Liberal hatred and the dawning of conservative understanding

Whether officials will admit it or not, the United States is at war with a loosely organized sect of Islamic extremists who are attempting to disrupt U.S. interests abroad and create mayhem here at home. Muslim extremists should be considered the default culprits in every random act of terrorism unless compelling evidence exists to the contrary.
— Washington Times, “Blame the white man,” editorial, May 5, 2010

Those who style themselves as the intellectual class are so captive to hatred for a particular kind of American citizen that they immediately and without evidence ascribe acts of violence to them. These liberals should reflect on the fact that they’ve become the most bigoted people in America.
— Ibid.

Because I don’t normally watch television, and also hardly t read liberal blogs, I was spared, and was largely unconscious of, the two-day-long liberal feast on the “white man” who was thought to be the suspect in the Times Square terrorist bombing attempt, as described by the Washington Times in a powerful editorial. I saw in news articles references to the “white man,” but all that they said was that he was seen in an alley taking off a shirt—hardly dispositive that he was the terrorist, so I paid little attention to this not-quite-suspect and didn’t mention him in my own postings on the incident. But for those whose lives intersect in a major way with television, it would not have been possible to ignore the constant eager drumbeat from liberal opinion shapers about the “white man,” and therefore when the real, Pakistani suspect turned up last evening it must have been quite a relief for conservatives and quite a let-down for the liberals. Again, by not watching TV, one could avoid all this psychodrama. At the same time, watching it would not have been without its useful lessons about the current deranged state of the liberal mind. As we can see in the editorial, the fact that liberals are systematically and profoundly bigoted against whites is being articulated by mainstream conservatives with unprecedented clarity. No realization could be more important to the emergence of a serious conservatism, by which I mean a conservatism that does not just disagree with liberalism on various issues, but opposes liberalism itself.

EDITORIAL: Blame the white man
Leftist racial profiling was thwarted again by reality

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

There was no joy in liberal land when the prime suspect in the Times Square bomb plot turned out to be a Pakistani-American. The right-wing terrorist boogeyman vanished. Leftist racial and ethnic profiling failed again.

The widely distributed videotape of a lighter-complected suspect near the attack scene—almost universally reported as a “white man”—raised expectations in some quarters that this could be the work of right-wing extremists, maybe even—oh dare it be hoped?—a Tea Party Republican.

The right-wing bomber story line quickly established itself in the meme stream. New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, prompted by CBS News reader Katie Couric, speculated that the culprit was “homegrown, maybe a mentally deranged person or someone with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health care bill or something.” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and NBC News “terrorist analyst” Roger W. Cressey dwelt long on the idea of the bomber being someone with a “right-wing” agenda. Geraldo Rivera seemed fixated on the idea that the bomber was a “white man.” Similar unsubstantiated musings and outright accusations were rife in the liberal blogosphere.

But then a suspect was apprehended on a Dubai-bound airplane, and his name was Faisal Shahzad. Talk about an inconvenient truth. It would be nice if this were just another opportunity to mock the haplessness of those liberals who are so captive to their agenda that they subordinate reality to their warped worldview. Delusions like this, however, place the country in danger.

Whether officials will admit it or not, the United States is at war with a loosely organized sect of Islamic extremists who are attempting to disrupt U.S. interests abroad and create mayhem here at home. Muslim extremists should be considered the default culprits in every random act of terrorism unless compelling evidence exists to the contrary. It’s possible that terrorists could be motivated by other orientations—witness Andrew Joseph Stack, who flew a small plane into the Internal Revenue Service offices in Austin, Texas, in February—but such incidents are outliers and, as in the Stack case, tend to be isolated.

The Times Square bombing attempt was the kind of terror attack in which al Qaeda, the Taliban and their cohorts are well-schooled, and it’s reasonable to assume this was not an isolated incident, given Mr. Shahzad’s recent travels to the Pakistani frontier. This was an attack either directly ordered or inspired by our enemies; it was part of their unfolding war plan against the United States. As in the Christmas Day underwear bombing attempt, we are lucky it failed.

Blaming the white American man is an ingrained habit, driven by political correctness and unapologetic biases. This is the same knee-jerk response that occurred over the October 2002 D.C. snipers. The prevailing view at the time was that the perpetrator was some kind of white, male, veteran, right-wing, religious nut. Commentators, self-appointed terrorism experts and security officials discussed the profile as though it were incontestable. When the shooters turned out to be two black males under the spell of radical Islam who virtually worshipped Osama bin Laden, the narrative collapsed. But the damage was done; shooters John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo passed a police checkpoint during their killing spree, perhaps because they didn’t fit the prevailing profile.

Those who style themselves as the intellectual class are so captive to hatred for a particular kind of American citizen that they immediately and without evidence ascribe acts of violence to them. These liberals should reflect on the fact that they’ve become the most bigoted people in America.

- end of initial entry -

May 5

A. Zarkov writes:

The media has always been quick to blame white men for crimes, and has propagated the myth that serial killers are nearly always white men. In the movie Copycat, psychologist Helen Hudson (played by Sigourney Weaver) gives a lecture where she tells the audience that only white men commit serial murders, and other races never do that. In 2002 Beltway sniper shootings, the media became obsessed with the white van, and as I recall the police were pretty sure the killers were white. In reality the murderers were two black men on a mission from that religion of peace, Islam. Therefore we should not be surprised that Bloomberg and the press continue to beat the drum that mass murderers are almost always white. As we shall see, and should expect, the reality as quite different.

Anthony Walsh from Boise State University studied serial killers and wrote a report. The Abstract says,

“There were many expressions of shock and surprise voiced in the media in 2002 when the “D.C. Sniper” turned out to be two Black males. Two of the stereotypes surrounding serial killers are that they are almost always White males and that African American males are barely represented in their ranks. In a sample of 413 serial killers operating in the United States from 1945 to mid-2004, it was found that 90 were African American. Relative to the African American proportion of the population across that time period, African Americans were overrepresented in the ranks of serial killers by a factor of about 2. Possible reasons why so few African American serial killers are known to the public are explored.”

In my opinion this is an astonishing revelation. Over and over again we get lied to by politicians and the media. But one needs to read this report to see how far political correctness has seeped into American academic life. For example, according to Walsh, ‘A Bowie State University graduate thesis available online explicitly states that “there is an absence of African American murderers within the realm of serial homicide investigation” (Duncan, n.d., p.1). This statement apparently passed muster without comment by a thesis committee.’

Walsh goes on to explain why the media avoids covering black serial killers. He says,

“The mass media (newspapers, television, movies) are the major sources of public information and perceptions about crime and criminality (Jerin & Fields, 2005). The media are the gatekeepers of what the public is entitled to know, and the media are very anxious not to attract accusations of racism by zeroing in on heinous crimes committed by African Americans with the same zealousness it exhibits when such crimes are committed by Whites (Greek, 2001; Perazzo, 1999). Charges of racism and all the negative consequences that accrue when such charges are made may feature prominently in the maintenance of this double standard. As Walsh (2004) opines, “Even the most conservative media types will be exquisitely sensitive to charges of racism under such threats [boycotts, demonstrations] and will maintain the ‘conspiracy of silence’ about such matters” (p. 53).”

On a hopeful note, I think the “conservative media types” are beginning to overcome their timidity. More and more in the last year, we see them willing to violate the Omertà about race. We can thank Obama for this.

May 6

James P. writes (May 5):

The day before the FBI arrested a guy from Pakistan, liberal idiot Robert Dreyfuss scoffed at the very idea the car bomb could have been planted by a Pakistani. No, no, it had to be one of those evil Tea Party white guys! Never has a prediction been so quickly and decisively refuted.

Dreyfuss wrote:

It may be that the Pakistan-based Taliban, the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has quietly established a Connecticut franchise while we weren’t looking. That’s possible. But it seems far more likely to me that the perpetrator of the bungled Times Square bomb plot was either a lone wolf or a member of some squirrely branch of the Tea Party, anti-government far right. Which actually exists in Connecticut, where, it seems, the car’s licence plates were stolen.

It may be that the car bomb, which fizzled, could have wreaked havoc in Times Square. That’s possible, too. But it seems very, very unlikely that a few cannisters of propane, a bunch of M-80 firecrackers, and some fertiliser that, police say, couldn’t have exploded, would have “killed thousands of people”, as CNN breathlessly reported yesterday.

Sensible analysts of the event point out, convincingly, that no branch of the Taliban, whether in Afghanistan or Pakistan, has demonstrated either the intention or the capability of striking in such as fashion. And the fact that the suspect, videotaped, is a white male in his 40s, hasn’t deterred our vast team of terrorism talking heads from describing the operation as part of the jihad. Of course, it could be that some offshoot of the jihadist movement recruited a white bread American to do its bidding, and it could be that the man shown in the videotape is not the culprit at all.

But Dreyfuss hedged his bet at the end. Even if it does turn out to be a Pakistani, he said, no worries, because vigilant and determined Obambi was on top of it. Everybody go back to bed!

As always, it is important to point out that even if the Times Square bombing turns out to be the work of jihadist zealots, it shows that as an enemy they rank about on a par with the guy who crashed his plane into the IRS building. President Obama took the opportunity to proclaim his vigilance and his determination to track down the perpetrator and to keep America safe.

And it is way past time for Obama to shift gears, and to start telling Americans that the only thing they have to fear is fear itself.

Now, of course, the media is anxious to forget the whole thing, because “nothing happened.” You can bet that if they’d arrested a white Tea Party type, they would keep this fact front and center for weeks. Terrorist attacks that do not conform to the proper media narrative of “the only real menace is white conservatives” are simply not news.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 04, 2010 10:28 PM | Send