U.S. government on account of her ethnic background....

I agree fully that this was wrongful: but it was wrongful not per se, but because it was unjustified by any actual threat emanating from the relevant population.

....the possibility of banning people from seeking out the American Dream on the sole basis of their spiritual beliefs....

For noncitizens, there is no right to the "American Dream," of course.

If the goal is to further alienate Muslims all over the world and at home, brilliant plan!

As opposed to....what?

And once we have our inevitable first attack under this new anti-Muslim immigration policy, up will go the barbed wire.

Plain alarmism.  I rather doubt this.

You've twice referred to "we"? Are you using the editorial "we"? Do you have a mouse in your pocket? What do you mean "we" and how did you come to speak for "we"?

but I am willing to be subjected to extra scrutiny at airports. I have nothing to hide.

However, where teh fairness comes into play is that the searching have two components: one authentic profiling, the other truly random.

Its a base canard that 70 year old grandmas arer being strip searched while "eastern looking" men lounge unmolested. But it is true that any effective sampling method must have a truly random component to maximize detection. There are numerous non-eastern "looking", non-non-white, non-male, non-young, non-"foreign" looking people who could have sympathies with terrorists, not just the Islamist variety.

Limiting our security psture to catch only one TYPE of terrorist is absurd. Security shoudl be designed to catch ANY kind of terrorist - or even base criminal. Or even that new entity which we have not yet encountered.

The correct profiling posture is to have truly random sampling. And weight the function according to traveler demographics - ie, one way ticket? standby? paid with cash? Name falls into certain patterns? cross-checck with Known Red Flags List?

And let the guards who do the searching exxcercise their judgement.

My three year old thinks its a game when shes not cranky when we travel. Other times, she cries, especially when she wants me to pick her up while they are wanding her, because she is sleepy and doesnt want to stand, and doesnt understand why this strange person is forcing her to do something, and why isnt Abba stopping them. This burns me deeply, to my heart, at a level that neither Josh nor Paul will understand. Perhaps Thomas can, however. But I will endure it.

all the 9-11 hijackers entered the country legally, they just stayed here illegally on expired visas.

Granted a crackdown in one area (legal immigration) won't stall them out much, terrorists realize there is a very large and mostly open border to be exploited with Mexico and Canada, and all they have to do is enter those countries to have an easy jaunt into the US.

US immigration policies are still our biggest weakness when it comes to the WOT, and only an idiot would think this weakness can't or won't be exploited.

Page 2(PDF link)...toss in a Spartans cap and some spectacles.  

No, I'm not calling the look-a-like a terrorist.  But, man, talk about separated at birth.  I almost toppled over in my chair when I saw that.

Led to one of the most persecuting religious communities in the history of the continent. If you weren't a Puritan, you were hung or kicked out into the wily forest. Think of the Salem Witch Trials and everything.

I've always liked that irony about how children learn they came here escaping religious persecution, then within a few decades have one of the most stringent religious codes ever here. Everything but eating, drinking, working to be able to eat and drink, and procreating was a sin. Even those few actions couldn't be done certain times. Cooking your pig was considered "work" and was a criminal offense on Sunday.

Just more of a quibble than anything.

I haven't figured out whether you're a sincere "truth-seeker" or someone who is pretending to be a racist conservative in order to try to put a stain on this site.  Please don't think that you can post epithets and get away with it.

Look, I already apologized for using a word that offends you guys, and I've promised not to use it again. I appear to have misjudged the local culture here, and I won't do it again. It's not the kind of word you would bleep out on television, and I've heard it used on talk radio and TV, so I thought it was ok - that's usually the litmus test I use for my language. Where I come from, that word isn't considered to be a racial slur at all; we reserve that classification for the truly horrible phrases (which I won't even put to "paper" here, because they really are horrible). I misjudged the local culture, and I've apologized for it (and referenced that apology several times now).

But to carry that over and imply that I'm some sort of "leftist infiltrator" is just paranoid and frankly, more than a little silly. I won't list my credentials - I don't want to get into a pissing contest over "who's a 'real' conservative/Republican/patriot" (not on this site, anyway).

-noraa.

Just Me is talking about ...

Be a little bit more circumspect. Just as not every Xtian supported the Inquisition back in the Spain of Ferdinand, Isabella and Torquemada, not every Muslim supports the Death Cult sect of idiots that try to pass themselves off as Muslims.

Anyway, welcome aboard ... we'll see how you do.

was NOT a Christian.  He was a self-professed agnostic.

In his letter, McVeigh said he was an agnostic but that he would "improvise, adapt and overcome", if it turned out there was an afterlife. "If I'm going to hell," he wrote, "I'm gonna have a lot of company." source

This meme that McVeigh was a Christian was started almost immediately after OKCity, by Dan Barker of the "Freedom From Religion Foundation" (see this May 1995 article).  Of course, this atheist writer was merely mistaken and not pushing self-serving propaganda helpful to the agenda of his Foundation.  After 9/11, Radical Islam's PR Flacks started pushing the same meme: "see, other religions do this too!"

Except that their favorite example, "McVeigh == Christian Terrorist", was a complete fabrication.

Stop spreading the lie.

Re: So tell me one thing, all of you oh-so tolerant and politically correct folks who keep announcing that "Islam is a Religion of Peace".  Tell me how many Americans are going to have to die before you are willing to confront the fact that there are in all probability a large number of suicidial maniacs in our midst who will gladly blow themselves up if they can kill a bunch of us in the process.

No one doubts that there are such maniacs out there (at least no one on this site). However I fail to see any benefit in extending the blame for such maniacal views to everyone who speaks the same language or holds the same (general) religion. Treat the maniacs as they deserve, but that's no excuse for afflicting the innocent.

to me how many people here can defend rape! Doesn't it make you a little sick to your stomach to defend people who brutalize your fellow human beings? Truly amazing.

Ok, so I am twisting your words around but I just want to give you a taste of your own medicine. We could have a rational discussion or you can be silly. I prefer rational thought. You?

That is Latin civitas. So I'm not surprised that a language of desert-dwelling nomads would lack a native term that is its equivalent.

Islam however does have a concept of "non-combatant" and strict rules for their treatment in warfare. The problem is not that Islam lacks ethics, but that it has no institutional means (like a Pope or the Southern Baptist Leadership Convention) for pronouncing on them authoritatively and hence binding believers to hold to them. So any fruitcake that wants to nominate himself to Holy Man can go around uttering fatwas no matter how far he goes off course from the mainstream religious teaching.

ever heard of a survey? It's a neat new tool used for quantifying experience.

Way to walk into a discussion of ethnic profiling at airport gates with guns blazing, kid. Yet another who survived Ashcroft's Last Purges -- it's like Reunion Day or something. Good times. Good times.

Well, as you appear to want to divert this thread:

I don't know whether to be relieved that you guys are dismissing the possibility of prison camps out of hand (my grandmother-in-law, as Trevino knows, was wrongfully imprisoned by the U.S. government on account of her ethnic background in the 1940's)

Who said that? I didn't say that. I don't want to work against any of your closely cherished stereotypes. Internment camps are back on the agenda, guys. Gromit's here.

or disturbed that intelligent Americans, presumably well-schooled in our nation's fundamental liberties, would seriously entertain the possibility of banning people from seeking out the American Dream on the sole basis of their spiritual beliefs (as opposed to the practical implications of those beliefs, which do not include condoning terrorism for many, many Muslims).

You left out the part where we gas them or pick them off with sniper rifles as they approach the gates. Clearly you haven't been reading closely enough.

If my spiritual belief mandates slaughtering thousands with sarin gas, can I come over to your house with some spare, unmarked canisters? Can I walk into a Federal building and pull a Joker-in-Central Gotham-with-Prince-blaring routine? (If yes, thanks for the discussion, goodbye. If no, differentiate.)

If the goal is to further alienate Muslims all over the world and at home, brilliant plan!

Thanks. The Sikhs are next. What plan, by the way?

If the goal is to reduce incidents of terrorism, well, I suppose I can think of more idiotic policies (the aforementioned prison camps, for instance), but this is still pretty dumb.

Really? Placing every Muslim who comes near our borders in prison camps would increase the rate of terrorism out of those folks?

Right. We need more kryptonite. I keep forgetting.

Any gains you make in keeping this or that would-be bomber out would be offset many times over by the heightened insularity and distrust of authorities that would take hold in existing Muslim communities, providing even more fertile ground for those terrorists who do manage to slip in, or even for those who feel increasingly persecuted by their own nation to take up arms against it (a development not without precedent in our nation's history).

(1) But if they're all in prison camps, surely the problem of their insularity is already solved? Yes, I know, we'll lace the wires with Kryptonite first.

(2) Yes, those Catholic suicide squads were deadly. The memorials to their dead literally litter the landscape across the country.

It took four men to carry out the attacks in London.  They probably had a support network, but we still aren't talking about a lot of people.  What immigration policy is going to keep four people in a nation the size of England, to say nothing of a nation the size of the U.S. from getting it into their heads to carry out such an attack? Yes, we need to be careful about who we let through our borders, but labeling a billion people as potential terrorists and barring them indiscriminately at the borders just to keep out four, or forty, or even four thousand?  That's lunacy.  And this isn't even to address how you would implement such a fundamentally un-American policy in practice.

I guess we could simply kill them all. I'd really rather not, for a host of reasons. I'm kind of surprised you're suggesting this.

Well, not really. You seem open to killing all sorts of innocents out of convenience.

And once we have our inevitable first attack under this new anti-Muslim immigration policy, up will go the barbed wire.

With the Kryptonite. Don't forget the Kryptonite.

I don't think it will come to this, but only because I think most Americans will recognize the blacklisting of an entire religious group for the small-minded religious bigotry (to say nothing of counterproductive policy) that it is, and reject it emphatically.

Elegant thought, if inelegantly worded. What does it have to do with passenger screening again?

Cease and desist. Now.

leaders do not have any control of any church body.

If the convention passes a resolution, it is only a resolution, the members and individual churches may choose or not to choose to abide by them.

Baptists are actually a collection of independant local bodies of believers who set their own church rules up at the local level without any oversight from those above.  The convention is just those local bodies banding together, because they realized that several churches that pooled their resources together could do more for missions than a single small church could (ie that is why we have the cooperative program).

But the president of the SBC has very little authority over an individual church body (as a matter of fact one of the most liberal SBC church bodies was located on the campus of one of its seminaries, the church has now disassociated by their choice with the convention, although their building is still on the seminary campus and they continue to meet there)-the only real authority the president has is to appoint trustees.

You would do better ot make your comparison to another church.

Pretty strict alrighty. It would just seem that their concept of non-combatants doesn't include the elderly, infants, pregnant women, the blind, the infirm, the hospitalized, or any other category.

 and for that matter even the Pope can no longer order the Inquisition to get rid of heretics. But what such leadership institutions have is moral authority. Sure, determined dissenters can take their dolls and go play elsewhere. That's why we have umpteen different Christian denominations. But when they do this they are recognized as having set themselves apart from the body they formally belonged to and the members of that body no longer heed them. Islam lacks anything like this sort of authority structure. Mullah Abdul can issue a fatwa justifying murder and rapine; Mullah Umar can issue a fatwa comdemning such attacks. And there's no structure for sorting out those differences or even determining who is a real mullah and who's a poseur. In effect, Islam is an anarchic religion. Very few Christian bodies are like that, and those that are, like the Quakers, usually are pacifistic so they aren't a problem.

but if someone asks me another question or uses a logical fallacy do I have the right to correct them or shall we let false info float freely?

It sure seems that when someone is winning with logic they are asked to shut up. Why is that?

Resentment from afar for a discriminatory immigration policy I can live with.  A disaffected infidel-hater who's stuck in Riyadh or Ramallah because we shut the door can't very well be blowing up a bus in London or Boston.

That little "interview" got me fired up, too.  But as a Republican you know we are held to a higher standard.  We can't afford to give ammo to the Kosmonuts and the DUndergrounders.  I'm sure some little troll is running home right now to tell about the racists and bigots over here. Don't take the reprimand personally.  It was necessary to keep this site from being misrepresented.

The "leftist infiltrator" thing is not just paranoia.  Think "seminar caller" if you listen to talk radio.  It is sad that some leftists cannot express their own views and must resort to distorting the views of their opponents by assuming their identity.

Just go to this poll, and you'll see that 26% of Muslims thought they were too integrated into British mainstream culture, 46% disapproved of the new citizenship ceremonies with a modern oath of allegiance to Britain, and 13% approved of the September 11th terrorist attacks.  Just go to this article and you'll find that "up to 3,000 British-born or British-based people had passed through Osama Bin Laden's training camps" and that "10,000 have attended extremist conferences".  The response from these young Muslims reflects the poisoning that has taken place by radical Muslims in their community.

...if four of my friends or acquaintances killed themselves in a suicide pact, but that's just me.

"Guy on bicycle (pointing to a car): The driver in that car knows all of them."

That moves him out of the "random" column in IMO.

I stand ready to be corrected but I don't think you understand Protestantism very well at all. Most Protestant churches are self-governing and the ministers respond to the wishes of the congregation.

The exceptions to this make up a rather small percentage of Protestants in the US.

...rapists, murderers and child molesters in those respective communities form an international network of terrorists and declare war against the United States.  How many rapists, murderers and child molesters are dead set on converting the multitudes to rape, murder and child molestation?  Do you not see how stupid your question is?

I was under the impression that Britain had a large number of racist skinheads, xenophobes and drunken football hooligans.  Where's the news about these folks running amok and committing random acts of retribution against Muslims?  

Let them seeth in anti-American resentment elsewhere.

I'm about as white as they come, and I disapprove of our "citizenship ceremonies."  I find them embarrassing and distasteful.

I also think you could go to any part of Leeds and find some unemployed young man who was willing to shoot his mouth off about something distateful.  If we happened to find a white guy who wanted to, say, get hopped up on E, start a fight and break some shop windows, would you make an argument that the "white community" had been "infiltrated" by drugged up morons, with the underlying assumption that, despite all their good intentions, white people aren't really to be trusted and that we should stop them coming into the country?

Sure, determined dissenters can take their dolls and go play elsewhere.

A Baptist Church in the SBC can totally disagree with any and all resolutions passed by the messengers at the convention, but they wouldn't be required or even asked to take their dolls and go elsewhere.

Baptists fully stand by local control and the doctrine of priesthood of the believer.  Just because the president of the SBC says something-or shoot any pastor in the SBC that doesn't mean an individual church of the members of that church are required to believe or follow to be considered members in good standing.

The convention itself has no authority over the churches that are members of it-the main purpose of the convention is to pool resources in order to make reaching stated goals more effective.

There are also plenty of fully indpendant Baptist churches that aren't members of any convention, although they could choose to associate with one, if they chose (Southern Baptists arent the only Baptist convention out there, they are just the largest and most well known).

Enough I guess for this tangent.

The context of the problem is that western nations include large populations of people who neither subscribe to nor accept the traditional western values of pluralism and tolerance.

With the exception of the word "traditional" I'm with you there.  Where I object is that you fail to acknowledge that many more of these are not immigrants than are.

The BNP is not made up of Muslim immigrants, yet they're unreconstructed fascists, skinheads and people who get their jollies kicking the crap out of "pakis" (a "paki" in the yob parlance is anyone not white or black, i.e. an Arab, a Chinese, a Mexican).

It's not all justified "backlash" against this mythical "massive influx" of immigrants into our country (we've never stopped hearing the "we'll  be overwhelmed" rhetoric for the last two centuries, but last time I checked we weren't all Jewish, French, Irish or Black), there's also racism, abuse and white people being idiots.

Yes, there are those in immigrant communities who dislike the ideals of pluralism and tolerance, but there are also those who can (and proudly do) trace their white heritage back to King Arthur or whatever, who are just as vile.  The vast majority of both groups are people who want to get on with their lives, run their businesses, put bread on their children's tables and not be bothered by anyone.

Intolerance and violence is abhorrent on both sides, singling out "immigrants" who say vile things only vindicates those ridiculous people who grew up here and should know better.

Are you implying that law enforcement does not keep tabs on various mosques and Islamic cells in England that could produce potential terrorists?

Because, well, they do.

This is just too important a topic for people not to talk about across the political spectrum, even if we WILL annoy each other to death.

As far as the legal questions here discussed: this is based on just one semester of immigration law, one of refugee law, one semester of foreign affairs law, as well as the standard Con Law class. Some of that knowledge is fairly stale. So take it with a grain of salt.

--There is a crucial difference between immigration law, which is about whether you get to be here, and alienage law, which concerns what rights you have when you are here.

--The Courts have held that there is no right to be here. Congress and the President could end immigration legal immigration, asylum, and all the rest tomorrow should they so choose. They could also summarily deport many people who are here. It would not violate the Constitution. It would violate treaty obligations that the United States has as a matter of international law, but as a matter of domestic law, if there is a conflict between a statute and a treaty the last in time governs.

--Because no one has the right to come here and because of its deference in the area of foreign affairs, the Supreme Court has thus rejected, e.g. equal protection challenges to the differing treatment of Haitian and Cuban refugees.

--But, immigrants inside the United States, whether they are legal or illegal, do have Constitutional rights. Most of the crucial individual rights clauses in the Constitution refer to a "person" rather than a "citizen", or they speak of things that Congress and the states "shall not do" regardless of who is targetted. So people who are here, legally or illegally, have a right not be imprisoned for practicing their religion or writing newspapers, are covered by the due process clause, get all the protections of any other person if accused of a crime, etc. etc.

--So, you get a bit of a paradox: they don't have a right to stay. But, to the extent that Congress chooses to admit them, they have a right to due process to see that the laws are applied fairly to them.

--As far as the equal protection challenges within the United States goes, the Supreme Court tends to be pretty deferential to classifications made based on immigration status by Congress, but not to classifications based on immigration status by the states.

Ok, on to the matter of profiling:

--Tac, the argument that profiling is no more constitutionally problematic under the Equal Protection clause than you not getting welfare benefits and social security right now, does not pass the laugh test from a Con Law point of view. The Equal Protection clause has always been understood to apply with special force to discrimination on the basis of race and nationality. Religion too, though those cases tend to be decided on the Free Exercise clause rather than the Equal Protection clause. For over 50 years the courts have used what they call "strict scrutiny": to pass Constitutional muster, a law that treats people differently on the basis of race or national origin must be NECESSARY to protect a COMPELLING government interest.

--This was the test the court used in Korematsu, when it upheld the evacuation orders. But Korematsu is considered a shameful outlier in the Court's equal protection case law.

--It seems to me that as far as racial and crude religious profiling (all Muslims) as a counter terrorism goes, in most situations I think it passes the "compelling interest" part of the test and fails the "necessary" part of the test. Simply stopping people on the basis of their skin color is lousy, lazy police work. It might be necessary in an emergency situation like the weeks right after 9/11, but by now we ought to have better ways of profiling people based on a variety of behavioral and demographic information.

--It is dumb to rely only on profiling in security measures and wave those who don't fit the profile through, for two reasons:

(1) the terrorists generally respond by recruiting those who don't fit the profile

(2) it breeds resentment and alienation for Muslims to get strip searched at the airport while their neighbors are waved through. I am willing to arrive at the airport earlier so that we do not have to choose between safety and a pretty clear 14th amendment violation.

(3) and, of course, profiling is not restricted to the airports. Are we going to start instituting special checkpoints for Muslims to ride the subway?

--Of course, racial profiling does in fact happen, despite Norman Mineta's opposition to it. The DOJ's guideline has been to say that profiling may be permitted in terrorism cases for national security reasons, but of course people shouldn't violate the 14th amendment. This handy little disclaimer clause means that it's pretty hard to make out a 14th amendment challenge, while probably having little if any effect in preventing conduct that violates equal protection in practice because it's so bloody vague.

So much for the legal issues. I'll discuss the moral & political aspects in another post.

I know a bit about this, I'm pretty sure you're both wrong. see here.

You derive this from....where, exactly?

Anyway, nice job establishing that there are bad native-born Britons.  God knows whom you're arguing against, but really, well done.

Re: I stand ready to be corrected but I don't think you understand Protestantism very well at all. Most Protestant churches are self-governing and the ministers respond to the wishes of the congregation.

The exceptions to this make up a rather small percentage of Protestants in the US.

And I have a very hard time crediting the notion that most Protestant churches lack any sort of institutional structure that determines what is and is not acceptable doctrine and practice for membership in their overall body, however losely organized and lenient they may be. If that's the case then what in the world determines the difference between the Evangelical Lutherans and the Missouri Synod Lutherans? Between the PCUSA and the Orthodox Presbyterians? Between Southern Baptists and other subspecies of Baptists? And who determines the qualifications for ordination to the church's ministry? Someone is setting the standards; they aren't just appearing from no where like manna from Heaven.

Yes, I know there are churches that are sui generis and effectively isolated from other churches, along with New Agety churches that pretty much make it up as they go along. But I would say that these are the exception not the rule.

Re: A Baptist Church in the SBC can totally disagree with any and all resolutions passed by the messengers at the convention, but they wouldn't be required or even asked to take their dolls and go elsewhere.

I don't believe that. Indeed I seem to recall a number of congregations (notably in Texas) seceeded from the Convention because they could not assent to its innovations. Again, I am not claiming there is a Baptist Vatican exercizing ironclad control, only that there is some sort of official body in charge of setting doctrinal and praxis norms-- and who, if Preacher Bob down at First Baptist started advising the bombing of abortion clinics, would issue a pronouncement to the effect that "This is NOT acceptable!". And I am contrasting that with Islam where no such organizational body exists.

....immigrants inside the United States, whether they are legal or illegal, do have Constitutional rights.

This doesn't appear to be the case in practice, though.  Speaking purely from memory, here, I can think of several cases wherein noncitizens were treated in a manner that wouldn't fly with regard to citizens.

For over 50 years the courts have used what they call "strict scrutiny": to pass Constitutional muster, a law that treats people differently on the basis of race or national origin must be NECESSARY to protect a COMPELLING government interest.

I would certainly argue that this is the case with regard to Muslims now -- which, I must note, is neither a racial nor national origin classification.

the terrorists generally respond by recruiting those who don't fit the profile

That's true to an extent, but I should note a couple of things:  first, this is easier said than done; second, the one element of the profile that almost assuredly will remain the same is that of religion.  While we do have examples of terrorists beating profiles by swapping jobs -- recall, for example, the Japanese Red Army terrorists attacking the Tel Aviv airport on contract with the PLO -- these are generally rare.

it breeds resentment and alienation for Muslims to get strip searched at the airport while their neighbors are waved through.

I guess I have a hard time being sympathetic about this.  It's really a minor thing in the scheme of things.

Are we going to start instituting special checkpoints for Muslims to ride the subway?

This is going a bit far -- but then, I'm not a fan of airport security searches either, to tell the truth.  My concept of profiling here is mostly one pertaining to law enforcement and investigative practices.

the issue isn't whether or not you credit the notion.

When you venture outside the mainstream Protestant denominations -- a minority of US Protestant churches and church members -- there is no heirarchy. Many evangelical ministers are not trained in seminaries they believe in being called to the ministry. Training, such as it is, is provided through independent study at a variety of Bible colleges.

Baptist ministers may be seminary trained, but there is no way to enforce an orthodoxy of beliefs or practice beyond what the congregation, this is, the employer, permits.

where Josh suggested halting or radically restricting Muslim immigration to the U.S.

Also the part where I plainly acknowledged that commenters here are ruling out internment camps (which, bizarrely, you quoted but clearly did not comprehend).  Which, of course, makes your incantation of "straw" unintentionally ironic.

So what relevant response am I left with?

"Elegant thought, if inelegantly worded."

Thanks, Thomas!  That's sweet.

might not run afoul of the free exercise clause*, but what about the establishment clause?  How can Congress write a law or authorize immigration officials to make policies saying "immigrants of these religions are okay, but immigrants of these religions are not"?

* Though I find the implications of this very troubling.  Could Congress then look at racial correlations in violent crime statistics and decide to restrict immigration based on race?  This is pretty much parallel to what Trevino is proposing.  Far more people die from violent crime than will ever die from terrorism, and the economic impacts, while not as acute, are, I strongly suspect, far more significant in the long term.

I stand corrected about McVeigh's faith.

Um, I'm getting it from the ethnic breakdown of the population of the UK.

i.e. there are more white Christian people in the UK than Arabic and Persian Muslims.  We're 92% white.  Even if every single one of the non-whites in England was a violent arsehole, I reckon we could still find more than four million white arseholes.  And since the arsehole ratio amongst immigrants is, in my non-scientific estimation, probably roughly even with the arsehole ratio amongst people who were born here, I think it's pretty safe to say that there are "many more" idiots of white, native descent than imported ones.

And so, unless we're going to start exporting white people to Ibiza when we push Muslims to Pakistan, I really don't see how any anti-immigrant measures will ever help us.

But may I post your post on my personal blog?  I would have contacted you back-channel but don't know how to.

Race is something intrinsic to a person that the person has no control over; further, correlations of race to antisocial acts are coincidental -- those acts are not functions of race  It is therefore unjust to discriminate based upon it.

None of the above holds true for ideology or faith.

I'm just going to guess that the ratios of terroristic to non-terroristic persons within each demographic sub-group varies somewhat.  Your assumption is best ignored.

I would certainly argue that this is the case with regard to Muslims now -- which, I must note, is neither a racial nor national origin classification.

I'm a little unclear on how profiling based on religion could be implemented.  Would you propose that people be required to state their religious affiliation when, say, boarding an airplane?  How would you guard against people simply lying in response?

As far as what's going on:

1. I am really quite skeptical that this man is typical of the Muslim community. If all or even a significant minority of them were plotting to kill us, there simply would have been more attacks by now. Look at Iraq, look at Israel. Whatever the gaps in our immigration laws, whatever the manifold failings of the BICE (formerly the INS)--part of the reason there have not been many attacks on the U.S. is that there haven't been people willing to carry them out living here, and it's difficult enough to get those who are willing to do it into the country to deter many of them. It isn't that hard to get a suicide bomb onto a subway.
   
2. I also think the problem is probably worse in Europe than here. There have been more attacks there since 9/11, more of the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks were living in Europe rather than here, and there have been many more high level arrests and serious cells in Europe than the U.S. The poll numbers also look different.

I'm not quite sure why this is, but I'm growing pretty confident of it.

3. A lot of the stuff about how moderate Muslims have not denounced bin Laden, no one has issued a fatwa, etc. is simply false. And for whatever reason--perhaps because a higher % of the victims and their families were Muslim, perhaps because there is less irrational hatred of England than the U.S. and Israel, perhaps a simple loss of patience, perhaps because of some of the positive political changes in some parts of the Arab world since 9/11 (e.g. Abbas replacing Arafat)--there have been more condemnation from Muslim groups, including extremist and even violent groups, than after previous attacks.
   
4. This is not to say that the response has been adequate. It is not adequate, as a collective matter, either in the West or outside of it. It really isn't.
   
5. For instance, outside the West, even among those who condemn attacks like this and condemn Al Qaida, there is an exception made for murdering Jews and Israelis. As someone who is married into a Jewish family and who will converting soon, believe me when I say I am REALLY not okay with this, and I am really not okay with the willingness of some people in the left--a small % in the U.S., a larger % in Europe--to put up with this bullsh*t and look the other way. Livingstone's speech last week moved me more than any speech I have read in my life, but I haven't forgotten Qarqawi.
   
6. In the West, I tend think that for a very, very large % of Muslims, to the extent that they are not responding adequately, the inadequacy is NOT explained by them secretly planning to kill us, but by things like:

--the near-universal human tendency to focus more on wrongs done to people who belong to your group, and wrongs done by people who do not belong to your group, than to wrongs committed by people who belong to your group, and against those who do not belong.

--sheer denial that something awful is happening. The parents who let their kids go to Pakistan for six months, and then are absolutely shocked and report their child to the police as missing? You want them to scream at them for being so clueless, and yet--I've seen a family miss signs of a crisis a child was happening in a way that would seem equally inexplicable to some. Denial is a powerful thing.

--the feeling of powerlessness that people have to change something this big and this horrible. I have felt this at times with the U.S. government, and that is a democracy of which I am a citizen.

--the corresponding feeling in much of the West that politics is something politicians do; the feeling among secular and religious moderates that religion something that clerics and their more traditional followers do; the lack of any sense of either power or duty to do anything to prevent your religion or your country from going off the rails.

--Simple fear of being labelled as a traitor to your people or your faith.

Those are just incredibly common human tendencies. Quite frankly, I have seen all of them at work in the utter non-response to the torture scandals in the U.S.

7) I continue to believe that one of the problems with some of the U.S. abuses of prisoners is that it is likely to make their neighbors reluctant to report things to the authorities when they should. Of course, if you know someone is planning to slaughter people on the subway, or you have a more general knowledge that they are planning to kill people, you have an overwhelming duty to report it that overrides all this. But Al Qaida doesn't work like that, they conceal their activities, and so you will generally have much vaguer suspicions than that.

Would you be noticeably less likely turn your neighbor in for a crime if you were not sure he was guilty, and you were afraid it was going to get him beaten, deported, imprisoned without trial, tortured, etc. even if they were not guilty? Those fears are probably exaggerated in Muslim communities, but they are not exactly ridiculous.

8. One thing this bombing makes clear: this is not just immigrants, this is citizens of Western countries as well. I suppose some of you would say that the answer is not to grant immigrants' children citizenship. I think that is EXACTLY the wrong response. I am certain that one of the reasons things are better in the U.S. than in Germany and France is that we don't share their stupid and frankly racist immigration policies, that the melting pot, "nation of immigrants" stuff has some truth to it--not the sachharine stuff of elementary school history, but some truth.
   
9. I also think that forbidding Muslim immigration, A) is guaranteed to get innocent people killed--I worked in an asylum clinic on some gender cases with African Muslim women as both my clients and my translators, so I take this rather personally; B) is going to an alienate a community whose support we need, unless we really are going to just say screw the equal protection clause and do a re-run of the WW2 internments; C) is not necessarily going to do all that much to stop terrorists, since the perpetrators in the US are much less likely to be naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents or asylum
   

I am sick and tired of "whatabouttery", of the use of atrocity to justify atrocity. I am just f*king sick of it, whether it comes from one side or the other

*(btw, I absolutely refuse to respond to anyone who accuses me of saying we're as bad as bin Laden, Zarqawi. We're not, it's obvious to me we're not, and if you think this comment implies otherwise you don't understand the English language well enough to have a useful discussion with. On the other hand--why do we expect moderate Muslims to step up and condemn terrorism? Because they have more power than we to stop it. Well, we hae more power to do something about the torture scandals than they do to affect the Bin Ladens and Zarqawis of the world, and this site and the leaders of the political party it represents mainly make excuses, distorts the facts, and acts outraged by the outrage.)

religion is definitely a suspect class. There's not a lot of case law on it, because it tends to be litigated under the free exercise clause rather than the equal protection clause, but it's definitely a suspect class.

In practice--they have Constitutional rights; but those rights do not include a right to be here. And so Congress also can detain, etc. for immigration violations with considerably less protection than for criminal cases.

That's probably the other key distinction I should mention: deportation and immigration related detention--those are civil proceedings, not criminal, and so the standard procedural  protections that the accused get in a criminal trial do not apply. But it's because of the nature of the case rather than the nature of the person. If an illegal immigrant is accused of murder, he gets a lawyer, Miranda, a jury trial, the whole bit.

The Supreme Court does tend to be extra deferential in these cases, too, and in the lower courts the fact that most people can't afford a good lawyer also comes into play. There are some really lousy decisions. But it's not because the Constitution just doesn't apply at all.

btw, I apologize for the wacked out formatting of the more recent, longer post. I don't think I put any html tags in, maybe it's just too long.

Would you propose that people be required to state their religious affiliation when, say, boarding an airplane?  How would you guard against people simply lying in response?

People would be required to answer questions from security officer concerning their religion, such as "are you, or have you ever been, affiliated with Islamic terrorist organizations?" or "are you sympathetic to the cause of radical Islam?"

Yes, of course they could lie, but a security officer who suspected deceit could be thereby empowered to let that alone be cause for greater scrutiny of the passenger.

"Though I find the implications of this very troubling.  Could Congress then look at racial correlations in violent crime statistics and decide to restrict immigration based on race?"

Yeah, more or less.

I agree that it's troubling, but that is the state of Constitutional law, and you can see that there are some darn good reasons not to give Constitutional protections to non-citizens outside our borders.

I think there's a pretty clear racist streak in our treatment of Haitian refugees. Part of it's just "there's too many of them," and part of it is the contrast with our policies towards Cuba which are driven by Florida politics and geopolitics more than liking hispanics better than blacks. But it's hard to explain entirely without race, and certainly nationality. The Supreme Court threw out the case, though.

As for the Establishment Clause: "not-Muslim" isn't really a religion. That said, I suppose it's conceivable. The thing is, though, the way Congress would do this would not be to say "no Muslims allowed", that would be politically disastrous. You do it through selective enforcement--they already are, frankly--and by designating Muslim countries as sponsors of terrorism and restricting immigration, and with an unbelievably vague definition of terrorist that you can use against anyone, and by delegating unlimited, unreviewable authority to the executive not to admit anyone thought to be a national security risk. As I said, to some extent it's happened already. Anyone who things profiling 1) doesn't exist at all thanks to that darn pesky Norman Mineta, and 2) doesn't happen outside of airports, is just clueless.

I don't know if there are stray html tags or what, I don't remember bolding anything.

Quite wrong.  As the history of Mormonism, Scientology and Santeria demonstrates, the United States government has long assumed a role in arbitrating the validity of faiths and their practices within society.  Democracy presupposes a set of common values; as such, it is entirely rational that the state would wish to promote those values.

Sneaky, how you slipped in practices there.  We aren't talking about particular practices.  Unless I missed something, the LDS church, Scientology, and Santeria are all perfectly legal in the U.S.  It is practices like polygamy, abduction, and animal sacrifice which are illegal.  I'm also fine with banning clitoridectomy, honor killings, and suicide belts, though the extent to which those even qualify as religious practices is highly questionable.

When you talk about banning Muslims at the border, you are not talking about enforcing common values, since some Muslims share core American values and plenty of adherents of other faiths do not.  What you are really talking about is regulating spiritual beliefs.  Those are very different things.  I'll defer to Katherine on the legal questions -- she knows her stuff -- but conflating religious affiliation with a particular system of values is as profound an error here as it is when one assumes that all who find evolution by natural selection credible must be atheists.  The correlation will never be strong enough to warrant blanket policies like the one you recommend.

I agree fully that this was wrongful: but it was wrongful not per se, but because it was unjustified by any actual threat emanating from the relevant population.

You are omitting the part where the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and declared war on the U.S.  This is no weaker a connection than saying "a handful of Muslims attacked the U.S. and our allies, therefore we will prohibit most or all Muslims from immigrating to the U.S."  Both wield a woodchipper where a scalpel is called for.  The latter is made MORE problematic by the nature of the threat, which does not thrive on the number of bodies which can be committed to the effort (as would, say, invasion) but rather on the number of sympathetic minds that are willing to turn a blind eye, or at least distrust the government enough to be unwilling to take sides.  And, as much as I abhor what was done to my wife's grandmother, at the very least there was a global war going on, with millions dying.  What happened in London, Madrid, Bali, New York, and DC are terrible, heinous crimes which warrant a vigorous response and heightened vigilance.  And the loss of life in Iraq and Afghanistan is deplorable.  But a little perspective, please.  Banning a billion or more people from setting foot on our shores for the crimes of a few?  Labeling a fifth or so of the world's population as dangerous to America because Osama Bin Ladin and his disciples want to do us harm?  Including most of the Iraqis and Afghanis who we so desperately want to adopt American values and to see us as an ally?  And when the terrorists start carrying Bibles and wearing crosses around their necks, what will this policy have accomplished, besides insuring more Islamic anti-Americanism worldwide, including within our own borders?

--the asterisk at the end refers back to this sentence, at the end of #6:

"Those are just incredibly common human tendencies. Quite frankly, I have seen all of them at work in the utter non-response to the torture scandals in the U.S.

And somehow my #7 got partly deleted. Here's the whole thing.

"7) I continue to believe that one of the problems with some of the U.S. abuses of prisoners is that it is likely to make their neighbors reluctant to report things to the authorities when they should. Of course, if you know someone is planning to slaughter people on the subway, or you have a more general knowledge that they are planning to kill people, you have an overwhelming duty to report it that overrides all this. But Al Qaida doesn't work like that, they conceal their activities, and so you will generally have much vaguer suspicions than that.

Would you be noticeably less likely turn your neighbor in for a crime if you were not sure he was guilty, and you were afraid it was going to get him beaten, deported, imprisoned without trial, tortured, etc. even if they were not guilty? Those fears are probably exaggerated in Muslim communities, but they are not exactly ridiculous."

Again, sorry for my typing/html ineptitude.

your implication that those four despicable Brits represent their community as a whole?  Your sample size is a bit small.

"We need the Patriot Act to be expanded, so that Mosques are monitored for hate speech the way the FBI monitors the Klan. Mosques that operate with hate speech get closed down and assets seized pre-emptively (a powerful incentive to stick to the spiritual and leave the temporal "rage" alone)."

This isn't constitutional. Hate speech is not a crime. Most of what goes on at radical mosques does not rise to the level of incitement. We would have to overturn 35 years of free speech law, which I don't think Scalia and Thomas are on board for anymore than Stevens and Ginsburg.

I am certainly more than okay with surveillance. I also think that deporting people calling for our deaths is okay, and I think would be constitutional--the courts allows Congress to deport people for things they may not jail people for.

I wonder if you guys might want to rethink your position on sentence enhancements for hate crimes. Theo van Gogh's murder harms its victim and his family no more than any murder, but it is a far greater threat to society as well as a direct threat to people who criticize Islam. In that sense it does more harm than another murder. Spraypainting "death to the Jews" or "kill the sons of pigs and monkeys" on a synagogue is more dangerous than spraypainting "G.B. Loves J.K" or "T.D. wuz hea!" somewhere. We don't criminalize thoughts, but intent and motive are relevant factors in sentencing for crimes. This becomes blatantly obvious to all of us when the threats are directed against us, or people like us.

Or do you just mean other peoples' faith?

And I have a very hard time crediting the notion that most Protestant churches lack any sort of institutional structure that determines what is and is not acceptable doctrine and practice for membership in their overall body, however losely organized and lenient they may be.

Actually Baptists don't have that much of an established doctrine.  Baptists do generally choose churches that most closely fit their doctrinal views, but for instance there are Baptist churches that ordain women, that permit women deacons (even a few still associated with the SBC), there is a very mixed bag on doctrinal issues such as election, free will, Calvinism (some Baptists are 5 point calvinists, some aren't any points).  Lot's of variation, and there is no authority over the members or the pastors that tells them they can't believe that way.  Church members can certainly fire or remove a pastor that they feel isn't teaching/preaching in line with their way of thinking, but the president of the SBC doesn't come along and boot that church out of the convention.

If that's the case then what in the world determines the difference between the Evangelical Lutherans and the Missouri Synod Lutherans? Between the PCUSA and the Orthodox Presbyterians?

I can't say much about these groups, I am not among them, and some of them do have a more of an authoritative church hierarchy where the pastor would be accountable to a person over him or her.  For instance, I think there was a Methodist minister who was recently removed because she was either homosexual or marrying homosexuals (I can't remember).  The Southern Baptist convention has no rules that would allow for a pastor to lose their ordination for something like that.  It is unlikely that a church pastored by a homosexual would want to affiliated with the SBC, but the president of the SBC has no authority over that pastor's position or church (however if the church members objected they could fire said pastor and call one that was not homosexual).

Between Southern Baptists and other subspecies of Baptists?

Baptists believe in priesthood of the believer, we actually have very little official baptist doctrine compared to other churches.  We don't have official positions on much of anything.  What mainly separates the SBC from American, Conservative or Indepenant Baptists is that Southern Baptists are a group of churches that chose to convene together for the purpose of furthering the cause of missions.  Conservative Baptists affiliate for similar reasons as do American Baptists.  The Indpendant Baptists are just that, Independant-they are unafiliated with any other Baptist church, and do not participate in any convention, and support any mission work from within their own church body.

You can get a huge, huge, huge variation in Baptist churches for this very reason.  There are SBC churches I would likely never consider attending, because they do not teach or believe in similar doctrines that I do (for instance my brother in law's southern Baptist Church called a minister who did not believe in the ressurrection of Jesus Christ and preached that on Easter Sunday-no church official came down from on high to remove him from his position-and I am unaware of whether or not the pastor is still there, but I wouldn't choose to affiliate with a church whose pastor did not believe in or teach the ressurrection of Christ).

And who determines the qualifications for ordination to the church's ministry?

Can't speak for other denominations, but Baptists can pretty much ordain anyone they believe God has called to be a minister.  Southern Baptists generally encourage those who want to go into the ministry to attend seminary or at least a Bible College, but it isn't a requirement.  Also, a lot of students attending seminary are ordained and will pastor churches while they attend.

I don't believe that. Indeed I seem to recall a number of congregations (notably in Texas) seceeded from the Convention because they could not assent to its innovations.

Notice that word "seceeded" it is important.  Baptists rarely if ever boot anyone from the convention (I won't say it has never happened, but I am unaware of it happening).  Churches and groups of Churches have chosen to disassociate with the convention.  Also, in Texas and Virginia and possibly some other states, alternative conventions were create, because the conservatives didn't like the way the liberal leaning Baptists were running the State conventions, but these groups continued to associate with the Southern Baptist Convention (just so you realize that churches in the SBC are often-almost always-also members of a State Baptist convention, and also a Baptist Association-which would be similar to all the churches within a county or two in a state).  Our church in Virginia maintained its membership in both the State Baptist Convention and the conservative splinter group.  But the difference is that these things are done at the local level by the churches upward, rather than from on high downward.

Also, back in the 80's after the "conservative takeover" had begun a large group of Southern Baptist split from the SBC and created the Baptist Fellowship, some of these churches while associated with the CBF also maintained their memberships within the SBC, while others fully broke off.  If I remember correctly Jimmy Carter is a member of a church that went with the CBF rather than SBC.

only that there is some sort of official body in charge of setting doctrinal and praxis norms-- and who, if Preacher Bob down at First Baptist started advising the bombing of abortion clinics, would issue a pronouncement to the effect that "This is NOT acceptable!".

The body in charge is the church membership.  If they believe a pastor isn't teaching sound doctrine or sound Christianity, then they call a meeting, and they take a vote, and give the pastor the boot.  

If the preacher down the road is advocating the bombing of abortion clinics there isn't anyone in the Baptist convention that has much authority over him as far as removing his ordination (which you might consider a weakness in how Baptists organize), but the church body he is a member of can remove him, the church that ordained him can remove that ordination, and other Baptist pastors are free to be critical of preacher Bob, but preacher Bob is answerable only to the congregation he pastors.

When the Baptist Pastor in NC tried to/or kicked out the democrat members a few months ago, Al Mohler was very critical of his actions, but Al Mohler in his various leadership capacities in the SBC still didn't have any authority to make him do anything differently other than to say he wasn't behaving very Christlike.

Is "none."

Glad to see your reading comprehension skills remain top-notch, kid. That, combined with a Quixote-like charge against an opponent who's not even on the field, brings back a lot of old times.

Remember me when next arthritis strikes.

I'm not sure they are at airports, easy enough to lie. But if they are, it is ridiculously easy to formulate them in a non-sectarian way.

One possibility, which I have not thought through the effectiveness or ramificiations of, would be to put questions like this on visa applications:

--do you believe that the targetted killing of unarmed civilians can ever be justified for political or religious reasons?

--have you ever advocated the targetted killing of unarmed civilians for political or religious reasons, or characterized such killings as morally justified?

--a signed promise never to etc.

If they can be shown to have lied on that document, it's a deportable offense. And I think questions like that are perfectly legitimate as a condition for granting entrance to noncitizens who don't have a right to be here. And you wouldn't be deporting them for their speech, but for perjuring themselves. So I think this is constitutional.

I am not willing to abandon Brandenburg v. Ohio, but I don't think this does.

I know you enjoy these little parries and thrusts, but you seriously need to stop lecturing folks on reading comprehension, at least until you can practice what you preach with some reliability.

Now, I can understand that my meaning might not be clear in some places -- I don't always express myself as well as I would like -- but there is nothing ambiguous about "I don't know whether to be relieved that you guys are dismissing the possibility of prison camps out of hand..."  You simply can't get from there to your ravings about kryptonite.

You love to go on about straw men and reading comprehension.  How ironic that in the very act of doing so you misread my comment and go on to attribute a fictitious position to me.

If you can't manage to be right about these things, then I'd strongly recommend you develop a modicum of humility.

Regarding the "opponent not on the field", I did slip up and call Trevino by his first name.  My apologies to any and all who confused him with the other Josh.

Who said that? I didn't say that. I don't want to work against any of your closely cherished stereotypes. Internment camps are back on the agenda, guys. Gromit's here.

Now, before you write one more word, I want you to take out the Nuk and carefully consider what those words might mean. Might it mean that I think you think we're calling for camps? Or might, just might, it mean that I think that it would conform to you, ahem, deeply held beliefs?

And the "opponent not on the field" was any target other than profiling in airline lines.

I know you've suffered some sort of unremitting brain damage, but it appears to be worsening. Seek help.

"Halting or radically restricting immigration of Muslims is a start."  Sayeth Trevino.  Upthread, no less.  Have you actually been reading this thread, Thomas?  I mean this one you are commenting on now?  Perhaps you have it confused with some other discussion in which stopping all Muslims at the borders was not discussed, and only airport screening was?  If so, my sincerest apologies for not accounting for every possible misapprehension that might cloud your otherwise quite capable mind.

Now, before you write one more word, I want you to take out the Nuk and carefully consider what those words might mean. Might it mean that I think you think we're calling for camps? Or might, just might, it mean that I think that it would conform to you, ahem, deeply held beliefs?

The above is simply unintelligible, Thomas.  Have you even considered what your words mean?  The most reasonable interpretation I can come up with is "I'm not saying you made this claim, I'm saying you would be inclined to make this claim."  But that can't be it, because that would be incomprehensibly stupid.

I know you've suffered some sort of unremitting brain damage, but it appears to be worsening. Seek help.

I think I've asked this before, but remind me what exactly you contribute to this blog that makes up for your astounding inability to discuss an issue on its merits and without resorting to insults when backed into a corner?  Are you the only right-wing cheerleader who can do a double-backflip with a twist, or something?

"Halting or radically restricting immigration of Muslims is a start."  Sayeth Trevino.  Upthread, no less.  Have you actually been reading this thread, Thomas?  I mean this one you are commenting on now?  Perhaps you have it confused with some other discussion in which stopping all Muslims at the borders was not discussed, and only airport screening was?  If so, my sincerest apologies for not accounting for every possible misapprehension that might cloud your otherwise quite capable mind.

(Link omitted.)

Oh, I get it. You were responding to Josh, but for some reason, mistakenly leaped through several comments, ignored the substance contained therein, and decided my statement was a defense of his position. Totally forgiveable of someone with your condition.

The above is simply unintelligible, Thomas.  Have you even considered what your words mean?  The most reasonable interpretation I can come up with is "I'm not saying you made this claim, I'm saying you would be inclined to make this claim."  But that can't be it, because that would be incomprehensibly stupid.

(Emphasis omitted for brevity.)

Actually, and I know this will strain you, it's completely comprehensible and not at all stupid if we begin with the entirely reasonable premise that either, one, you're not here to argue in good faith, or two, we're all pretty sure you have certain lurking preconceptions of Conservatives in the Mist. Actually, that should be "and/or," or really "and," because both are true.

And the correct interpretation is, "I'm not saying you made this claim, I think your febrile little mind will inevitably lead you to suggest it." And, given that you felt the need to reference World War II internment camps, looks like a good bet to me.

I know. The medicine hasn't kicked in yet. Hold on, partner.

I think I've asked this before, but remind me what exactly you contribute to this blog that makes up for your astounding inability to discuss an issue on its merits and without resorting to insults when backed into a corner?  Are you the only right-wing cheerleader who can do a double-backflip with a twist, or something?

Well, the first time you actually bring up something with merit, or at least substance on which the merits might be discussed, we can have a discussion. The first time you back me into a corner we'll have other things on our mind, because the Risen Christ will be back, and you and I will be some place much hotter. (Hint: Not the superheated parts of your skull.)

as to "minor in the scheme of things": I don't know about strip searching being SO minor. But, leaving aside the actual inconveniencce suffered:

1) don't think it's only at airports. There was a policy which may or may not continue of  selectively enforcing our immigration laws against Muslims. We have detained for an extended period, in some cases abused, and have deported Muslim immigrants on the basis of very minor, very technical immigration violations--you send in your change of address card a day late, or it gets lost in the INS processing center, that sort of thing. When the local police stop and question people for using a camera outside of their apartment, that also happens on the basis of race.

You have to realize: the worse the consequences and potential consequences of being stopped on the basis of race, the more resentment and fear of the stop itself.

2) Realize that disparate treatment on the basis of your race, religion or ethnicity is a harm in itself, in addition to the actual inconvenience faced. WHY you are being stopped matters. To give a trite but true example: drinking at a different water fountain or using a different bathroom are not especially harmful themselves--the reason why they are done, and the knowledge that people have been really harmed for the same reasons they have to drink out of this water fountain--that is the harm. I don't think Muslims' situation is at all comparable to the Jim Crow South--all I'm saying is, the reason you are being searched at the airport matters, the worst case scenario running through your mind when they stop you matters.

I think many have pointed out that the Muslim community does have some culpability here. Because it is a somewhat closed society, I've noticed CAIR and other Muslim organizations tend to circle the wagons whenever they perceive they are under attack. Clearly they are afraid of being attacked and harassed by the "native" populations, but although a few will decry the acts, the community does not appear to care enough to turn in the terrorists in their midst. Or take care of them in their own way.  

The Islamic community immediately cries foul if anyone starts to criticize the terrorists. As if to say:  those are a few bad guys, they live in our neighborhoods, they spout dangerous rhetoric, they come and go at odd hours of the night, but we don't know anything about that. It appears that in their community the loyalty is to Islam first and to the state second, third or 40th.

I am a devout Episcopalian. I go to to church regularly, teach Sunday school, and am very involved. I call myself a Christian. That is a critical part of my identity. However, if one of my fellow churchgoers lived in the house next to me and it was apparent that they were involved in illegal activity that could endanger another persons life, I would not hesitate to report them. It seems to me that the Muslim community will turn a blind eye to the seedier aspects of their community. We haven't forgotten that there were many in that community that celebrated and danced in the streets on 9-11. That is why this story is News.

I personally will believe them when these communities step up to the plate and help us cull the "radical Muslims."

It's easy to say that just a handful of Muslims are radical. But when you actually start crunching numbers (I have an M.A. in European history, so my number crunching may not be as good as say...a statistician) it looks like a much greater number.

The estimated Muslim population is 2 billion 1/10th of 1% of that number (or .01%)is 200,000! Or say just the population of Britian is estimated to be 1,500,000 Muslims. .01 = 15,000! That's a whole lot of people running around who want to kill Christians!

If the Muslim community would start policing themselves maybe it would create a more powerful atmosphere of tolerance!

is how the FBI beat the Klan. Hate speech when it leads to terrorist actions IS something the FBI should monitor (which currently Muslims bar them from entering); and speech that leads directly to crime.

there certainly is constitutionally protected speech. However when that speech rises to support for terror; that right can and should end. Bund supporters were jailed quickly for speech against the US after Pearl Harbor.

That's what I'm advocating here.

Even harder than coming up with creative ways to deport the Islamofascists, is trying to figure out how to navigate the posts on the redstate website.  Some posts are wide, some are scrunched up.

but I'm the person who noticed here that the statistics you posted were valid if and only if all men accused of rape were presumed to be rapists, regardless of the outcome of their trial; albeit I couched it in terms of a Swiftian "modest proposal". To which you responded with an emotional attack and a plea for "rationality" and asked me to stop being "silly". If you wish to avoid silliness, you should not advance conclusions which follow only from silly premises.

I concur: To believe that, you'd have to believe that the root cause of terrorism is the resistance to it.

(I think I'm going to make that my signature quotation!)

Sorry about that.  I thought about that as I was typing "wise-[blank]," but decided it was not gratuitous or profane in this context.  I honestly didn't think it would offend anyone to call myself that.

I am sorry that you were offended.  I appreciate the warning.

Yep, you can extrapolate all you like, but I keep coming back to the fact that the most conservative numbers on radical muslims are simply to large to accept. When you are looking at the possibility of 15,000 radicalized muslims (see my earlier post on this subject) in London, then you can't turn and look the other way. So you look to the obvious parties to help. Hey! Muslim communities. Help us out here. You want to be part of a civilized society. You want to suggest that Islam is Good, and there are just a few bad apples...well cull the apples. Get rid of the bad guys. Police them, report them, turn them away, don't rent to them, don't feed them, do not provide them aid and comfort. Do not provide them safe harbor.

"Wise-acre" is better.

FWIW, I'm more sensitive than most.

First of all, I think your math is off a little, but I think I get your point.  To correct your math, 1/10th of 1% in 0.1%, so you would have to multipy by 0.001, for 2 billion that would actually be 2 million.  200,000 would be 1/100th of 1%, or 0.01%, as you stated correctly (multipy by 0.0001).

1/10th of 1% (0.1%) of 1,500,000 Muslims is 1500.

Whew.  That aside, your point is well taken.  Of course these precentages are all being pulled out of thin air.  The question I have for you is how much will the other 99.9% take before the numbers start becoming 0.5%, or 1%, etc.  9/11 took only how many people?  It wasn't more than a handful.  Scary.

I am with you.  I have no idea where to go with this.  I just am afraid that the Muslim community doesn't have much of an incentive to do anything, really.  I wish I was smart enough to come up with an idea.  All I can do is correct your math.

European history, eh?  I was trying to come up with an example of what a handful of people could do.  All I can think of is Martin Luther.  He was ONE man.  And what he had to say sparked the 30years war.  That wasn't too pretty.  Is that where we are headed?  Are these communities in our midst going to rise up?

Do I know what my point is?  Not at all!  I think I need to go to sleep.

I think you see my point here. Even a small element in a society as large as this one amounts to significant numbers. And I really mean significant. The idea that there may be 1,500 radical islamists in Great Britain plotting another terrorist strike, is well, frightening. And of course I'm pulling those numbers out of my nether regions, but again, there are lots of Muslims. Estimates are 2 billion. If just a tiny fraction of these are radical, that is really too much risk to contemplate without being exceedingly uneasy.

To your other point, I think a good example would be the French Revolution. For all intents and purposes it was started by a group of angry women who could not get their bread! French people do not starve quietly.  

In the past, my husband transported livestock by the semi load.  The Dept. of Transportation stopped him regularly to check his brakes, health papers, etc.  Never once in my whole life have they stopped me in any single car I have ever driven.  

We absolutely are not guaranteed the right to be treated equally.  In more sane circumstances, as in car safety, everyone accepts that you spend your law enforcement dollars on the most high risk areas.

You just don't like the idea of racial profiling.  Well, I don't like the idea of being turned into ashes by a 20 year old muslim extremist right after my mother (73, graying blonde, slight stroke on her right side) was required to take off her shoes (and yes, she was randomly selected for a special search).

If there were a community of white religious leaders who advocated getting hopped up on e, starting fights, and breaking windows was a means of religious expression and that drugged up white morons should maintain their own cultural identity against the godless tea-drinking heretics who wanted to destroy the one true faith, and if the drugged white guys all came from a cluster of countries ruled by tyrannical drugged white guys who espoused such beliefs and paid for the establishment of safe-houses, or churches or mosques or clinics, where guys could go get a bit of E and  a few big rocks and boot polish and some pep-talks before hitting the streets for some window breaking, then --yep, restrict immigration of whites until we find a way to see if they are hopped up E freaks or went to E freak school or work for E freak state intelligence or are E freak coordinators (imams or priests or dealers).

It isn't like ManU or Arsenal lost to a Pakistani junior team is it?  It is just political, nothing to do with them.  Their 'politics' is just shouting and drinking and football.

but I am still amazed at the restraint(or apathy) of those other malcontents with more serious grudges.  I remember the first years of Thatcher, the Clash, the Brixton riots and all that.  It must have been mostly hype, or maybe the yobs of that era only had problems with black immigrants. Come to think of it, we don't really hear about the football hooligans like we did a few years ago.  Not that I am hoping for bad behavior, but the lack of violent reaction is kind of eerie.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1529009,00.html