Back in late January of 2013, I published an exchange between myself and a Jihad Watch veteran, "Wellington", that transpired on comments threads on Jihad Watch (The Wellington/Hesperado Tennis Match), demonstrating both my argument for total deportation of Muslims from the West, and a complex objection to it fairly typical of the asymptotic position in the Counter-Jihad (albeit more intelligently and maturely expressed than seems often to be the case on Jihad Watch, what with the likes of "Philip Jihadski" and "Angemon" bullying their elbows in various comments threads there these days).
I playfully framed it as a tennis match because instead of composing an essay about my disagreement with Wellington, which would have been too tediously cumbersome due to the sheer volume and complexity of the exchanges, I opted to present the exchanges virtually intact, in the form of "volleys" back and forth.
Since then, a couple of months ago, Wellington saw fit to weigh in again when I revisisted the subject in one or more Jihad Watch comments threads.
Hesperado:
As a small minority of commenters agree, we need to deport all Muslims. We can’t do it today, or in the next few years—not because it goes against our laws in the free West (no laws or constitutions in the free world prevent their nation from taking measures to protect their societies from enemies who are waging war on them and in the process actively mass-murdering and destroying property and portending much worse in the near future), not because it is technically impossible; but only because our dominant and mainstream paradigm reflecting the PC MC worldview prevents us on a psychological and cultural level.
And one telling indication of just how broad and deep that paradigm is in the hearts and minds of Westerners is how even the majority inside the Counter-Jihad balk at deportation and put up static energy countering it, static energy which shows telltale signs of infection by PC MC.
[At this point, a severely asymptotic Jihad Watcher (who, being Egyptian, may also be further deformed by quasi-dhimmitude), piped in:]
Hesperado:
“Since we can’t do it, let’s try something else. ”
We can’t do it now, or in the next few years. We can do it eventually; and we will do it. The question is not if—it’s when. Will we wait until after Muslims mass-murder a million or more of us—or before?
Wellington:
First of all (and unfortunately) American society and government has not yet identified Islam as a negative, far from it as you and I and so many others here at JW know only too well. But even assuming Islam would be identified as a negative, i.e., an enemy of the American Republic, this STILL would not legally allow for deportation of Muslims en masse. Communism, another wretched totalitarian ideology like Islam, and certainly an enemy of the Republic and its founding principles, was very much recognized as a negative during the Cold War (it’s making a comeback on American college campuses presently but this is just another testimony to what has happened to American higher education and so I digress) but this did not disallow someone during the Cold War from being a Communist, nor did it make illegal the Gus Hall led American Communist Party. Ditto for any stupid American Nazi party, even during WWII.
You see, the Constitution protects virtually all theory, including very inimical theory, but definitely does allow for prosecution of inimical action based upon inimical theory (e.g.—You want to be a Satanist? OK, then be one but if your Satanism requires a human sacrifice on a Satanic altar now and again, sorry, you can’t do that and if you do you will be charged with murder). Therefore, Muslim deportation en masse, once again even assuming Islam is put by the government in the same category as Marxism and fascism et al., is not a constitutional or legal possibility under the Constitution and statutory law. And it makes no legal difference if there are “only” a handful of Muslim atrocities or far more than a handful. I do wish you’d finally learn this. I submit to you that you’re far too intelligent not to.
The way to “defeat” Islam in America is not through mass deportation of Muslims, something which I’ve already detailed is simply not going to happen, but rather by way of Islam being put, for all intents and purposes, by American government and society into the same category with other malevolent ideologies and belief systems. If (hopefully when) this occurs, Islam will become marginalized by way of being looked upon as a pariah and Muslims will then be viewed as confused people, as losers, just as Neo-Nazis and Marxists are. Of course, any Muslim ACTING upon this or that warped Islamic belief (and there are so many such beliefs), which is destructive of life or property, can be prosecuted, and should be prosecuted, to the full extent of the law. Ditto for Marxists, Neo-Nazis, Klansmen, Satan worshipers, NAMBLA members, etc. ... I wish you’d finally learn this about American law, especially, speaking personally, since I agree with so much else of what you contend.
[At this point, a helpful Jihad Watcher interjected:]
Wrong! with your explanation of how to get rid of islam. Neo Nazis, marxists, klansmen, Satan worshipers, are not in the same category as islam. Muslims viewed as confused cannot be compared to these groups.
Islam is stealth and the numbers are growing. These groups [i.e., the Neo Nazis, etc. which Wellington cited -- H.] aren’t an immediate threat and probably never will.
Hesperado:
Correct. Wellington is confusing categories. I have pointed this out to him several different times in the past; but he keeps doing it.
...your response all revolved around law. This isn’t a legal problem. It’s a military problem — specifically, a problem that is military in nature, but whose military nature is not being recognized (and, immediately consequent upon such recognition, addressed appropriately).
The problem thus has two sides, like a coin:
1) the military (and paramilitary, including stealth or what used to be termed “espionage”) belligerence of our enemy — this belligerence pursued on two parallel (though seemingly mutually contradictory) tracks as Violent Jihad and Stealth Jihad
2) our society’s complex denial of #1.
Now, back to your misapprehension of the problem as a legal problem. Did Hitler’s activities in the years ramping up to December 11, 1941, present to America, or to Great Britain, or to France a legal problem, to be solved through application of domestic laws being ignored (or through passing new domestic laws)?
Perhaps the most important flaw in the response of the Good Guys in the last two world wars was the stubborn insistence that the war devolving under the noses was going to be just like the last war—i.e., inability to think outside the box in order to attend to new data unfolding in the ongoing present. That’s what our mainstream is doing—thinking that the next world war will be caused by “another (white Western) Hitler” and will be a conventional war. This present world war that is now happening is unique in world history, for many reasons—including that it is not following conventional rules or patterns of warfare; so much so, that the entire Western mainstream doesn’t realize it’s happening (and thus, of course, their political representatives are not responding appropriately by declarations of war on their side). Indeed, most even in the Counter-Jihad can’t recognize it as such, and seem to insist that Muslims present only legal and criminal problems.
...
Every Western nation has the right to defend itself using deportation and other means from any organization whose members are doing the following:
1) waging war against that Western nation
2) killing the people of that Western nation in the past and in the present—and plotting to do worse in the indeterminable future.
Although Wellington has never made himself explicit (for some strange reason, as I have repeatedly in the past pointed this out to him), the only logical reason why he maintains his demurrer so stubbornly is that he does not believe #1 and #2 are happening.
Sitting as we are upon this veritable mountain of data about Islam and Muslims called Jihad Watch — a mountain taller than Everest and continuing to get taller every week with ever new and gruesomely and alarmingly fresh spurts of the evil lava of Islamic data—it is deeply dismaying and offensive to me that anyone, particularly someone approximately on our side, would be refusing to grasp that #1 and #2 are massively real.
My two points #1 and #2 of course should not be construed to refer only to one Western nation. Muslims are at war and killing in waging that war against all Western nations (and indeed, concretely against dozens of other non-Western nations, and planning on extending that war to the whole world).
This additional fact (which everyone who has been reading Jihad Watch should know by now) makes my aforementioned dismay and aggrieved sense of being offended all the more acutely stinging and searing.
Wellington:
I am certainly aware, Hesperado, that Islam is at war with the West and that it produces killers aplenty (your two points above). The first problem is that the West doesn’t think Islam is at war with it. This goes to a point I’ve made many times here at JW and that is that as long as Islam is looked upon as something good, rather than a negative, we have the chief problem of all—refusal to identify the enemy. Once Islam is seen for what it is, which would mean no more pieties about Islam is fine and it’s just been hijacked by a few extremists, blah, blah, blah, then the corner of corners will have been turned. But even when this happens, and even though certain Muslims will continue to kill in the name of Islam, this does not mean that we will then be able to round up all Muslims and deport them. Virtually no judge, no law professor, no attorney would argue that we could.
Also, while Islam is indeed at war with America and the West, you know full well that this doesn’t fall under a strict definition of declared war, in part because we are faced with a belief system and not a particular hostile nation. Second, and as I have tried to explain to you many times, belief is sacrosanct but certain actions are prosecutable. That’s why, for example, even though Communist Russia by proxy in Vietnam was, in effect, responsible for killing American soldiers and civilians, this didn’t mean, under law, that Communism had to be banned in America or that American Communists could be rounded up and put in detention camps or deported. Of course, if a particular American Communist during the Cold War (which wasn’t so cold) broke one or more laws in furtherance of his Communist beliefs, well that was an entirely different matter. And it makes no difference under law if you have a handful of Communists/Neo-Nazis/ Muslims, etc. doing foul and illegal things or far more than just a handful. Under American law you could still openly believe what you want.
BTW, what FDR did with Japanese-Americans in WWII will almost certainly never happen again. Furthermore, even though you know that I share your deep distaste for Islam, the fact remains that the vast majority of Muslims in America do not break American laws openly, just as, say, the vast majority of KKK members don’t.
I do “get” what you’ve tried to convey to me. I get it all right and I disagree with what you have contended. I am certain that, with the possibility of a lone lawyer here or there, 99.99% of fellow lawyers would agree with me and not with you.
Hesperado:
You have a different, and curious, definition of waging war than I do, apparently. Your definition allows for us to treat the belligerents who, in their war against us, have been killing us for years, are now killing us, and continue to plan to kill us in ever more horrific ways in the near and far future, as though they were citizens who should be read their Miranda rights.
...
Wellington exemplifies a certain posture which the late blogger Lawrence Auster noticed and often analyzed with scintillating: certain Westerners recognizing how bad and dangerous Islam is, but they can’t offer any remedy. And not only do they have no remedy—they tell people who DO offer a remedy that their remedies are wrong, or impossible, or illegal. Meanwhile, the problem remains horrifically formidable—according to their terms, agreeing with us, who proffer the solution they, the Wellingtonians, reject…!
[For the penultimate volley by Wellington, I will intersperse my forehand and backhand in italics]
Wellington:
Your remedies, like mass deportation, are not, as I have tried to explain to you many times, legally feasible.
Sure, they are not legally feasible if we continue to insist that we must consider Muslims to be ordinary people not waging violent war against us (and in order to facilitate that violent war, deceptively non-violent stealth jihad).
...
First of all, and most important, is for Islam to no longer to be looked upon as a positive or something neutral by a very large majority in any given Western nation, like Britain, the US or The Netherlands. Not there yet but I think this will happen in time, especially as ordinary folks become better and better informed about Islam. Already a far greater percentage of most any Western populace thinks of Islam skeptically than just twenty years ago and so this is a “remedy” in the making.
This is fine, but not as a substitution for something more robust to prevent horrific terrorism worse than 911.
Also, no Muslim in pursuit of their beliefs should ever be allowed to break Western laws. When they do, prosecute the bastards. No exceptions. No excuses.
Any given Muslim's Islam is already a violation of our laws—and furthermore is an act of war—the hot war they are in fact waging on us now, which has been killing us, is killing us now, and portends horrifically worse mass-murder of us in the future. Until we realize this, we will get nowhere.
...
Encouraging emigration of Muslims from the West, as for example Denmark has done, is yet another route to explore with greater vigor. Furthermore, stop further Muslim immigration to Western nations. Find any legal pretext to do so.
Unfortunately, this is only a workable solution if it had been started yesterday. As it is, the West will not be ready to even consider it on the table for discussion for probably a couple more decades (and even that's being very generous) -- and in the meanwhile, the West will absorb a few million more Muslims, making the problem even worse than it is now (and even now it's teetering on the edge of becoming unworkable). To continue to articulate this as "we need to stop immigration" suffers from the "Closing the Barn Door AFTER the Wolves Have Gotten In" syndrome.
...
Additionally, encourage Muslims to take a long look at their sick religion, as Robert Spencer and many other prominent and well known people have. We’re at a watershed moment in history when Islam is being scrutinized in ways and in numbers that it has never had to endure before. Good. Encourage not only non-Muslims but also Muslims to take a long, hard look at a religion which I and many others believe will not withstand scrutiny. A mass exodus from Islam by millions of Muslims, a distinct possibility if not a certainty, will also serve mankind greatly.
There's no evidence this will happen sufficiently to solve our problem. It's completely hypothetical. In the realm of hypotheticals, given the dangers we know Muslims are capable of, we should never err on the side of hope, but always on the side of grimly jaded pessimism -- if we want to do our best to protect our societies from Muslims, that is.
[At this point, I step back from the net to resume the back from the middle of the court again, as we wind up the deadly serious game to game... set... match.]
Wellington:
[Hesperado functions] in a a legal void. The man, though very intelligent, simply refuses to learn American law. I have tried many times, as the lawyer I am, to instruct him here but he is determined to remain insouciantly ignorant, going on and on, as he does, in a theory world that is not based in any kind of legal reality.
Never mind that stalwart opposers of Islam’s designs like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller have not called for things that Hesperado has (e.g., mass deportation of Muslims), never mind that not a single Congressman or Senator, however knowledgeable of Islam they might be (for instance, the former Congressman, Allen West) have not called for such things. Yes, never mind any of this. All are wrong to the extent that they don’t see what must be done pursuant to Hesperado’s prescriptions. He is right here and everyone who disagrees with him is wrong. Ironically, there is something at least faintly totalitarian (never mind the massive ignorance) about his continued legally and constitutionally insupportable stance.
Frankly, I think he may be beyond hope. To the extent that he will respond to this post of mine, I predict he will demonstrate again that he has learned nothing. Actually, Hesperado hurts the cause so much of us are fighting for by continuing to propose legal solutions to combatting Islam that are not legal or constitutional at all.
In short, he is a hindrance in dealing with Islamic fascism and not an aid. I wish it were otherwise, but to date it has not been so. I am not optimistic he will finally learn.
Hesperado:
Aside from his obstinately persisting misapprehension of the problem—viz., that our struggle against Islam is some kind of a legal situation where we are fighting crime, rather than a military situation of hot war which we continue to refuse to wake up to in order to counter-wage in self-defense—Wellington is needlessly and erroneously construing deportation as unethical. The enlightened and democratic Czechoslovakians, for example, rounded up and deported millions of Germans in Czechoslovakia beginning in 1945 in the aftermath of WW2—many were citizens who were more than first-generation in Czechoslovakia. Hugh Fitzgerald has written at length exonerating the Czechoslovakians in this regard. Then, when I bring this up, Wellington reveals his needless and erroneous (not to mention disastrous) misperception of reality: namely, his belief (alas, an all too common belief in our day) that we are not in a world war right now against an enemy more evil and more dangerous even than were the Axis Powers.
It’s positively outrageous and obscene, not to mention infuriating, for Jihad Watchers to purvey such fashionable shibboleths (e.g., "total deportation would be un-Constitutional") dressed up as reasonably informed axioms in the face of this volcanic mountain of data about Muslims on whose slopes oozing with fresh blood and gunpowder we sit, slip and slide in our ongoing dismay.
Since we can’t do it, let’s try something else. Help Muslims discover by themselves the filth of Muhammad’s life, teachings and examples. Help them leave Islam. Not an easy task, I agree, but it’s worth trying.
We’ll still need to get rid of our PC mentality though. As for the deportation solution, we should use it against anyone tied to Jihad, be it militant or stealth.