Tancredo sticks to his position under hostile questioning

Speaking to a New Hampshire audience in which many people, who had come to the event for that purpose, were challenging his view on immigration, Tom Tancredo held his own. To a Muslim woman who pulled her shawl over her head so it covered her hair and said “Am I the enemy if I do this?”, he replied: “Do you believe that we should replace the Constitution with Sharia law?” She didn’t answer the question.

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Spencer Warren writes:

The Muslim woman said to Tancredo:

“Do you take us for idiots, for people who have no appreciation of our history? Perhaps you don’t have an understanding of your country right now, of its composition.”

The woman’s statement suggests that she views America as an empty vessel that she and other immigrants have a right to change by moving here. It is outrageous. She has no respect for America as a distinct, concrete country and civilization.

In retrospect, Tancredo could have told her this and added we don’t want people like her here and she should go home.

LA replies:

Exactly. When she says “us,” she means Muslims. Tancredo must have appreciation for Muslims as a distinct people with their own history and validate them and their beliefs. But when it comes to understanding America, it’s just the opposite. America’s composition is diverse, and Tancredo must yield to that. Tancredo’s fault, in short, is that he doesn’t honor Islam as a distinct culture, and that he does honor America as a distinct culture. To straighten himself out in this woman’s eyes, he must stop honoring America as a real and distinct culture and instead see it as a valueless container of real and distinct alien cultures (particularly Islam) which must be validated, honored, and empowered.

Notice also her use of “our” and “your.” She speaks of “our history,” meaning Muslims, and of “your country,” meaning America.

One should not blame this woman in some moral sense for saying these things. She is simply repeating the liberal American orthodoxy. At the same time, a country cannot tolerate cultural aliens who view it as this woman does, and I wish Tancredo had said that this woman’s beliefs are incompatible with America and that she and people who feel the way she does should leave.

Karen writes from England:

The woman showed utter contempt for and ignorance of America. Her idiotic comment that Tancredo’s question about sharia law was “below me” and her implications that all religions are equal demonstrates an arrogance and even a feeling of superiority. She appreciates her own culture and has no intention of leaving it behind her. There is no possibility of assimilation and the only solution to this ghastly mess is to throw such people out. When they are excluded from the West they will respect it.

If you don’t expel them, they will destroy you. Why do Americans have this naive belief that they can effect the transformation of the individual when the history of mankind has shown this is a fantasy?

Tancredo should have said more and put it more firmly.

Ray G. writes:

Karen from England is right on the mark. As a life-long resident of Dearbornistan, Michigan I can tell you from years of observing and interacting with Muslims, they usually, not always, but usually have a very strong sense of cultural superiority.

Furthermore, Karen, we Americans think we can assimilate anyone into becoming Americans because it worked so well one hundred or so years ago but what is forgotten today is that during the great immigration period into the US, approximately the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most of the immigrants came from the same culture. They may have come from many different countries but essentially the same, European, Caucasian, Judeo-Christian culture.

Today’s immigration into the US is very different, mostly Mexican-Indian and Arab-Muslim, Asian-Buddhist or Asian-Hindu.

Spencer Warren replies:

To be fair, it is easy for us in hindsight to probe the woman’s comments in full detail.

Tancredo also should have said that wearing the veil has no place in our country. It is a bizarre relic of a primitive, barbaric age more than a millenium old, from an alien culture that is mired in its miserable past. It is a badge of inferiority and oppression, and is contrary to the individual dignity and equality that is central to our civilization, based as it is on our Judeo-Christian heritage. It has no place here and she should go back home where she belongs.

Further, many of her co-religionists are a threat to our country and civilization, as they have said repeatedly, quoting their Koran. Some have acted on these beliefs, killing many of our countrymen. Many teach this every day in Wahhabi-financed mosques in our country. And what would be done to a Western woman who tried to walk down a Saudi street not wearing her bizarre garb?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 19, 2007 10:53 AM | Send