Terror Terminology (Oliver North)

Louisville, KY — The term “politically correct,” is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary thus: “Of, relating to, or supporting broad social, political, and educational change, especially to redress historical injustices in matters such as race, class, gender, and sexual orientation.” Add to that litany of “historical injustices” the title of my New York Times bestseller: “American Heroes in the Fight Against Radical Islam.”

In recent weeks, the vocabulary police opened a new front in the War on Terror by issuing a list of “do’s” and “don’ts” for terrorism terminology. In an effort to fight a “kinder, gentler” war on Islamic radicals, the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in consultation with unnamed Islamic interest groups, has issued a paper entitled, “Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims.”

This policy document warns U.S. government officials against “using theological terms, particularly those in Arabic even if such usage is benign or overtly positive. Islamic law and terms come with a particular context, which may not always be apparent.” Homeland Security’s paper counsels: “It is one thing for a Muslim leader to use a particular term; an American official may simply not have the religious authority to be taken seriously, even when using terms appropriately.”

We are told that we should no longer use words and phrases such as “jihadist,” “Islamic terrorist,” “Islamist,” and “holy warrior.” Using the word “Islamic,” the experts have advised us, may “concede the terrorists’ claim that they are legitimate adherents of Islam.”

At best, this advice is seriously flawed. At worst, it is an ominous recipe that invites defeat, for it begs us to ignore who it is that has declared war...

The liberal root of ‘pc’ was found to be described very well by Auster in a piece he wrote on the Ontario Human Rights Commissions curret attack on Mark Steyn as an ‘islamphobe’. The link is:
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/010605.html

Here is the piece in its entirety....What the attempt to banish “Islamophobia” really means

The Ontario Human Rights Commission has issued a statement in the matter of the complaint of certain Muslims against Maclean’s magazine and Mark Steyn with regard to Maclean’s publication of an excerpt from Steyn’s supposedly anti-Islamic book America Alone. The Commission declares that it has no jurisdiction under the law to deal with the case, since Ontario law prohibits discrimination in the provision of goods and services, housing, employment, and so on, but not discrimination in the content of magazine articles. (Other jurisdictions in Canada do outlaw such discrimination.) The Commission nevertheless says it needs to state its opinion on the broader issues raised by the complaint. It then launches into a disquisition on racism and “Islamophobia” which inadvertently reveals the heart of the modern liberal order.

The Commission states:

The Commission is concerned that since the September 2001 attacks, Islamophobic attitudes are becoming more prevalent in society and Muslims are increasingly the target of intolerance, including an unwillingness to consider accommodating some of their religious beliefs and practices.

Unfortunately, the Maclean’s article, and others like it, are examples of this. By portraying Muslims as all sharing the same negative characteristics, including being a threat to ‘the West’, this explicit expression of Islamophobia further perpetuates and promotes prejudice towards Muslims and others.

The key to the Commission’s thinking is in its labeling, as wrongful “Islamophobia,” the view that Islam is a threat to the West. The assumption underlying such a judgment, whether about Islamophobia or bigotry generally, is that all people are good (except for people who don’t believe that all people are good), and that no people can be a threat (except for those people who believe that some people can be a threat). Since all people (that is, all people who don’t hate nothing except hatred) are good, and since no people are enemies (except for the people who believe that there are enemies), any negative statement about a group (except for negative statements about the society’s own majority group) is by definition a false, vicious, dehumanizing attack on that group.

The core error of this liberal view is that it never considers the possibility that some people and groups (other than the majority peoples of the West) may indeed be enemies. Specifically, it never entertains the possibility that Islam is in fact a threat to the West. If Islam is a threat to the West, then saying that Islam is a threat to the West is not an act of bigotry but a statement of truth and part of a legitimate effort to protect the West from a real enemy. By condemning truthful negative statements about Islam as bigotry, and even outlawing such statements, modern liberalism forbids the West from defending itself.

In short, liberalism has taken group conflict, a normal and recurrent feature of human history, and turned it into an immoral act, adding the further twist that only the West is capable of exhibiting such immorality against other groups, while other groups are incapable of exhibiting the same immorality against the West.

How does liberalism get away with seeing only Westerners’ negative statements about Islam as wrongful, but not Muslims’ negative and threatening statements about the West? Very simple. Under liberalism, there is no society “here” to be attacked. Under liberalism, Canada is not a substantive entity—not a nation, not a culture, not a people, not a group. Canada is, instead, a system for the promotion of human rights. Not being a concrete group or culture, Canada cannot be an object of bigotry. But Muslims and other immigrants, who are concrete entities, can be objects of bigotry. Muslims are a group and therefore deserve to be protected from discrimination. Canadians are not a group and therefore do not require protection from discrimination.

In short, Western peoples do not need protection under the modern liberal order, because modern liberalism, in its very premises, has already defined the Western peoples out of existence. This is why it’s a waste of time looking for liberals and mainstream conservatives (who accept the premises of liberalism as much as the liberals do) to protect Western society from the intrusions of Islam and of Third-world cultures generally. Under modern liberalism, the Western peoples have already in principle ceased to exist, and all that’s left is the mopping up operation.

* * *

The Commission, by the way, makes an interesting Freudian slip. After pointing out that Ontario’s anti-discrimination laws do not infringe on publications and books, it mentions the more sweeping anti-discrimination laws in other Canadian jurisdictions, with the obvious intent that Ontario emulate them:

Limits to freedom of expression under some other human rights legislation in Canada are broader, stating that no person shall publish, issue or display before the public any statement, publication, notice, sign, symbol or other representation.

Of course the Commission left out a phrase. It meant to say something along the lines that no person shall publish any statement, symbol, etc. “that discriminates against anyone.” By leaving out the words, “that discriminates against anyone,” the Commission makes it sound as though the law prohibits all statements, publications, and symbols, period. Meaning, the total cessation of public writing and speaking. I call this a Freudian slip because, as argued here, the prohibition of all discourse is the logical end toward which liberalism is really heading.

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