Sunday, February 12, 2017
“It’s not immoral for one human to own another human" ... "Consent isn’t necessary for lawful sex"
The title of this post comes from a recent lecture given by a Muslim professor from Georgetown University, and refer to slavery and rape in Islam.
A fair share of the libertarian intelligentsia seems to share the left's outrage over the temporary moratorium on immigration from seven threat countries. From Cato, Alex Nowrasteh and David Bier are both on their usual jihads against any immigration controls whatsoever. FEE has recently had pieces by two economists I respect, Sandy Ikeda and Don Boudreaux, criticizing arguments for restricting immigration.
There's a lot of this material, and it is tedious spending time evaluating arguments point-by-point, so I won't do it. Suffice it to say there is no sensible argument for restricting productive workers. But most of the stuff coming out now doesn't deal with this at all, a great deal of it denies there is any problem at all with Muslim immigration, and a fair amount suggests that the threat of terror is way overblown. Much of it denies we should be concerned about cultural change, and treats us as bigots if we are.
This is madness.
Here's a very "nice" (i.e. horrific) example of why we should be concerned about the cultural attitudes that Islam promotes. Professor Jonathan A.C. Brown of Georgetown University recently gave an address in which he repeatedly defended both slavery and rape as moral, if conducted in the Islamic way. You see, worrying about individual autonomy and consent is merely a Western fetish, and once we shed it and understand that Mohammed practiced both of these things, they certainly are moral, since by definition he was the most moral man.
This not some nutty outlier position. Linda Sarsour, one of the main organizers of the "women's march," has been promoting sharia. The more I read about her, the clearer it is she is working for the Islamization of the United States. (Read all the way through the 2017 updates.) Or consider Rep. Keith Ellison (D, MN), a radical Muslim and anti-Semite, and the choice for DNC Chair of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Chuck Schumer.
It's so disconcerting to realize all the women at the "women's march" imagining themselves in solidarity with Sarsour, some donning hijabs to protest Trump's "ban." They do realize that in Islam most abortion is banned, at least after four months, and that a male's consent is generally needed, right? They do realize that Sarsour defends the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia, and claims it is better than here? I think they are beyond reason -- it's really madness. So too with Sanders and co.
At some point, one also must start to wonder if libertarians for completely unrestricted immigration are playing with full decks, or if maybe they really share with leftists a desire to see existing society overthrown at any cost. Or perhaps some are simply so naive and uninformed on anything other than economics and libertarian philosophy that they are unaware of what they are actually advocating. (I hope this is the case with Boudreaux and Ikeda; I am fairly sure it's not for Nowrasteh and Bier, since they claim to be immigration experts who study this stuff for a living.)
It's hard to know what to say, other than that this is madness. Bringing in large numbers of Muslim immigrants from the most fundamentalist and violent parts of the Islamic world is a terrible idea. They'll not assimilate (leftist dogma these days is that "assimilation" is an exclusivist and racist concept!), they will not become productive citizens, and most importantly they'll promote a foreign culture that is incompatible with liberty. (See the three charts below from the Pew Research surveys on attitudes of Muslims around the world.
I hope libertarians return to their senses on this soon.
A fair share of the libertarian intelligentsia seems to share the left's outrage over the temporary moratorium on immigration from seven threat countries. From Cato, Alex Nowrasteh and David Bier are both on their usual jihads against any immigration controls whatsoever. FEE has recently had pieces by two economists I respect, Sandy Ikeda and Don Boudreaux, criticizing arguments for restricting immigration.
There's a lot of this material, and it is tedious spending time evaluating arguments point-by-point, so I won't do it. Suffice it to say there is no sensible argument for restricting productive workers. But most of the stuff coming out now doesn't deal with this at all, a great deal of it denies there is any problem at all with Muslim immigration, and a fair amount suggests that the threat of terror is way overblown. Much of it denies we should be concerned about cultural change, and treats us as bigots if we are.
This is madness.
Here's a very "nice" (i.e. horrific) example of why we should be concerned about the cultural attitudes that Islam promotes. Professor Jonathan A.C. Brown of Georgetown University recently gave an address in which he repeatedly defended both slavery and rape as moral, if conducted in the Islamic way. You see, worrying about individual autonomy and consent is merely a Western fetish, and once we shed it and understand that Mohammed practiced both of these things, they certainly are moral, since by definition he was the most moral man.
This not some nutty outlier position. Linda Sarsour, one of the main organizers of the "women's march," has been promoting sharia. The more I read about her, the clearer it is she is working for the Islamization of the United States. (Read all the way through the 2017 updates.) Or consider Rep. Keith Ellison (D, MN), a radical Muslim and anti-Semite, and the choice for DNC Chair of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Chuck Schumer.
It's so disconcerting to realize all the women at the "women's march" imagining themselves in solidarity with Sarsour, some donning hijabs to protest Trump's "ban." They do realize that in Islam most abortion is banned, at least after four months, and that a male's consent is generally needed, right? They do realize that Sarsour defends the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia, and claims it is better than here? I think they are beyond reason -- it's really madness. So too with Sanders and co.
At some point, one also must start to wonder if libertarians for completely unrestricted immigration are playing with full decks, or if maybe they really share with leftists a desire to see existing society overthrown at any cost. Or perhaps some are simply so naive and uninformed on anything other than economics and libertarian philosophy that they are unaware of what they are actually advocating. (I hope this is the case with Boudreaux and Ikeda; I am fairly sure it's not for Nowrasteh and Bier, since they claim to be immigration experts who study this stuff for a living.)
It's hard to know what to say, other than that this is madness. Bringing in large numbers of Muslim immigrants from the most fundamentalist and violent parts of the Islamic world is a terrible idea. They'll not assimilate (leftist dogma these days is that "assimilation" is an exclusivist and racist concept!), they will not become productive citizens, and most importantly they'll promote a foreign culture that is incompatible with liberty. (See the three charts below from the Pew Research surveys on attitudes of Muslims around the world.
I hope libertarians return to their senses on this soon.
