Us and Them (and after all, we're only ordinary men...)

I won't say I was shocked when a friend who reads my blog told me yesterday that he thinks my recent post about the Danish Mohammed cartoons showed that I had moved to the "hard right" on the issue.

I wasn't shocked because I'm all too familiar with the process by which most casual news-readers (and no small number of pundits, commentators, and bloggers) form their opinions about politics and society. In short, it's all about Us vs. Them. The thought process goes something like this.

1. George Bush (the "hard right") is obviously bad. George Bush attacks Muslim countries.
--> Therefore, people in Muslim countries must be good.
2. Political Christianity is often antithetical to liberal values. Many Christians (both radical and non-) disapprove of the Muslim reaction to the Danish cartoons.
--> Therefore, the aggrieved Muslims must represent liberal values, and the Christians antiliberal (hard right) values.
3. White people committed many atrocities against people of other races in the past 500 years, and many white people continue to hold bigoted attitudes toward people of other races.
--> Therefore, the non-white people in any situation must be in the right.

And so on.

This is, of course, a dangerous line of thinking. If the enemy of my enemy is always my friend, I'm going to be stuck with some pretty dodgy friends. Sometimes you have to make a deal with the devil, like when we helped out Stalin in World War 2. But anyone who thinks that supporting the radical Islamic movement is a good way of getting rid of George Bush and his ilk has crossed over from realpolitik to realinsanity.

My friend took issue with the fact that I often made references to "Muslim mobs," "hard-line Muslim leaders," "offended Muslims," etc. He wondered why I characterized the radicals as "Muslims" as opposed to "radicals" or simply citizens of their respective countries. The reasons I did this included:

• It's easier to type "Muslims" than it is to type "Syrians, Iranians, Lebanese, Indonesians, Malaysians, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Iraqis, Saudis, UK residents of primarily Middle Eastern and South Asian descent, and residents of the Gaza Strip." (Even as an acronym, that's SILIMAPISUKRPMESADRGS...)
• The people calling for and organizing the SILMAPISUKRPMESADRGS protests are primarily either Muslim clergy or non-governmental organizations with the word "Muslim" in their names.
• The anti-cartoon protesters all say that they are protesting an insult to Islam; to my knowledge, none claim to be protesting racism against Arabs or any other race, aggression against Middle Eastern countries by Western militar forces, or economic policies of any sort. Furthermore, many protesters claim that it is because of their Muslim religion that they are protesting.
• I have not heard any reports of any non-Muslim participating in the protests, although I am sure that there are at least one or two among the millions.
• The Western media typically refers to the protesters as "Muslims", and I see no reason to deviate from this convention, especially in light of the reasons mentioned above.
• If millions of Christians worldwide took to the streets to demand that governments crack down on newspapers critical of Christianity, I can't imagine that we wouldn't be talking about the "Christian mobs". And fair is fair.

My friend noted that most Muslims don't support the actions of the radicals urging bloodshed in response to the cartoons. ("How do you know that?", I asked in response. "Did you take a poll?")

Apparently exactly 100% of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims have to agree with the protests before we can label them "Muslim protests."

But I especially take issue with being called "hard right" for supporting the freedom of speech, and for denouncing those who would use violence to curtail free speech. I never suggested a violent or categorical response to the protests and threats. I never suggested dropping a bomb on protesters or restricting the rights of Muslims. I merely said that these protesters, and the organizations that support them, are in the wrong , and represent a negative force in the public sphere. What's "hard right" about that?

In fact, to stop people from protesting would be a restriction of freedom equal to what the protesters themselves are demanding of the Danish government (to repress the press). I believe that Muslims - or SILMAPISUKRPMESADRGS of any persuasion - should be free to protest and boycott as they like (although burning embassies and destroying businesses goes a little too far). But I still think that the protests are wrong, the idea that they support (government should suppress critics of Islam) is wrong, and that the people and groups who organized the protests are dangerously anti-liberal. And publications from The Economist to Slate to the Boston Globe to the Huffington Post's Bill Maher and Nina Burleigh agree with me - hardly a "hard right" lineup right there.

Being a liberal doesn't mean automatically siding with anyone who incidentally happens not to like George Bush. Being a liberal does not mean saving one's social criticism exclusively for Pat Robertson and Ann Coulter.

Being a liberal means upholding and fighting for liberal values. Freedom of speech is one of the most important liberal values - some might say the most important. The minute we think that supporting free speech, and denouncing those who seek to restrict that speech, is "hard right," we've lost the very thing that makes us liberal in the first place.

PS - As an endnote to this whole matter, a dialogue between me and the same friend. Apologies for any errors in transcription.

Me: What should we (America) do if an NGO group beyond our borders sends some guy into our country and he burns down some building?

Friend: We should arrest the people responsible and put them in jail like any criminals.

Me: And what if that group maintain branches within the U.S. that incite and encourage violence and introduce violent-minded individuals to like-minded individuals in an organized fashion?

Friend: We should go in with tear gas and rubber bullets and arrest them.

Me: And what if that group's parent organization, in another country, actively orgnaizes violence against our people and property overseas (such as embassies)?

Friend: Then we should go mow them down with AK-47s.

Me: (laughs) Wait, you're calling me "hard right"?