Cal Thomas—worse than a Usual Suspect

Allan E. writes:

I believe this article shows a hairline crack in the unwillingness of most conventional “conservatives” to see reality for a change. Cal Thomas comes as close as anyone of his stripe to your (and my) position on further Muslim immigration to the West, or at least on what to do with them once they’re here.

LA replies:

Thanks for sending. Unfortunately, notwithstanding the hair-line crack you refer to, the article remains, like all mainstream conservative writings about the Islam threat, absurdly inadequate. Yes, Thomas says some welcome-sounding things. But what does it actually add up to? Here’s the key part of the article:

What is needed in Britain—and America—is a change in the thinking that naively believes that simply exposing foreign nationals to our way of life means they will “catch” it as they might the flu. Allowing immigrants from nations in which the dominant religion mandates the forced subordination of every other faith (or no faith) and their subjugation through state power under Sharia law, increases the likelihood of more attacks.

At the very least, all non-Western immigrants to Britain and America should be told prior to their arrival that our intention is to westernize them. They must learn English, study and embrace the history of their host nation and, if they are Muslim, they will be allowed to worship only in existing mosques. No new ones should be built. Existing mosques must be monitored to make sure that hate is not taught and aggressive behavior toward their host countries is not promoted. If such behavior and speech are detected, the mosques should be closed and the imams arrested or deported.

Diplomacy should precede or follow war. Once war begins, victory is the only acceptable outcome. The goal of the terrorists is victory. If Britain and America settle for less, they will get less, which is defeat.

With the exception of the idea of not allowing the construction of new mosques (an idea that is completely impossible under our existing laws and Constitution, and Thomas doesn’t propose changing our laws and Constitution) and monitoring existing mosques (are we going to turn ourselves into East Germany and have a network of thousands of secret agents spread out across the country monitoring every Islamic mosque in the U.S.?), his argument adds up to the oldest conservative escape hatch in the book: “THEY MUST BE ASSIMILATED.” Muslim immigrants must “study and embrace our history.” How do we do that? Are we going to require, via a national law, that Muslim and other non-Western immigrants study our history—in a society in which every attempted conservative curriculum reform is instantly taken over by liberals and turned into a celebration of diversity and of America the country that is yet to be? And even if we required Muslims to study our history, how would we make them, who are commanded by their religion to reject all non-Islamic societies, “embrace” our history? So this is just the usual empty escapist blather we’ve been hearing for 20 years from conservatives who respond to the social disorder brought on by unassimilable immigration by mechanistically repeating, “We must try still harder to assimilate the immigrants, we must force them to assimilate”—in a non-judgmental society that at present is not trying to assimilate immigrants at all and has no will or desire to assimilate anyone.

Thomas is actually worse than a Usual Suspect. The Usual Suspects warn in impassioned speech that Islam is a mortal threat to us, then avoid saying anything about Muslim immigration, either that it is the cause of our domestic Muslim threat, or that stopping it is the indispensable way to stop worsening our domestic Muslim threat. They remain tactically silent on an issue that they dare not mention, whether out of fear of revealing the emptiness of their Islamo-critical posture by advocating continued Muslim immigration, or out of fear of becoming pariahs in liberal society by calling for an end of Muslim immigration. Thomas is different. Like the Suspects, he says that Muslims are our enemies, that they are at war with us, that they seek to conquer and defeat us—but then, unlike the Suspects, he positively states that we should continue letting these enemies immigrate into our country just as we are doing at present, even as we monitor their mosques and try harder to make them “embrace” American history once they’re here! The Suspects are intelligent enough in their cowardice to know that they must remain silent about Muslim immigration to avoid exposing the fraudulence of their anti-Islamization position. Thomas is not intelligent enough to do that. He casually lets the world know that he’s incapable of non-contradictory thought.

[Is it contradictory of me to criticize Thomas’s idea of monitoring all mosques, given my support for examining and closing unacceptable mosques? That topic is picked up in a new entry.]

- end of initial entry -

December 4

Paul Gottfried writes:

You may be guilty of expecting a serious argument from someone who is incapable of providing one. From what I can tell, Thomas survives and prospers for the same reason as Michael Novak. The neocons need goyim who can push their message within the various Christian denominations. Thomas does this for Evangelicals the way Novak performs the same function for Catholics. While Charles Krauthammer can construct coherent arguments for his position, a neocon lackey like Thomas does not seem to be able to rise above rhetorical tidbits.

LA replies:

Your connection between Novak and Thomas is funny. I was just talking about Novak yesterday, about his wheeny response to Heather Mac Donald’s atheist arguments. Now, Novak is actually smart, unlike Thomas. But as a Christian apologist he’s pathetic, an embarrassment.

Paul Gottfried replies:

What evidence do you have of Novak’s intelligence. Having tried to engage him in conversation many times, I’ve never failed to be astonished by how little he knows.

LA replies:

Hmm. The thing with Novak is, with every issue, he reliably reduces it to pure neoconservative ideology. It’s almost as though he has no intelligence outside that ideology. So maybe there’s something to what you’re saying.

Paul Gottfried replies:

He’s quite different in this respect from someone like Father Neuhaus, who usually clings to the neocon partyline but who is a serious Catholic and a learned thinker.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 03, 2008 08:38 PM | Send