The King Dhimmi

The Vietnam era leftists have been awaken in the last few years because of the Iraq war. They claim to "support the troops" and scream when we appear to even remotely question their patriotism.

Today in the Inquirer, we have a great example (third item) of how these old-school liberals really think. A letter from a Ben Burrows sums up how wrong we on the right have been:

There seems to be no story about Islam that commentator Charles Krauthammer cannot convert to a stereotype of racist intent and European blindness to his own brand of Sharonista recklessness.

Sharonista, get it. Krauthammer is a Jew. Brilliant!

To me, the real story behind the "sudden" appearance of racial and religious minorities in Europe is the failure of former colonial countries to acknowledge the continued false sense of colonial superiority without any sense of welcoming and integration into the general European culture - of a maintenance of permanent difference.

The general idea behind emigration to another country was to integrate and assimilate to the ways of your new country. The Italians, Poles and Germans who came to America learned the language and culture of America and adapted to our ways. They didn't scream that they wanted to prosecute under their religious law as the Muslims do.

I worry that, far from attempting to repeat the previous American success of integrating previous waves of immigrants, we have ourselves become infected with colonial hubris. This "white man's burden" mentality has brought both Democrats and Republicans to grief, most recently in Iraq.

I'd say that the previous waves of immigrants such as those listed above, and more recently Vietnamese, Korean and Indian emigre's have done a great job of integrating. As for the "white man's burden" mentality, it seems that that is not even close to being the case. But let's move on to the real gist of Bennies letter:

It is time for us to recover a sense of gratitude for our diversity, and from this gratitude to derive a sense of common purpose.

Well radical Muslims have a common purpose, to kill the infidel (you are one, Mr. Burrows) and expand Islam worldwide.

Theo van Gogh's portrayal of Muslims was, in its way, just as much a blanket denunciation of a multicultural, multiethnic cohort as anything of Krauthammer's.

Theo van Gogh was speaking his mind, which is a right that every person should enjoy (there was a time when liberals actually believed that). Is Mr. Burrows intimating that van Gogh was guilty of something so horrible that he deserved to be murdered in the street by a Muslim thug? Can a film maker not speak out when a religion conducts horrid practices such as genital mutilation of women and stoning of homosexuals? By pointing to practices that Muslims do not hide but extol, the man deserved to be left in a Dutch street bleeding to death with a note (text here) denouncing him and promoting Islam tacked to his chest with a knife? Theo van Gogh's work was created with a Muslim woman who saw the injustices perpetrated by her religion on women. Does she deserve to die?

In our efforts to seek justice and freedom for all, we must all remember the injunction to love the stranger, and not to embarrass or isolate those different from ourselves.
Ben Burrows

Kumbaya, Mr. Burrows. That is the leftist mantra in a nutshell. Perhaps if Mr. Burrows would read something besides the Nation and the Inquirer, he'd realize that Europe has not isolated Muslims in the least. In fact they've bent themselves into a pretzel attempting to accommodate them. They've done this to their own detriment.

How do I know that Mr. Burrows is a leftist/liberal, well, besides the inane rantings he wrote to the Inqy? Well a quick Google search shows this:

"Hi, I'm an old fogey who went "Clean for Gene" in 1968. I will not abide another candidate who pretends to go head-to-head with George Bush and then says "I agree!""

Update: Theo van Gogh's killer was convicted by a Dutch court and sentenced to life yesterday:

Bouyeri seemed unfazed by the sentence, looking relaxed as he shook his attorney's hand and strolled out of the courtroom with his guards. He has two weeks to lodge an appeal but had said he hoped to receive the maximum punishment, preferably death, in his quest for martyrdom.

Wearing a black-and-white checkered head scarf, he remained seated when the judges filed into the high-security courtroom yesterday, in a show of disdain for the non-Islamic proceedings.

Besides the van Gogh killing, Bouyeri was convicted of the attempted murder of two bystanders and eight police officers during a subsequent shoot-out; illegal possession of firearms; and impeding the work of a parliament member, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whom he threatened to kill in a letter impaled in van Gogh's chest.

I suppose that Mr. Burrows thinks that all Bouyeri needs is a little "loving" and less "embarrassment". Give me a break. This guy killed for one reason and one reason only; Islam.