By Ahmad Maher, IOL Staff
Michelle Malkin is another American Islamophobic ideologue, who calls for extensive discrimination and racial profiling against Muslims and Arab-Americans in the United States .
| I thought I just heard a piggy squeal... |
A staunch advocate of right-wing extremist agenda, the Philadelphia-born American writer wrote a new book wondering why the US government cannot just imprison Arab Americans and Muslims as it did with tens of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II on the supposition that their ethnicity made them a national security threat. In her book entitled 'In Defense of Internment', Malkin argues that after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, racial profiling is a welcome tactic and even justified.
| Not "racial," but cultural profiling. In her book, Malkin takes the position that the internment of the Japanese in WWII wasn't an incident of blind racism, but that it was based on a combination of common sense and intelligence. Since our enemies are making war on us because of our culture, it makes sense to respond by taking a close look at their culture and protecting ourselves against those most likely to represent a danger to us. There's no need for rioting in the streets, as Arabs and Muslims are so fond of doing. There's no need for vigilantes stringing up suspects from lamp posts. There's no need for any "racism" or other lunacy at all. What's needed is a cold-blooded, rational assessment of the threat, coupled with equally cold-blooded and rational measures for our own protection. That will be unpleasant in many respects, but mere unpleasantness shouldn't be a reason for government — instituted "to provide for the common defense" — to abrogate its responsibilities. |
"If you want to read a book decrying the loss of personal freedom in wartime America, this is the wrong book. If you want to read a book about the history of institutional discrimination against minorities in America, you're out of luck again. 'In Defense of Internment' provides a radical departure from the predominant literature of civil liberties absolutism," read the book's prelude.
Malkin doesn't wear rose-colored glasses and she enjoys the burger of the sacred cow. Those are deadly defects in the eyes of Islam Online, right up there with her failure to hide her face. There are already lots of books decrying the loss of civil liberties and even more books about discrimination against minorities. There are precious few people who bother to actually think clearly on either subject. "Civil liberties," as opposed to "individual liberty," has become a growth industry, but hasn't actually added much to the quality of our national life, while it's managed to degrade the quality of our national discourse. I'm not even going to dwell on the growth and decay of the discrimination against minorities business. I try not to use too much bad language here.
Possibly — a remote possibility, I know — around the time I'm a little old man sitting on the front porch of the old folks' home, the two might be vanquished by the rise of Rationality. Call me a dreamer if you will, but I can envision a world in which costs and benefits are balanced, in which when diminishing returns show up we move on to the next task, in which thought actually consists of stringing facts together. In that world, children might point the finger and giggle at people who stand up and spew mumbo-jumbo, causing them to slink back into their navels and hide for a few more generations, perhaps even to wither away and die. I'm betting that if that remote possibility comes true, Michelle Malkin will be one of the early drivers... |
Oddly enough, Malkin is the daughter of Filipino immigrants herself.
| Which has nothing to do with the workings of her brain. The "unity in the community" approach to mental bonsai doesn't work with everyone. Simply belonging to an ethnic group doesn't determine objective truth. Unless, apparently, you're a Muslim... |
Malkin also says it is "unwise" from the US administration to continue allowing Muslims to serve in the US army, particularly in the Middle East hotspots.
| Not as long as we have holy men hollering that it's forbidden for American Moose limbs to take up arms against any other Moose limbs anywhere, no matter what they've done. If the holy men were split down the middle, with some saying yes and some saying no, it would be a different matter. If the holy men said things like "there's some things in this world that're right, and some things in this world that're wrong, and it's the task of good men to fight against the wrong" then it'd be a different matter. But they don't, so it's not. |
She calls for "the strictest scrutiny" and thorough backgrounds checks for Muslim personnel not to mention army preacher on the basis of "race, ethnicity, religion and nationality". Urging President George W. Bush to follow the footsteps of World War II President Roosevelt, Malkin said she was compelled to write this book after watching ethnic activists, historians, and politicians repeatedly play the World War II internment card after the September 11 attacks.
| It's called flogging the horse long after it's dead. If Islamists manage something awful, like destroying Harrisburg or Cleveland or downtown Washington D.C., it won't even be a matter for discussion. First you quarantine possible carriers, then you sort through them. You can't sort through them when they're spread out everywhere. The Japanese were interned in the Second World War, as were sizable numbers of Germans and Italians. There wasn't an awful lot of domestic sabotage, despite the presence of groups that were sympathetic to the Axis. |
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