The public has the right and vital need to have the events of our time fully and fairly described and reported. But a witch's brew of psychological denial and political correctness is suppressing the institutional voices of government, police, schools, universities and the media when it comes to radical Islam.
As the danger grows but is not publicly described, the public will first be ignorant and fail to demand sufficient remedial action.
But as incidents and rumors are encountered over time, the public mind will inevitably suspect the worst and demand the strongest action. Demagogues will emerge to gratify that vox populi. (The Dubai port deal is a small example of such a process -- although in that incident the threat is real and there are many sincere and rational voices amidst the many demagogues.)
Institutional voices are not being responsible by suppressing honest description of radical Islamic events. Denying the existence of evil (or refusing to be judgmental about it) has never proved a reliable method for defeating it. Hell is presumably filled with souls who didn't understand that point.
Exactly. Refusal by the sensitive elite to admit that our enemies are Moslem for fear that ordinary Americans will assume the worst--that all Moslems are our enemy--is backfiring. The cadre of Sensitive Americans who won't let polite company mention that fanatics are twisting Islam into a hafeful creed of murder to justify killing us is just making sure that the Moslems they pretend to care about will get blamed for the killing and mayhem they clearly see being carried out by self-proclaimed Moslems.
I've written about this fear before (here and here for example). As I noted:
Failure to call our enemies who are killing us our "enemies" for fear of tainting all Arabs or Moslems is stupid and counter-productive. Doesn't this tacitly say that our enemies and the loyal Arab- and Moslem-American here are one and the same? Why should all Arabs or Moslems be tied to the murderous behavior of a few? I am not personally offended by describing IRA members as terrorists even though I am half Irish. And I'd be offended if somebody thought that calling them terrorists would offend me because I am Irish! Personally, I think that our Arab-American and Moslem-American citizens are loyal Americans. We can call our enemies what they are and still include all our citizens in the war.And this:
Remember, people can see that people who are Moslem are killing us in the most horrible fashion they can think of and dream of doing it on a mass scale.
If ordinary people are told again and again that we have no enemy drawn from Islam, then the fact that Islamic enemies keep killing us will lead ordinary people to logically conclude that all Islam is guilty. If we can't accurately define the subgroup we fight because it will offend all Moslems, isn't the logical conclusion that all Moslems support the terrorists?
Naming our enemy localizes anger to focus on the actual enemy. Denying we have enemies who are Islamic paints the entire religion as guilty.
So who is the sensitive side, really?
I hope the port issue is a passing concern for our people. But I fear it reflects a rising sentiment that holds all Moslems guilty for the hate of a small percentage of Moslems. If this becomes a war of civilization because our people haven't been taught that there is a difference between our terrorist enemies and all Moslems, the guilty parties for this view will include those whose false compassion leads them to refuse to name our enemies rather than the so-called warmongers who advocate killing our actual enemies.
Or are we to just pretend that our enemies are just happy Islamist friends?
