Eric Allen Bell, cause célèbre for the sorta-kinda-anti-Islam Movement mainly because he used to be a flaming Leftist (worked with Michael Moore, and wrote over 100 articles for the Daily Kos, a Radical Leftism-on-steroids website) -- and who now, after his recent epiphany, barely approximates the asymptotic softness of Glazovianism or the Pipes Dream -- published an article on the Glazovianist website Front Page and on Jihad Watch, in which he describes a brief period during his transition from a Leftist to a Softie on Islam when, somewhere in the middle of this transition, he continued to criticize Spencer & Geller:
...having only recently sipped from the well of knowledge, I had not yet flushed all of the Kool Aid out of my system.
Then on page 2 of that same article, he has to add:
Yes, there are lots of peaceful Muslims all over the world who share our concerns – who are our partners in this effort, who tell their stories and love their children and love America just like we do.
I'd like to know what "lots" means, exactly. I'd also like to know where these "lots" of harmless Muslims are, exactly. Can Bell pinpoint them, and tell them apart from the dangerous Muslims we should be extremely worried about? I'd love to know how he can, if he would claim he can (but of course, he can't -- nobody can; so why put it on the table as something worthy of mention?).
One can somewhat flesh out what this "lots" means for Bell, from a smattering of comments he made in the comments sections of two other articles he wrote, also published on Jihad Watch.
For example, from the comments section to his first article at Jihad Watch:
Until a violation of the law occurs, the Muslim community has a Constitutional right to build a house of worship.
My involvement with the Occupy Movement...[!] I feel that the people are being victimized by the power elite, being lied to badly by Obama and his bosses at Goldman Sachs.
I supported the buidling of the mosque in Murfreesboro, TN because I support liberty.
We continue with more excerpts of Eric Allen Bell's many dingalings from the comments section to his second article on Jihad Watch:
I strongly support OCCUPY... [!]
I could not possibly disagree more strongly with the idea that all of the Muslims must be removed from America.
A Muslim is a human being. Islam is a religious/political doctrine. There are not the same thing.
A human being whose mind houses bad ideas is capable of being transformed.
And if those human beings will bad ideas are not transformed, then what we are doing here, which is to inform, brings with it the possibility of neutralizing or minimizing the threat.
We must never become the thing we object to. It is critical that we respect the human rights of others in our stand against Islam or else we have lost the moral high ground.
...
I made the documentary because I believed and still believe that the Islamic Center in Murfreesboro has a legal right to build and that the Islamic community there is peaceful.
Nearly every Muslim I have ever met is peaceful. That is not what concerns me. What concerns me is Islam itself and generally speak much of its leadership.
...[quoting another JW commenter's suggestion]
"18. That no additional mosques be allowed until Islamic countries reciprocate in international relations, freedom of religion and houses of worship, and social equality."
WOW - Bad idea. Since certain Islamic countries do not recognize religious pluralism, we should not either? We should retaliate by stooping to their level? It's easy to see who will win that war of ideas and it won't be Democratic Values.
To respond to tyranny with tyranny, history has shown us over and over and over, is generally a bad idea.
...Nearly every [American] Muslim I have met or interviewed (but not all) does live up to full Democratic standards.
...
[responding to another JW commenter's idea]
"The battle against Islam in the U.S. will be won or lost in the Congress, which needs to declare a moratorium on Muslim immigration, and pass the Winslow Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "Congress shall have the power to make laws restricting the free exercise of religions other than Christianity and Judaism, including but not limited to Islam."
It's bad ideas like that which give too much power to the government, which will abuse the power and/or be incompetent with it, that only fuel the perception that the anti-jihad movement is "fascist".
"Our way or the highway" is not how America works. American citizens have the right to have bad ideas, ridiculous beliefs and there cannot be any preference shown toward one religion over another.
The execution of the plan you outlined above will destroy our liberties in the process and introduce more of a totalitarian element to the US Government. We don't need more of that.
Did you ever see the Pink Panther cartoon where he destroys his entire house while trying to get rid of a single fly?
...
What Islam is to religion, Fox "News" is to news - deeply deceptive and even more extreme and corrupt than the others.
...
[At one point Bell outlines a "dilemma" -- i.e., he twists the Problem of Islam into his own still Lefto-utopian worldview:]
The demonization of any person so deeply indoctrinated as to imagine themselves to be a Muslim is unfair, cruel, discriminatory and lacking in humanity. The parallels with Nazi Germany start to get creepy.
Equally, to be so "open-minded" and "liberal" that one exercises no caution whatsoever and imagines all Muslims to be "moderate" until proven otherwise is clearly a hazardous and potentially dangerous position to take in a world where this tyrannical religious system and brutal political system is becoming more popular and more radicalized with each passing day.
So, what is the right approach? What actions can we take without violating another person's civil rights or their dignity, within the law, maintaining the moral high ground without abandoning the good common sense?
Is there a nonviolent resolution?
Is it possible to promote caution without promoting hate?
Conclusion:
It seems Bell needs to do more flushing out -- "lots" more -- of the Kool-Aid still coursing rather vigorously throughout his veins.
3 comments:
Leftie?
Here you go, genius:
http://www.libertarianrepublican.net/2012/03/interview-with-documentary-filmmaker.html
"Raising money in Hollywood [for my pro-Mosque documentary]... is not only very difficult but usually takes a long time - and most people fail at it. Michael Moore had given me a big boost by inviting me to write several articles on the subject for his blog..."
If a libertarian can be supported by Michael Moore, and if that supposed libertarian represents libertarianism, then libertarianism is inimical to our #1 priority of protecting our societies from Islam.
"I would describe my political orientation as being Libertarian with Liberal social views, except on the matter of abortion for which I am pro-life. I favor a system that allows for maximum personal liberty with some degree of collective accountability. Since governments by their very nature are corrupt I feel we should have the smallest government possible. Government holds back our collective and individual potential. An overnight sudden reduction in government would be reckless, but we need to begin a process of shrinking down the size and scope of our highly corrupt government immediately. Meddling is unfair and the free markets are unfair and in fact nothing in life is fair, but at least having the free market dictate certain matters is closer to the forces of nature than any form of central planning. So I’m not sure I qualify as a traditional Liberal as I do not feel that more government and more taxation is going to solve anything. To the contrary, it just feeds the beast. This system of Plutocracy I feel we are living under today, is largely the result of a government that has gotten too big and too corrupt. I have come to understand the government is a monopoly which fixes markets and rigs the game for some at the expense of the many."
There's no way to solve the problems and dangers which international Islam poses without big government. So Bell may consider himself a libertarian just because he wants to scale down the size of government, but it's an incoherent proposition given his concern for the welfare and rights of Muslims whom he deems to be victims of oppression under Islam around the world, not to mention his concern for all those Copts, and by extension all those millions of other non-Muslim Third World peoples oppressed by Muslims. To do anything to help all these people requires big government -- not only one big government (America) but a coalition of several (the West). But it's also highly likely that Bell believes he can just write and talk about his concerns and hope that they will have some magical effect -- sans any pragmatic framework for putting them into practice on the mass scale they require -- on the menaces Muslims pose to the world. His answer to the question about Ron Paul's reckless Isolationism only supports my assessment here.
So Bell's a confused mishmash of Radical Leftist and Childishly Idealist Libertarian (if that's not a redundancy). Hardly an improvement on a Plain Leftist No Cream or Sugar. Big fucking deal.
P.S.: And don't forget that he wrote "over 100 articles" for the Daily Kos. If Libertarianism countenances such fervently Leftist propaganda, then it's bankrupt; or Bell's not a real libertarian (whatever that is). There's no third alternative.
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