I realize Cal Thomas is a big media personality who writes columns that appear in many famous newspapers. He’s also a dolt when it comes to the Constitution. And history. And religion. And … well, pretty much everything else I can find.
Thomas appeared on Alan Colmes’ radio show for the following daft exchange, discussing mosques in the United States:
Thomas: I want them to be monitored. I want there to be listening devices in very single one of them.
Yes, Cal Thomas wants every mosque to have a listening device in it. And, of course, he’s saying this publicly, so every radical Islamist terror cell now knows not to make plans inside of their mosque. Nice way to drive them underground, Cal. Maybe we need to bug the houses of every known Muslim in the US, and assign a personal monitor for every single one of them. We certainly are going to need to hire a lot more FBI agents to monitor all the tapes of all the mosques each week.
I do strongly suspect that there are in fact certain mosques that are under surveillance, electronic and HUMINT, based on the rhetoric coming from them and other indicators (and, I trust, under a court order). That’s a much more defensible stand — I’d expect a Christian militia church to be treated similarly. But, then, I don’t assume that because there are Christian militias like the Huttaree planning on killing policemen, etc., that all Christian churches need to be monitored.
Colmes: Can you imagine saying that about any other religion?
Thomas: No I can’t, but no other religion…is talking about the imposing the equivalent of Sharia law…
Obviously Cal hasn’t spoken to some Dominionist Christians. Nor to Christianist folks who very seriously and sincerely suggest the death penalty (by stoning, preferably) for homosexuality, adultery, etc. Still more would propose criminal penalties for blasphemy, and outlaw divorce. We still have Blue Laws that restrict commerce on Sundays and Christian holidays. And, of course, we can see all sorts of significant teaching from conservative Christians in this country about the subservient role of women vs. men, etc.
(Let’s not even talk about Old School Mormons …)
Some of the particulars might vary, but for Thomas to single out Muslims in this country for, in his eyes, proposing a theocratic basis for a judicial system is disingenuous. It’s just not his flavor of religion that he’s worried about.
Colmes: So you want the government to monitor what happens in mosques.
Thomas: I sure do…
Colmes: How will that ever pass a constitutional test?
Thomas: Well, I don’t know; we’ll have to see; depends who’s on the court.
Remember that, folks, next time you hear Cal Thomas or his ilk railing against “activist courts” as if it’s a liberal thing. “Depends on who’s on the court” is his answer to how to make discriminating against a particular religion on a generic basis pass “constitutional” muster.
The conversation was based on an article that Thomas recently put out “Purging Evil” — by which, of course, he means Islam in the US. I hadn’t been going to go through it in total, but it’s such zany hatemongering that I simply can’t resist.
Terry Jones, the Florida “minister” who threatened to burn the Koran on the anniversary of September 11, is as much a distraction from the real challenge facing America as was Senator Joseph McCarthy when it came to communism.
Gee, wasn’t it just this morning that I first commented how Islam is the New Commie Menace?
Communism was (and remains in its Chinese incarnation) a real threat.
China may be a threat. Communism, as an ideology, though, is a-mouldering in the grave. Heck, even Fidel is suggesting that they Cuba needs to back away from it. The People’s Republic of China is communist any more only insofar as they pay lip service to it; in reality, it’s as much of an autocracy (and growing plutocracy) as the imperial orders it supplanted.
China is a threat — or at least a challenge — to the US largely because of its massive population, growing industrial power, untapped resources, debt-holding over the US, and long and proud tradition of considering itself the center of the world. That would all be true even if they were as democratic as the day is long.
But radical Islam — rabid, advancing, intolerant, subjugating — is potentially a bigger one and must be conquered.
IT’S LIKE A WAVE OF ARMY ANTS … DEVOURING ALL THEY COME ACROSS …
Various apologists for the Nazis …
NAZIS!!!
… and communists in the media, academia and religion are now mostly forgotten and that’s the problem. Forgetting what happens when evil is accommodated leads to terrible consequences and more evil.
Accommodating evil is, in fact, rarely a constructive or long-term solution. (Though, of course, one could consider our major financial and economic ties to “Communist China,” and the fact that we aren’t invading them or nuking them into a glass parking lot, would seem to indicate that we are “accommodating evil” in Cal’s world.)
The problem comes in accurately identifying evil, and figuring out the most productive way to confront and stymie it.
Some ancient wisdom about what must be done with evil is helpful for those who would pay attention: “You must purge the evil from among you” (Deuteronomy 22:21).
Um, Cal? Here’s a bit of context for that reading from Deuteronomy …
13 If a man takes a wife and, after lying with her, dislikes her 14 and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,” 15 then the girl’s father and mother shall bring proof that she was a virgin to the town elders at the gate. 16 The girl’s father will say to the elders, “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he dislikes her. 17 Now he has slandered her and said, ‘I did not find your daughter to be a virgin.’ But here is the proof of my daughter’s virginity.” Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town, 18 and the elders shall take the man and punish him. 19 They shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver [b] and give them to the girl’s father, because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives. 20 If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the girl’s virginity can be found, 21 she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you.
Um … about that whole “imposing Sharia law” thing?
Instead, we are tolerating, even welcoming evil, under the false assumption that evil can be neutered when it is in the midst of good. If that were so, the good works performed by various cultures would have long ago eradicated evil. Evil must not only be purged, it must be defeated.
I could pull up a zillion quotes from the New Testament, Cal, about answering evil with good, and how treating evil people with goodness is the right path to choose, and all that. But, then, why bother?
The former co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission, Democrat Lee Hamilton and Republican Thomas Kean, write of the “Americanization” of al-Qaida leadership, reports the Washington Post. In a 43-page study by the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, Hamilton and Kean warn of the radicalization of Muslims inside the United States and how al-Qaida’s strategy is changing from big events, like airplane hijackings and attacks of mass destruction, to plotting for smaller actions designed to spread fear and instability across the country.
Of which we’ve seen pretty much zilch so far.
But, then, if al-Qa’eda were managing to be wildly effective in radicalizing Muslims in the US (if they’re not being radicalized by Anglo pundits calling them evil cryto-terrorists), one would expect that “smaller actions” wouldn’t be necessary. A mass uprising would be much more effective.
In this chilling sentence from the report is the challenge for those who deny the reality of what we face: “The U.S. is arguably not little different from Europe in terms of having a domestic terrorist problem involving immigrant and indigenous Muslims, as well as converts to Islam.” The report says al-Qaida and its affiliates in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen have minimally established an “embryonic” recruitment infrastructure in the United States. It points to convictions last year of at least 43 American citizens or residents aligned with radical ideology and high-profile cases of recruits who went abroad for training.
Good Lord! There were 43 American citizens or residents convicted. That’s a whopping 0.00014% of the 307 million people in the US! IT’S AN EPIDEMIC OF EVIL!!!
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano seemed to confirm the findings in the report when she spoke last week to a group of first responders in New York: “The old view that ‘if we fight the terrorists abroad, we won’t have to fight them here’ is just that — the old view. It is abundantly clear that we have to fight them abroad; we have to fight them at home. We have to fight them, period.”
Agreed. Fight the terrorists, then. But who are the terrorists? Cal seems to think it’s pretty much every single Muslim in America.
We are doing a poor job of fighting the terrorists at home if we continue to allow Muslim immigrants, especially from Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, into America.
Because every Pakistani, Somalian, and Yemeni is a terrorist. Or will be a terrorist. Or could be a terrorist. No, let’s go with is most likely a terrorist. After all, why would anyone want to come to this country who didn’t want to blow it up?
We won’t win this war if we permit the uncontrolled construction of mosques, as well as Islamic schools, some of which already have sown the seeds from which future terrorists will be cultivated.
Right. Because, just like every Catholic Church and Catholic School was a seed bed for future IRA terrorists, and just like every Jewish Synagogue and Yeshiva in the 30s-40s was a seed bed for Israeli terrorists against the Brits, every Mosque and Islamic School is a seed bed for jihadists. So let’s ban ’em all!
We won’t win this war if we continue to permit the large-scale conversion to Islam of prison inmates, many of whom become radicalized and upon release enlist in al-Qaida’s army.
Really? Really? How many prison inmates, converting to Islam, have gone on to be radicalized al-Qa’eda terrorists, Cal? “Many”? How about some numbers? How about some examples and trends?
Even Syria understands the threat better than our own government. The New York Times reported on Sept. 3 that the Syrian government has asked imams for recordings of their Friday sermons and has begun closely monitoring what is taught in religious schools: “(Syria), which had sought to show solidarity with Islamist groups and allow religious figures a greater role in public life, has recently reversed course, moving forcefully to curb the influence of Muslim conservatives in its mosques, public universities and charities.”
What does Syria know that we refuse to acknowledge out of fear of offending “sensibilities”?
Because, of course, we want to model our freedoms and liberties and tolerance and openness and lack of police state on … Syria? Really, Cal? We should take our cue from Syria?
In Nigeria, Christian gangs have assaulted and murdered Muslims. (Muslim gangs have done the same to Christians.) Should we follow their model, too?
We must purge the evil from among us, or else.
Fortunately for you, Cal, I’d prefer to be much more narrowly focused on actual purveyors of killing and death, rather than “purging” anyone I consider to be uncivil, un-American, hateful, and, yes, arguably evil.