Excellent reply Stephen. Thanks. You write:"Muslim...

2008-09-02T18:59:00.000-04:00

Excellent reply Stephen. Thanks. You write:

"Muslims aren’t the problem. Anti-reason intellectuals peddling “multiculturalism” are the problem."

I think this is the crux of it all. Immigration would not be a problem if we were not suffering from multiculturalism (and egalitarianism which is its root) and socialism (ie the welfare-state). These two things make any rational immigration policy impossible. If the West were free and strong what could Sharia Muslims do? They would be marginalized and rendered impotent. I think that is the ultimate answer: rational philosophy. And we both know how hard that will be.

You could call modern philosophy the ultimate fift...

2008-09-02T17:36:00.000-04:00

You could call modern philosophy the ultimate fifth column.

That's a really good question, madmax. My wife (L...

2008-09-01T20:03:00.000-04:00

That's a really good question, madmax. My wife (LB) and I have had some long conversations about that and we struggle with the answer.

The historical precedent that comes immediately to mind is the internment of Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans after the Pearl Harbor attacks. Britain (and I think the US) did the same thing with German nationals during the war. In fact, in the novel N or M? I referred to in the post, one of the characters, a German émigré, was fearful of being arrested simply for being German.

Of course, internment is a more severe step than merely refusing immigration, but some of the same considerations apply. The obvious rationale is that in a time of war, members (or erstwhile members) of an enemy country represent higher-than-acceptable threats. “The Constitution is not a suicide pact,” some like to say; using a broad net to detain or block enemies may catch a lot of innocents, but such is the price of being at war. This has some plausibility, but I can’t quite get past the fact that it treats individuals according to characteristics that are beyond their control (i.e. race or nationality). And if we are really talking about expelling Muslims in general, as opposed to merely Muslims from enemy countries, then I see that as an outrageously heavy-handed - and ultimately futile - attempt to control people’s thoughts. If it comes to that, then America is lost anyway, and we’re going to have to find a Galt’s Gulch somewhere and start over. (Hopefully, all the OBloggers would be able to find each other.)

So, my conclusion is that I think it is not appropriate to expel Muslims or block Muslim immigration in general. Increased scrutiny for immigrants from jihadist nations (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc.) is appropriate. (I’m a big fan of profiling and typecasting when it comes to guessing if someone intends to harm me.) It is proper to block people for being a physical threat, but we should not (and cannot) block people for what they think.

Here are a few thoughts to consider, in no particular order:

* Muslims aren’t the problem. Anti-reason intellectuals peddling “multiculturalism” are the problem. Muslims who want to live by Sharia law should absolutely hate living here. They can impose their views on their children, but they cannot break America law and they cannot prevent their children from seeing and thinking. Some young Muslims will escape the irrational framework they were brought up in and will become truly American. The rest can be miserable or leave.

* If we had a general policy of blocking Muslim immigration, then we would have prevented Wafa Sultan (a Syrian Muslim) from coming here, just as a blanket policy against Soviet immigrants, for fear of communists, would have prevented Ayn Rand from coming here.

* Our laws are supposed to make it impossible to implement Sharia law in the United States. (I can’t say the same for Europe, unfortunately.) I do not know the particulars of Sharia law, but surely every instance of it is an outrageous affront to our Constitution. If Muslims can by degrees whittle away the Law of our Land, then we are in big trouble. Evangelical Christians are just as fervent as Muslims are in forcing religious doctrine into our Constitution, and frankly, they seem to have a much better chance of doing so. In fact, come to think of it, declaring an “emergency” to inhibit Islam would be a wonderful pretext for them to impose the Ten Commandments as our new Law.

* Technically, we are not even in a state of war, at least not in the sense of what wars are supposed to be (i.e. short, all-out applications of force to annihilate a threat). Jihadists, with Iran at the ideological helm, have been unilaterally waging war against us since 1979. Shamefully, our Presidents and Congress have not declared war against the nations sponsoring Islamic totalitarianism despite the innumerable times they should have done so. If we fixed our own foreign policy, Muslim immigration would not be an issue. (If you haven’t already read it, I highly recommend Peter Schwartz’s The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest in this regard.)

* It is scary to be so immersed in bad ideas; it is tempting to think that at least some of the bad ideas could be blocked by preventing certain irrational fanatics from entering the country. But freedom is freedom. I put my trust - not faith, but trust - in the only system that will safeguard that freedom. Even the freedom haters have the right to think and speak. The free west has one huge advantage in this conflict; we are right.

You have been posting great essays. This is anothe...

2008-09-01T16:11:00.000-04:00

You have been posting great essays. This is another one. I too am shocked when I compare the pre-1950's West with today. Multiculturalism has become our number 1 cultural religion and it is everywhere. You couldn't escape it if you tried. Its in the very air we breathe.

But I have a question relating to Muslims and immigration. Could it be argued that since Islam is at war with the West, that for national security reasons, Islamic immigration should be stopped? Many conservatives want Muslim immigration stopped and even further, they want Muslims removed from Western lands on the grounds that consistent Muslims must and will advocate for Sharia Law. That is their duty as Muslims. Some conservatives go further and say that Islam should be treated as a military ideology and not a religion and should be criminalized in Western lands. I am sympathetic to these arguments although I know that conservatives who make them are ultimately Christian apologists and no lovers of freedom.

But your post has made me wonder what a pre-multiculturalist West would do with Islam. I strongly doubt that they would allow a people with open hostilities to the West to walk openly in Western countries. But how to reconcile banning Islam and Muslim immigration with Objectivism is not easy.

Comments on One Reality: The Obsolescence of the Fifth Column

Excellent reply Stephen. Thanks. You write:"Muslim...

You could call modern philosophy the ultimate fift...

That's a really good question, madmax. My wife (L...

You have been posting great essays. This is anothe...