Portland mayor’s quintessentially liberal response to Somali’s attempt to commit mass jihad murder

This statement by Mayor Samuel Adams of Portland, Oregon was reported at OregonLive.com:

The bombing plot was “very unnerving,” he said. “It came as a shock to me, as I’m sure it did for most Portlanders.” [LA replies: But why should it be a shock? There have been numerous attempts at jihad bomb attacks in recent years and months, including the Times Square bombing attempt and the foiled attempt to bomb the New York subways, not to mention the actual jihad mass murder at Fort Hood. Answer: To liberals, an attack by an enemy is always a shock, because there is no such thing as an enemy. To think that there is an enemy is, as my Randian critics always put it, to think in essentialist, mystical, Platonic terms, in which we imagine the world as consisting of collective entities which are concoctions of our fantasy rather than of individuals, which are the only real reality.]

He said it was a “reminder that we are not an oasis with a wall around us. We work hard to have a free and open local community, but it’s a reminder that part of us must always be vigilant to prevent people from abusing those values of openness.” [LA replies: To attempt to set off a bomb killing and maiming hundreds of people at a Christmas tree lighting is not to attempt to commit mass murder; it is to abuse the values of openness.]

The mayor said that he had “trust in Portlanders’ sense of fairness” in dealing with the alleged Somali plotter. [LA replies: Translation: Let’s not think that this attack has anything to do with anyone or anything beyond the actual perpetrator, such as Somalis or Muslims. It’s purely an isolated act, having no meaning beyond itself.]

“Bad actions by one member of any group does not and should not be generalized or applied more widely to other members of that same group,” he said. “Otherwise, as the biggest racial group in Portland, we European-Americans would be in deep trouble.” [LA replies: How many Islamic mass murder attacks on us will it take, before we see that all Islamic mass murder attacks on us are committed by Muslims?]

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 28, 2010 12:35 AM | Send