A groan

Submitted by Peter Herz (United States), Aug 13, 2010 at 16:11

I think the entire elite culture on both sides of the North Atlantic needs to be cleared out and replaced. There's not only the philobarbarism Susan noted about a strange fondness for Pakistan among Britain's elite and the sudden disgust expressed for the Jews on both sides of the pond, but also an ignorant positing of a moral equivalence between religions. Mention Muslim thuggery in Mumbai, Israel/Palestine, the Maghreb, Sudan, Southern Thailand, treatment of minorities, etc. etc., and they immediately bring up the Northern Irish troubles. It seems to be part of the expected "enlightened" blathering boilerplate of our times.

Well, I don't see Irish-descended Presbyterians and Irish-descended Roman Catholics killing each other in America, by golly (and both tribes are very, very, very numerous). And, in the general comparison of Christian and Muslim behavior, it strikes me that if you tweak the fundamentalist conscience (and I mean Christian here, because there's really no other kind), you get a homeless shelter, private school, or relief effort. Tweak a conscientiously Muslim conscience, and it seems that something blows up and there's blood on the ground.

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