A.J. DiCintio
Liberal multiculturalism
By A.J. DiCintio
News coverage of the demonstrations in Egypt has put the liberal vision of "multiculturalism" on full display — thanks to the drivel spewed by dogmatic ostriches who, in reality, parrot the dangerous, patently absurd notion that the moment 19% of Egypt's 60 million people gained a bit of access to the Internet, poof, the threat posed by the country's Islamist crazies evaporated.
But this kind of perverse "thinking" isn't limited to cultural problems in other nations; it has been thriving for years right here in the USA.
For an insight into just how thoroughly it has spread throughout the nation, we can thank Patrick Poole for his posts (bigpeace.com) exposing the Virginia Military Institute's sponsoring of a conference "celebrating" the Muslim conquest of Spain.
Christine Brim also deserves praise for her "let's follow the money trail" analysis of the conference. Diana West (dianawest.net) as well, for the publicity she has given Poole's posts and her commentary on them.
Happily, the commentaries by these writers have occasioned so many complaints that, according to Poole, "VMI is furiously scrubbing the 'celebration' language from all the event materials and trying to portray this as a military and academic event to irate callers. . ."
No amount of scrubbing, however, can wash VMI's two-fold problem down the drain.
First, it is clear liberals at the institution believe Tariq ibn Ziyad and his forces crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in the year 711 A.D. because they were all in a sweat to establish not simply a "fusion between two worlds" (VMI's language) but a kind of fusion that deserves to be celebrated today.
However, as even Poole's brief list of facts and references shows, a person who accepts such nonsense as truth suffers either from Mindless Devotion to Ideology Disorder or Pollyanna Syndrome, each a deadly disease that is especially contagious to youth and airheaded adults.
Second, VMI is behaving with the same anti-intellectual, high-booted intolerance exhibited by true-believing liberals who at other colleges and universities quash speech that doesn't conform to the dogmas of the Liberal Church.
Here, for instance, is what Poole has to say about diversity at the conference:
Callers are also being told that both points of view will be represented . . . however, a review [of the speakers] shows no indication of anyone critical of the "Islamic Spain under occupation as model of tolerance" viewpoint. When one conference panel is dedicated to the topic of "'Al-Andalus' — an ageless Model of Tolerance," it seems unlikely that discussions of the Cordoba martyrs (those Christians who were killed by the Islamic occupiers for refusing to publicly renounce the claim that Jesus was the Son of God) or the 1066 massacre of the Jews in "tolerant" Cordoba will be forthcoming.
It is evident, then, that what liberals at VMI view as promoting multiculturalism is nothing more than what Diana West calls a "deep-tissue manipulation of history," a moral and intellectual abomination that by "revisionist history" or any other name is poisonous not just to the mission of the university but to the entire nation.
As history shows, however, "truth will out" despite efforts to suppress it by force, exclusion, censorship, or the sliming of opponents as racists, fascists, Islamophobes, etc. And interestingly, two other examples of truth about liberal multiculturalism recently appeared in print.
The first is contained in comments made by British Prime Minister David Cameron regarding how "state multiculturalism" in Britain — a kin to liberal multiculturalism in the U.S. in both the public and private sectors — insidiously corrodes democratic values.
Urging all of Europe "to wake up to what is happening," Cameron exhibited neither the childish silliness nor the neurotic guilt characteristic of liberal "reason" when, echoing Jefferson's "unalienable Rights," he proclaimed, "[A free country] believes in certain values and actively promotes them. Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Democracy. The rule of law. Equal rights, regardless of race, sex or sexuality."
Moreover, to make certain no person could fail to notice his rejection of the jelly-kneed appeasement characteristic of so much liberal "thought," Cameron stated the following regarding what we must be willing to proclaim about principles "that define us as a society."
"To belong here is to believe [in them.]"
The second expression of truth has to do with the immediate harm the perverse view of multiculturalism can wreak. It appeared in the Washington Post February 4, 2011, exactly one day after Patrick Poole's initial article about the VMI conference.
Authored by Senators Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins, the piece summarizes the U.S. Senate's report on the case of Major Nidal Hasan, who is accused in the murders of 13 people and attempted murder of 32 others at Fort Hood.
Following are excerpts relevant to the topic at hand:
Our Senate committee's . . . investigation . . . has concluded that the Department of Defense and the FBI "collectively had sufficient information to have detected Hasan's radicalization to violent Islamist extremism but failed both to understand and to act on it."
At various times . . . Hasan, a psychiatrist, openly expressed his beliefs that suicide bombings were justified, that U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were wars against Islam, that Muslim Americans in the U.S. military might engage in fratricide against their comrades and that his loyalty to his religion was greater than his sworn obligation as a military officer to support and defend the Constitution.
Some of Hasan's colleagues complained about these statements. Two fellow officers described him as "a ticking time bomb." But astonishingly, Hasan's commanders took no action against him.
If you don't find the influence of liberal multiculturalism in the Hasan case, you likely agree with Hasan's superiors, who, according to the report, "Rather than discipline or discharge [the major] . . . sanitized his personnel evaluations so that evidence of his radicalization was praised as research on terrorism."
If you do, you will regard the case as a reminder of the many profound reasons not simply to beware liberal multiculturalism but to join the fight against it with unyielding commitment.
© A.J. DiCintio
February 12, 2011
News coverage of the demonstrations in Egypt has put the liberal vision of "multiculturalism" on full display — thanks to the drivel spewed by dogmatic ostriches who, in reality, parrot the dangerous, patently absurd notion that the moment 19% of Egypt's 60 million people gained a bit of access to the Internet, poof, the threat posed by the country's Islamist crazies evaporated.
But this kind of perverse "thinking" isn't limited to cultural problems in other nations; it has been thriving for years right here in the USA.
For an insight into just how thoroughly it has spread throughout the nation, we can thank Patrick Poole for his posts (bigpeace.com) exposing the Virginia Military Institute's sponsoring of a conference "celebrating" the Muslim conquest of Spain.
Christine Brim also deserves praise for her "let's follow the money trail" analysis of the conference. Diana West (dianawest.net) as well, for the publicity she has given Poole's posts and her commentary on them.
Happily, the commentaries by these writers have occasioned so many complaints that, according to Poole, "VMI is furiously scrubbing the 'celebration' language from all the event materials and trying to portray this as a military and academic event to irate callers. . ."
No amount of scrubbing, however, can wash VMI's two-fold problem down the drain.
First, it is clear liberals at the institution believe Tariq ibn Ziyad and his forces crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in the year 711 A.D. because they were all in a sweat to establish not simply a "fusion between two worlds" (VMI's language) but a kind of fusion that deserves to be celebrated today.
However, as even Poole's brief list of facts and references shows, a person who accepts such nonsense as truth suffers either from Mindless Devotion to Ideology Disorder or Pollyanna Syndrome, each a deadly disease that is especially contagious to youth and airheaded adults.
Second, VMI is behaving with the same anti-intellectual, high-booted intolerance exhibited by true-believing liberals who at other colleges and universities quash speech that doesn't conform to the dogmas of the Liberal Church.
Here, for instance, is what Poole has to say about diversity at the conference:
Callers are also being told that both points of view will be represented . . . however, a review [of the speakers] shows no indication of anyone critical of the "Islamic Spain under occupation as model of tolerance" viewpoint. When one conference panel is dedicated to the topic of "'Al-Andalus' — an ageless Model of Tolerance," it seems unlikely that discussions of the Cordoba martyrs (those Christians who were killed by the Islamic occupiers for refusing to publicly renounce the claim that Jesus was the Son of God) or the 1066 massacre of the Jews in "tolerant" Cordoba will be forthcoming.
It is evident, then, that what liberals at VMI view as promoting multiculturalism is nothing more than what Diana West calls a "deep-tissue manipulation of history," a moral and intellectual abomination that by "revisionist history" or any other name is poisonous not just to the mission of the university but to the entire nation.
As history shows, however, "truth will out" despite efforts to suppress it by force, exclusion, censorship, or the sliming of opponents as racists, fascists, Islamophobes, etc. And interestingly, two other examples of truth about liberal multiculturalism recently appeared in print.
The first is contained in comments made by British Prime Minister David Cameron regarding how "state multiculturalism" in Britain — a kin to liberal multiculturalism in the U.S. in both the public and private sectors — insidiously corrodes democratic values.
Urging all of Europe "to wake up to what is happening," Cameron exhibited neither the childish silliness nor the neurotic guilt characteristic of liberal "reason" when, echoing Jefferson's "unalienable Rights," he proclaimed, "[A free country] believes in certain values and actively promotes them. Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Democracy. The rule of law. Equal rights, regardless of race, sex or sexuality."
Moreover, to make certain no person could fail to notice his rejection of the jelly-kneed appeasement characteristic of so much liberal "thought," Cameron stated the following regarding what we must be willing to proclaim about principles "that define us as a society."
"To belong here is to believe [in them.]"
The second expression of truth has to do with the immediate harm the perverse view of multiculturalism can wreak. It appeared in the Washington Post February 4, 2011, exactly one day after Patrick Poole's initial article about the VMI conference.
Authored by Senators Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins, the piece summarizes the U.S. Senate's report on the case of Major Nidal Hasan, who is accused in the murders of 13 people and attempted murder of 32 others at Fort Hood.
Following are excerpts relevant to the topic at hand:
Our Senate committee's . . . investigation . . . has concluded that the Department of Defense and the FBI "collectively had sufficient information to have detected Hasan's radicalization to violent Islamist extremism but failed both to understand and to act on it."
At various times . . . Hasan, a psychiatrist, openly expressed his beliefs that suicide bombings were justified, that U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were wars against Islam, that Muslim Americans in the U.S. military might engage in fratricide against their comrades and that his loyalty to his religion was greater than his sworn obligation as a military officer to support and defend the Constitution.
Some of Hasan's colleagues complained about these statements. Two fellow officers described him as "a ticking time bomb." But astonishingly, Hasan's commanders took no action against him.
If you don't find the influence of liberal multiculturalism in the Hasan case, you likely agree with Hasan's superiors, who, according to the report, "Rather than discipline or discharge [the major] . . . sanitized his personnel evaluations so that evidence of his radicalization was praised as research on terrorism."
If you do, you will regard the case as a reminder of the many profound reasons not simply to beware liberal multiculturalism but to join the fight against it with unyielding commitment.
© A.J. DiCintio
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