Spencer—pundit and defeatist

In a video at Hot Air Robert Spencer, showing that he has a talent for this kind of thing, offers a whimsical and amusing commentary on the planned Muslim foot baths at the renovated Indianapolis airport. It all works pretty well until he comes to the very end, where, in a tone of, “Oh, well, that’s the way it goes in this crazy world,” he says:

Accommodation of Muslim demands is the order of the day, and the one certain thing is that we will be seeing plenty more of it.

Spencer, our top Islam critic, is basically telling us that there’s nothing we can do to stop the progressive Islamization of our country. After all, if something is the “order of the day,” how can it be resisted? If an event is “certain,” what’s the point of trying to prevent it?

That’s not the entirety of Spencer’s overall message, of course; on other occasions he has advocated strong measures to prevent the spread of Islam, such as stopping all Muslim immigration. But, as I’ve shown, he makes such statements very infrequently and in passing, without any force behind them, even as—the present instance is a case in point—he tosses off light-hearted defeatist comments that suggest a fundamental lack of seriousness about the whole problem. At bottom, it appears that his mission, his job, is to criticize Islam, not to help turn back the Islamic threat.

The lack of seriousness may be further encouraged by the YouTube format. Snappy, entertaining, two minute standup comedy routines about the advance of Islam in America would not appear to be the most effective way to rouse the American public to follow in the footsteps of Charles Martel.

Also, Spencer’s underlying defeatism feeds a similar defeatism among his conservative audience. This is evident from the comments at the Hot Air site underneath the Spencer video. The commenters are angry about the foot baths, they talk about the double standard for Muslims, they make funny sarcastic remarks about Islam. But not one of them says, “This is totally unacceptable, we have to stop this, and here is how to stop it.” The stance of American conservatives toward Islam consists of complaining about the advance of Islam in America, while doing nothing to prevent it, not even imagining doing anything to prevent it, and excluding from the discussion any real ideas on how to prevent it.

Imagine what the discussion would have been like if Spencer, instead of making light of the foot baths, had said something like this: “Islam and sharia law will continue to gain power in our society unless we do the following: We must stop Muslim immigration. We must pass a law declaring that Islam is not a religion under the meaning of the First Amendment. We must pass laws restricting the practice of Islam and the teaching of sharia in this country. Either we reduce the power of the Muslim community in America, or their power over us will continue to increase.” Then the discussion following Spencer’s remarks would have consisted, not of the usual whining, bitching, and joking about Islam, but of a serious debate about whether Spencer’s proposals made sense or not. Instead of kvetching and retreating, the conservatives would be talking about how to defend America.

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Jeff in England writes:

Spot on. If Spencer would listen to constructive criticism like this instead of taking it so personal, he could really have an impact on American and Western policy. Instead he is a “critic,” a very good one, yes, but no more than that. Ditto Melanie ditto all the Suspects in varying degrees.

And that, in these troubled days, is not enough. The situation is urgent. We have been invaded and we need our intellectuals to be more than critics. Their task, in addition to “criticism” of our enemies and invaders, is to suggest strong positive action (i.e. immigration restriction) against those enemies and invaders and then convince the mainstream to support that action in an active manner.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 23, 2007 11:30 PM | Send