Thursday, April 26, 2007

Some similarities between Sharia and PC

Sharia is the "law" applied automatically wherever there's a Radical Islamic State. There are even western like Arabian countries that obey strictly the Sharia. In these countries:

* Alcohol beverages are proihibited

* Music is not allowed

* Women must cover their faces and bodies

Political correctness, in its turn is making huge progress in the same direction

* Smoke is prohibited in public places in almost all countries of Europe, US and Latin America

* Fat: people who are fat or restaurants that sell fat meals (especially if they have a clown as a symbol) are being targeted by low-fat radicals

* Crucifixes and other symbols of Christianity like Easter and Christmas are being, or are banned or turned into something other than its original meaning

Both Sharia and Political Correctness are pursuing the same goals: to impede people from the "wrong" things or "Christian" things, at least. Their perpetrators do not believe in freedom. Freedom to do wrong, to fail is freedom that must be allowed too.

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The Big White Lie

The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don't have to lie. I don't have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don't have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine. I don't have to say that everyone's special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don't have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don't have to pretend that Islam means peace.

Of course, like everything, this candor has its price. A politics that depends on honesty will be, by nature, often impolite. Good manners and hypocrisy are intimately intertwined, and so conservatives, with their gimlet-eyed view of the world, are always susceptible to charges of incivility. It's not really nice, you know, to describe things as they are.

This is leftism's great strength: it's all white lies. That's its only advantage, as far as I can tell. None of its programs actually works, after all. From statism and income redistribution to liberalized criminal laws and multiculturalism, from its assault on religion to its redefinition of family, leftist policies have made the common life worse wherever they're installed. But because it depends on-indeed is defined by-describing the human condition inaccurately, leftism is nothing if not polite. With its tortuous attempts to rename unpleasant facts out of existence-he's not crippled, dear, he's handicapped; it's not a slum, it's an inner city; it's not surrender, it's redeployment-leftism has outlived its own failure by hiding itself within the most labyrinthine construct of social delicacy since Victoria was queen.

This is no small thing. To rewrite the rules of courteous behavior is to wield enormous power. I see it in Southern California, in the bleeding heart of leftism, where I live. I've been banned from my monthly poker game, lost tennis partners, lost friends-not because I'm belligerent but because I've wondered aloud if the people shouldn't be allowed to make their own abortion laws, say, or if the world might not be a better place without the UN.

It's a rotten feeling. I sometimes think that I'd rather be deemed evil than a boor. Wickedness has some flair to it, even a whiff of radicalism. If you molest a child, there's always a chance that you can get the ACLU to defend you as a cultural innovator. But if you make a remark at table about the destructive social effects of broken homes and then discover that your dinner partner is a divorcee-trust me, you feel like a real louse. It's manners, not morals, that lay the borderlines of our behavior.

This, I believe, is the reason conservative politicians so often lose their nerve, why they back down in debate even when they're clearly right. No one wants to be condemned as a brute-especially not conservatives, who still retain some vague memory of how worthy it is to be a lady or gentleman.

And because we've allowed leftists to define the language of political good manners-don't say women are less scientific; don't remark that black people bear the same responsibility for their actions as whites; don't point out that the gunman was a Muslim, it's not nice-the sort of person willing to speak the truth isn't always the sort of person you want to be seen with. It sometimes takes, I mean, a Rush Limbaugh or a Sean Hannity to withstand the obloquy attached to stating the facts of the matter. If these people in their public personae seem harsh to more genteel conservatives, it may be because it requires that extra dollop of aggression to shatter the silence created by the Left's increasingly elaborate sensitivities.

Still, mannerly as we would rather be, truth-telling continues to be both compelling and ultimately satisfying. There is, after all, something greater than courtesy. "Firmness in the right," Lincoln called it, "as God gives us to see the right." We find ourselves at a precarious moment in an endeavor of great importance: namely, the preservation of Western rationalism and liberty. It does mankind no good to allow so magnificent an enterprise to slip away merely for fear of saying the wrong thing.

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Duke Lacrosse Scandal: Eight Lessons

By Dennis Prager

America's news media, an amoral university, an opportunistic district attorney, and a police department that seems to have collaborated in framing innocent students all combined to nearly destroy the lives of three innocent young men -- members of the Duke University lacrosse team.

The attorney general of North Carolina announced that all charges -- of rape, sexual assault and whatever other charges a mendacious young woman got Mike Nifong to bring against the Duke lacrosse team players -- were being dropped. He pronounced the students "innocent," not merely "not guilty." And the attorney general also declared Nifong a "rogue prosecutor."

The lessons of this terrible story are obvious, but given the political correctness of our time and the inverted values that prevail among America's elites -- particularly the news media, the universities and the legal profession -- these lessons will rarely be expressed, let alone learned.

First, the rape of a name is also a rape. A false accusation of rape can be as devastating to a man and his family as a real rape can be to a woman and her family. Sometimes a real rape is more destructive; sometimes the rape of a name is more destructive. It is therefore a grave injustice not to prosecute the woman who brought these false charges.

Second, moral Americans of every race must acknowledge that our society has a problem of anti-white prejudice in parts of the African American community. Proportionally, it seems that more blacks unfairly mistrust whites than whites unfairly mistrust blacks. Mike Nifong won his race for district attorney largely by appealing to this prejudice.

Third, it is utterly unjust that the families of the Duke lacrosse players had to pay millions of dollars in attorneys fees to defend their sons against a lying woman and a morally corrupt district attorney. Such injustices happen every day because the American legal system, unlike that of other countries such as Great Britain, forces those who win lawsuits wrongly brought against them to pay all their legal bills. Trial lawyers and the Democratic Party, which trial lawyers fund, prevent all reform in this area in order to allow frivolous lawsuits and their accompanying high lawyer profits to continue. That is why three young men who did nothing wrong have cost their families much, if not all, of their life savings.

Fourth, while Duke University has good individuals, like most universities today, Duke is a moral wasteland. Eight-eight professors, abetted by Duke's president, created a mob mentality against the young men not unlike that of a lynch mob. Of course, nothing will be done to Duke's president or to those professors. To get fired as the president of an elite American university, one must suggest that men and women are innately different. Politically incorrect truth telling -- not race-, gender- or class-baiting of whites, athletes or males -- gets you fired. And Duke alumni will continue to fund Duke, just as Columbia University alumni are funding Columbia with record donations despite Columbia's reluctance to discipline radical students who violently disrupted a conservative speaker on campus last year.

Fifth, the moral vision of much of the Left, which led the anti-white athlete hysteria, was revealed again. It views the world not as a conflict between good and evil but between white and black, male and female, and rich and poor. The athletes were rich and white and male. For many on the Left, that alone made them villains. As a general proposition, subject to exceptions that accompany all generalizations, the Left has considerably more compassion for groups (racial, ethnic, socioeconomic and sexual groups it favors) than for individuals.

Sixth, any time Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson get in front of cameras on a race matter, assume that they are there to inflame, not heal. We await their apologies to the three Duke students. But we are also awaiting Al Sharpton's apologies to those he libeled in the Tawana Brawley rape hoax.

Seventh, the next time you hear that someone was indicted by a grand jury, unless you have knowledge of the case, or reason suggests possible guilt, don't assume it. As Joe Cheshire, one of the accused boys' lawyers said, "A grand jury would indict a ham sandwich for the death of a pig."

Eighth, it is time to drop the anti-male bigotry and either hide the names of accused rapists -- at least until their indictment -- or also reveal the names of their accusers. Short of that, the press and justice system surely have the moral obligation to reveal the names of false accusers of rape. It is almost beyond belief (but little is anymore) that news media like The New York Times will still not reveal the name of the lying accuser. For the record, it is Crystal Mangum. Shame on her and her supporters. I weep for those boys and their families. And I fear for America.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.


For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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