The amazing self-delusions of the neocons

Concerning the Dutch government’s ongoing debate on whether or not to fund Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s security while she is in the U.S., Paul of Powerline, in a blog entry entitled “The West Fades in Holland,” writes:

How that debate turns out is probably immaterial. The fact that the Dutch are having this debate, instead of debating the quickest way to arrest and/or deport the Islamists who pose such a threat to their freedoms, tells me that the game is probably lost in Holland.

What Paul leaves out is that the U.S. government also declined to fund Ali’s security when the Dutch cut it off, which prompted Ali immediately to return to the Netherlands, showing that she believes her life is in continual danger in the U.S. from Islamic extremists. Yet the U.S. government, just like the Netherlands government, has not debated the quickest way to arrest and/or deport the Muslims who pose such a threat to our freedoms. Nor does Paul insist that the U.S. government do so. So, by Paul’s reasoning, haven’t the U.S. government, and Paul himself, surrendered to Islamic extremism as much as he says the Dutch government has?

Central to the neoconservative outlook is the conviction that Europe is a mess, and we are great. Europe has a terrible Islam problem, but we, oh, we’ve got it together man, we’re assimilating our Muslims. It is Orwellian for the neocons to say so, since for years they have been complaining that we are NOT assimilating our immigrants and that this is the cause of multiculturalism. Yet, suddenly, when it’s a question of comparing the U.S. to Europe, the same neocons turn around and boast that we, unlike those pathetic Europeans, are assimilating our Muslims. In the same way, they censure Europe for failing to deport Muslim extremists, while they ignore the fact that we also are failing to deport Muslim extremists.

What vanity. What blindness.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 09, 2007 08:41 AM | Send