Further analysis of the psychology of Buchananites

Here’s a comment I’ve posted at Ilana Mercer’s blog, following her discussion of my criticisms of Buchanan:

Big Bill, the Buchanan defender, writes: “The secularists seek to destroy all religious belief, not just Muslim belief. The newspapers seek to offend every religion not just Islam.”

This comment evidences a mind that is seeing the world through a pre-written “script,” not seeing the world as it is. First, the Danish paper published those cartoons, not in order to blaspheme religion, but in order to establish the idea that pictures of Muhammad could be published without fear. Second, what is blasphemous about the cartoons? Most of them are benign or neutral. The one about the virgins is apposite, a true joke. The one of Muhammad with a bomb for a turban expresses what the jihadists themselves are constantly telling us, that Allah, through his mouthpiece Muhammad, orders the death of infidels: “Strike terror into their hearts,” “Strike off their heads,” “Kill them wherever you find them.” When bin Laden issued his famous fatwa against all Americans, he was quoting Muhammad. Does Big Bill think that these aspects of Muhammad’s teaching are “holy,” and therefore cannot be exposed, attacked, satirized?

If he does think that, then this shows once again how the Buchanites have become purely reactive in their thought processes, not directed toward a rational good, but only reacting against what they don’t like. They don’t like the secular left, so they automatically sympathize with our Muslim enemies who are the opposite of the secular left. Not only is this position immoral and treasonous, it even fails on its own terms, since it is the secular left that has encouraged the Islamization of Europe. It hasn’t occurred to the Buchananites that some people in Europe are trying to resist the secular left, by defying Islam. The Buchananites cannot see any of this, because they only see reality through their “script,” a script written in the ink of resentment.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 08, 2006 06:20 PM | Send