Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Pat Buchannan Condemns and then Agrees with Breivik

That's basically the story. Breivek, the guy who killed all those people in Norway, is just evil; his ideology doesn't matter. And it's reprehensible for the European media to note that he does seem to have been a fan of many Conservatives warning about the dangers of Islam. Because of course reading about and enjoying anti-Muslim rhetoric has nothing to do with his actual act of violence, even if he said that the two were connected.

But as it turns out, Breivak was, apparently, largely correct in his analysis of the problem.
As for a climactic conflict between a once-Christian West and an Islamic world that is growing in numbers and advancing inexorably into Europe for the third time in 14 centuries, on this one, Breivik may be right.
in fairness to Buchannan he is an isolationist and a nativist; he prefers a strategy of keeping the Muslims in their own land and not interfering with them. Which is frustrating in a way; he's clearly an anti-Islam bigot, but he often opposes military engagement with them.

Still this article is engaging for the way in which it condemns people like me for pointing out that conservative basically agree with Breivak, and then basically agrees with Breivak (on the problem, if not the solution).

1 comment:

Kullervo said...

Islam is a religion, i.e., an idea. You're not a bigot for criticizing or even condemning an idea. Ideas don't get special kid glove treatment because they're religious ideas.

Muslims, on the other hand, are people. If you condemn or hate them because they are identifiable members of a cultural group, that's bigotry.

The ability to freely criticize ideas is absolutely fundamental to a free society. If certain classes of ideas are declared immune from criticism for any reason, we have a serious problem.