Quod Erat Demonstrandum

Good post on the Peter King hearings on terrorism

National Review has an editorial defending them.

Matt Feeney at The American Scene comments on it and doesn't agree doesn't agree:

“[E]xcessive concern with the pieties of multicultural relativism has prevented us from being sufficiently critical of Islamism.”  It continues: “A problem cannot be dealt with that is not faced foursquarely, and…we have for too long been a nation of cowards when it comes to addressing jihadist radicalism between our shores.”

So what has been missing from our fight against homegrown Islamism is a critique of it? And this owes to an “excessive concern with the pieties of multicultural relativism”? And the true first step in addressing this problem is “fac[ing]” it with a certain resolve, a certain nonrelativist foursquareness?

I honestly thought that such a critique would be redundant by now. Who needs to be convinced, through a critique of it, that homegrown Islamism is a bad thing? Who is addressing this danger with inadequate foursquareness? The Obama administration might not have come out publicly with a critique, per se, of Islamic radicalism grounded in a foundationalist interpretation of the Judeo-Christian-Western-Enlightenment-American-Exceptionalist Tradition, but, despite this, the Justice Department has gone ahead and arrested several of the subjects NR itself lists, anyway.

The editorial is a depressing reminder that much of the mainstream conservative intelligentsia views international politics and security policy as a bothersome girth of dog to be wagged by the tail of cultural polemics. Thus, what is missing from the fight against homegrown Islamism is a certain manner of talking about it, a public insistence from the highest levels that this fight is – per the Universal Morality from which emanates the American Exception (or is it vice versa?) – a just and good fight.

David Frum vs. George Will on Libya

Responding to George Will's questions for Libya interventionists, David Frum has some questions of his own for non-interventionist.  I really think that Will's critique was sufficiently withering that Frum ought to provide some direct answers; many of his questions are indirect attempts to supply answers to Will's crucial question of why Libyan regime change has become a crucial interest when nobody thought it was prior to the uprising.  Nevertheless, here he goes:

 "If Muammar Qaddafi violently suppresses the Libya uprising while America stands by, will Arab and Muslim opinion really believe that we were 'neutral'? Or will they believe that we tacitly support Qaddafi – as they believed through the 1990s that we tacitly supported Saddam Hussein?"

I don't really have any way of knowing or caring how Arab public opinion will behave in response to an attempt to overthrow Qaddafi, much less why I should care, but keep this question in mind; it will be important later on

"What behavior can we expect from a Muammar Qaddafi who survives this uprising? Qaddafi turned to the West after 2003 because he was frightened by the overthrow of Saddam. Having crushed an uprising – and successfully defied an American president – which way will Qaddafi turn next? How confident are you that he won’t revert to terrorism, if not against Europe then against a newly volatile Egypt right next door?"

Here is where Will's argument is so much more powerful.  Will asks what will happen when Qaddafi successfully defies our no-fly zone, when we have put actual power on the line and face defeat.  Won't we be dragged into real war that way, or else face this same fear of "looking weak"?  There's a slippery slope of escalation that can take place, proceeding from demands for cheap rhetoric (can't the President show solidarity?  It costs so little, and it shows how much we care about morality) to demands for military intervention (can't we back up our words?  How dare we let anyone, anywhere in the world defy our demands!  Besides, we are powerful, they are weak, we will hardly lose anything...) to all-out war (America cannot retreat!  Terrorists will think we lack will, and people lacking in will are the sort of people terrorists like to attack...)  The further you go down this path, the greater the costs of either continuing or turning back.  Countries all over the world are defying us all the time.  And yet when it comes to terrorism, countries seem to be pretty scared of us.  Yemen and Pakistan have allowed us to practically colonize them for fear of ending up like the Taliban. 

"Iran crushed its uprising in 2009, with impunity. Hezbollah has seized power in Beirut. Hamas holds Gaza. The Muslim Brotherhood is rising in Egypt. Who looks like the ascendant power in the Middle East today? Iran or the United States?"

This is sort of a non-sequiter, as he's not demonstrating that, for instance, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood will swing behind Iran, or what goals Iran is about to achieve at America's expense, or what Libya has to do with any of this and how a fight there would be an efficient use of American power to contain Iran.

"How many Libyans will flee the country after the rebellion is crushed? Where will they go?"

Refugees will probably threaten stability in Egypt or somewhere.  I have no idea if there will be more of them as a result of an American no-fly zone, or whether such a no-fly zone would shorten or prolong Libya's civil war, whether it will break or cause stalemate

"If you are the king of Saudi Arabia, what conclusions do you draw from the fall of American ally Mubarak and the survival of American enemy Qaddafi?"

I would probably not give America much thought, instead noting that Mubarak had the choice of seeing Egypt descend into chaos or losing power, and decided to leave power, and that Qaddafi, faced with the same choice, decided to cling at the expense of chaos.  I would probably try to avoid having things come to such a pass by appeasing the street ahead of time. 

America didn't want to see a friendly country, Egypt, descend into chaos, so it kicked nudged aside its personal ally, Mubarak; but then again, Egypt's military made the same decision, and Mubarak was far more reliant on his military than on us.  Qaddafi has decimated his military over the years precisely to avoid Mubarak's predicament.  I understand that Saudi Arabia's military doesn't play anything like the role that Egypt's does, but what exactly is Saudi Arabia going to do?  Subordinate itself to Iran in hopes that Iran will defend it against a rebellion that it probably believes it knows how to stave off?

You see how arbitrary this all is.  Some actors ("Arab public opinion," above) are supposed to decide that we are all-powerful, and that Qaddafi must be our friend, because he survived; others are supposed to decide that it is bad to be our friend, because Qaddafi is our enemy and he survived.  In no case is there any acknowledgement that anything besides America's willpower, and other people's perception of that willpower, matters. 

 "If you are the prime minister of Iraq, what conclusions do you draw from the apparent regional ascendency of Iran and the apparent decline of the United States?"

Not to say that any of this has anything to do with Libya, or that our intervention in Libya won't accelerate our decline, but I suppose that if I were prime minister of Iraq and I perceived that Iran was growing in strength, I would allign with its my weaker neighbors to form a counterweight.

"If you are the president of Syria, what conclusions do you draw from the success of Qaddafi’s brutal suppression of revolt?"

I take it as confirmation of what I have known for decades, that one ought to brutally suppress revolts.

"If you are the president of Venezuela and you lose an election, how will you react when President Obama tells you that you 'must' honor the election results?"

I ignore him, just as everybody ignores loud declamations of American Presidents.  I remember that Bush recognized the government that resulted from a coup against me, and I withstood that; I'm not especially afraid of American power (without it, what would I have to rail against?) and would be marginally less afraid of it if it were preoccupied in Northern Africa....Shouldn't we assume that American diplomats have ways of making clear which of our 'musts' other countries should take seriously?  Isn't that why we have diplomacy, so that we don't have to go fight a war to prove our toughness every time somebody defies our big talk?

 "If you are a Libyan insurgent and you are offered arms by international Islamist groups, do you say yes or no?"

I say yes, of course.  Regardless of whether there is a no-fly zone.

Letter to the Washington Post on the Constitution

A letter I wrote to the Washington Post, which they, in their wisdom, seem to have decided not to publish:

Dana Milbank (Getting creative with the Constitution, January 6) objects to Republicans’ exclusion of Constitutional anachronisms, such as the three-fifths compromise, from the House of Representatives’ reading of the Constitution, as sanitation of history.  His mistake is treating the Constitution as a document of merely historical interest.  Legally speaking, it is the supreme law of the land.  Congress has no need to consider parts of the document that are no longer the law.
Our government’s legitimacy does not rest on the idea that the Constitution is sacred or infallible, but on the rather prosaic decision of the people, through a republican process, to ratify the document.  This means that it is fair to contest the legitimacy of acts that are contrary to the Constitution, and, therefore, that Congress ought to take the Constitution very seriously.
There are accounts of government’s legitimacy that differ from this Constitutionalist one.  But disagreeing with Constitutional conservatism should begin with accurately understanding it.  Milbank’s assumption that the Constitution is of solely historical interest prevents him from doing so.

19 Democrats did not vote for Pelosi for speaker: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/morning-fix/morning-fix-31.html
That means that even with the November slaughter, there's still D's that can be picked off on high-profile issues. And ultimately, I would think, you can't really distance yourself from Pelosi and be pro-ObamaCare- might suggest that a GOP President really could be in position to sign repeal, even if Democrats aren't dumb enough to do filibuster reform. Yet we're always told that entitlements are unrepealable. Interesting times these are.

Nick Kristof, NY Times: "They argue that gross inequality tears at the human psyche, creating anxiety, distrust and an array of mental and physical ailments — and they cite mountains of data to support their argument."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/opinion/02kristof.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Well if they cite mountains of data, then it must be a good argument, right?

‎"Among rich countries, those that are more unequal appear to have more mental illness, infant mortality, obesity, high school dropouts, teenage births, homicides, and so on.
"They find the same thing is true among the 50 American states. M...ore unequal states, like Mississippi and Louisiana, do poorly by these social measures. More equal states, like New Hampshire and Minnesota, do far better."
I don't want to be too obvious, but wouldn't we expect that social pathologies would lead to some people being poor? I'm sure this is dealt with in the mountains of data, but I just can't help but wonder about it. Doubtless the process is self-reinforcing; but I don't think anybody disagrees in general terms that it would be desirable to end these cycles if we can. Disagreement comes over the best way to do this.
Disagreement about whether inequality is a problem usually comes down to the specific question of whether to tax the rich so that poor people don't feel inferior. In the absense of conspicuous consumption, and of vast differences in wealth within a community, it's hard to see how inequality really becomes concrete for people. People might become angry for a few seconds when they hear some statistics about rich people, but that is highly abstract and removed. It would be comparable to seeing your political party defeated- upsetting in the abstract, but not something that most people would actually become depressed over. Indeed, the sort of people who join gangs and so forth are the least likely to care about or possess the ability to process that kind of abstract information.
Also, Nicholas Kristov writes for the New York Times op-ed page, which gives him a much higher social status than someone who writes for the local paper. Barak Obama had an inauguration party that was full of pomp and circumstances, which vividly illustrated the fact that he has a higher social status than most people. Many athletes and celebrities also seem to have high social status. All these cases are independent of the net worth or salaries of the people. Does this also make us sad?

Some fellow at the David Frum outfit:

"America is engaged in a defining civilizational [etc.]...The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell offers the opportunity for a patriotic political center to emerge in American politics, one that moves the discourse on our engagement in the War on Terror beyond the usual Left-Right labels.



"The repeal of DADT has already exposed leftist “America is always wrong” sentiment in the guise of pacifism...Similarly, the extreme right is displaying apoplectic fits of homophobia that leads them to mock the US military in ways that might seem recognizable by the Taliban. The extremes on the left and on the right may share and even admire some Taliban values...



"When America wins, it is not merely a military victory overseas, it is also the triumph of our best values over those domestic forces that most resemble the enemy."

http://www.frumforum.com/with-dadt-gone-can-we-unite-to-beat-the-taliban

I think we need to get beyond centrist rhetoric about the need to move our rhetoric beyond left-right labels. This fellow's rhetoric is nothing but self-parody of the worst militaristic right-wing rhetoric of the past decade, pro-gay rights sentiment aside.

.

The United States government, like most governments, runs deficits most of the time; but, like most countries, it usually succeeds in keeping its deficits below crisis levels. Many commentators are forever scolding the government and the American public about the deficit, and much of the public seems to enjoy this treatment. This is a Puritan country, after all, and people always want to be reminded of the pain involved in true virtue. Thus "we must stop putting off the tough decisions" and so forth. These people have been having a field day lately, as the much awaited deficit crisis becomes alarmingly close, much closer than we expected a few years ago.
In many matters of policy, appeals to virtue can have an effect, but I think they are unlikely to in the case of the deficit. I draw this conclusion from facts that are generally known, and a behavioral model I have in my mind. Powerful currents of opinion and factions in America disagree about the proper size and scope of government. Powerful constituencies in the Democratic Party favor a relatively large role for government, while constituencies in the Republican Party favor a relatively small role. Suppose, then, that it becomes necessary to balance the budget. Republicans will pursue a low-tax, low-spending equilibrium; Democrats will pursue the opposite. At any time prior to the very brink of a crisis, any Republican acquiescence to a tax hike or Democratic acquiescence to a spending cut is an unforgivable sellout.

Suppose, though, that a particular Republican or Democrat reads an opinion piece in the Washington Post, and concludes that the deficit is more important than disputes over the role of government. Still, his views on the size of government is still important to him, and to his constituents. Why should he be the first to blink? Why not wait for his friends across the aisle to perhaps be persuaded by the same editorial?

The thing that will eventually bring both sides to the bargaining table, if anything does, is the moment of crisis. At that point, Democrats will decide that if the U.S. becomes unable to borrow money, or its currency becomes worthless, their social programs are impossible, so they will have to agree to trim spending. At the same time, rich Republicans will conclude that the value of their wealth depends ultimately on the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, and will agree to tax hikes if necessary to restore said full faith and credit. The nature of the eventual settlement of course depends on the partisan makeup of government at the time, but it will be in nobody's interests for the IMF to make our fiscal decisions; or, since we are the IMF, for the world to collapse in a fit of confusion.
***
Reality may of course be somewhat more linear than the above model allows. Republicans and Democrats have gotten together in the past to keep the ship temporarily afloat. Ireland and Greece, on the other hand, have seen crises come on them faster than they could respond; but their example may cause countries that still have time, such as the U.S., to take heed. Thus, anticipating that the time for a grand bargain of some kind is near, opinion and party leaders of different stripes might decide that it is time to try to begin to piece together that deal on the best terms they can, rather than continue to work at cross purposes. But self-interest will guide the process. The crisis we have been in since 2008 has brought debates over the role of government into a much starker light than they had been previously, when government could more easily be all things to all people. Everyone has behaved as if they see the need not to abandon those debates, but to settle them decisively. Post-political, post-ideological good governmentism will have exactly nothing to do with our eventual resolution of our fiscal problems.

Rand Paul

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow asked Rand Paul whether his libertarian principles could allow him to support the 1964 Civil Rights Act's bans on segregation in public accomodations; he basically said they did not.  Today, he has flip-flopped on the issue. 

Alex Knepper at FrumForum writes,

Rand Paul’s comments on the 1964 Civil Rights Act are proof that we chose the wrong person. It’s not that his opinions are objectionable — indeed, I agree with him on this issue — but that people simply do not understand libertarian principles enough to put the opinion in its proper context. It doesn’t matter how good his explanation is: you can’t educate people through a political campaign. All throughout the fall, we’ll be bombarded with ads about how Rand Paul waffles on — wait for it! — the Civil Rights Act of 1964! But a campaign is there to mobilize, not educate. You can’t transform the culture in a five-month campaign.

I think Paul understands that campaigns are about mobilizing, not transforming the culture.  Nor would he push to revise the Civil Rights Act if he were elected; his approach as an elected official is likely to recognize political reality.  I think he also wants to be honest about what he really believes, while asking voters to support him for his own agenda; he makes clear that changing the Civil Rights Act is not part of his agenda.  Obviously, that didn't work out, as he now recognizes.

Update: Robert Gibbs agrees with Paul that the Civil Rights Act is a settled issue, and (I gather) thinks that Maddow was wrong to bring it up.   From NRO:

Asked about those comments today, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that “I think the issues that, that many fought for in the ‘50s and the ‘60s were settled a long time ago in landmark legislation and the discussion about whether or not to support those, I don’t think, shouldn’t have a place in our political dialogue in 2010.” 

 

Public Opinion and Transformational Presidencies

Many interpretations have been offered of the 2006 and 2008 elections; broadly speaking, I can think of a couple of ways to look at these elections. 

The first would deemphasize ideology or political philosophy, and treat the elections as a referendum on the incumbent party's execution and character rather than on what we should expect from our government.  It would go something like this: by the time of these elections, a strong majority of people believed that the government had taken us to war in Iraq on false pretenses, and that it was conducting this war incompetently.  The war appeared to drag on without end or hope of victory, had accomplished no apparent purpose, had in fact damaged America in most people's minds.  More generally, the incumbent administration was believed to be incompetent, a perception highlighted by its handling of Hurricane Katrina.  In 2006, one can add corrupt Congresspeople losing office, which resulted in the individual corrupt people losing their jobs, and perhaps in the belief in a "culture of corruption" (as Nancy Pelosi described it) which cost others their office.  In 2008, we can add the effects of the economic and financial crises, which convinced the public that the Bush administration was mishandling economic policy.

The other interpretation is ideological, and emphasizes the extent to which the last two elections are repudiations of conservative ideology.  Public opinion blamed the economic and financial crises (so this explanation would go) on President Bush's perceived laissez fairre ideology.  Even before the financial crisis, average wages stagnated and health insurance costs were rising at unsustainable levels, weakening public acceptance of the strongly free-market post-Reagan regime. 

Moreover (this interpretation would continue) "the Reagan Era is over."  The Reagan Era, encompassing the Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush Presidencies, was a historical aberration from the norm of post-New Deal politics.  This aberration resulted from fear of Communism, fear of cultural change, fear of crime, and quite possibly racism (and, admittedly, some flaws in Great Society liberalism that had culminated in stagflation, leading to backlash.)  Today, however, cultural conservatives are losing the demographic war.  The college-educated, black and Hispanic people, and atheists are growing in number. 

To some extent, the rejection of an incumbent Party is a chance for the new Party to try out a new ideology, if they happen to have one laying about (see FDR, 1933; Ronald Reagan, 1981; Barack Obama, 2009.)  Thus, concluding that the Bush years have brought discredit to monetarist triumphalism, neo-Keynesians are to have their turn.  We can no longer sustain a health care system that socializes expenses and leaves costs alone, so it is time to try out more government intervention in health care.  To the general problems of a post-industrial economy there isn't really a ready-made answer; but Green Jobs to this point has been the slogan which served that purpose.  [Financial regulation doesn't fit neatly here; it isn't part of an ideological project, but obviously even the stupidest Democrat knows how to respond to a financial crisis (it's caused by deregulation or a general laissez-faire mindset) and equally obviously Democrats in power will then have to pass something.  If there were a pre-existing intellectual movement that had some grand vision in mind, they could have had whatever they wanted whenever they wanted it.]

Yet it really does matter whether the public is on board with rewriting the social contract.  Insofar as voters appear to respond mechanistically to economic conditions, I believe this is because 1) neither Party usually offers a radical platform and 2) voters know that they can usually stop radical departures they don't like, if the Madisonian machinery doesn't do it for them.  In other words, I lean toward the first set of explanations above for the '06 and '08 Presidential elections; voters expect to be able to punish incompetent steering of the ship of state without having to fear that the replacement driver will change the ship's destination. 

Look, for instance, at the 1982 elections.  Reagan had inhereted a severe recession which had not abated, yet he lost only twenty-six seats in the House and broke even in the Senate.  Rahm Emanuel would die of joy at similar results this time around. 

In January of this year, progressive columnist EJ Dione, Jr. wrote about the relationship between the economy and the Obama administration.  He started off gently with his liberal readers, soothing them with fairy stories, emphasizing the economic determinism D's want to believe in right now.  Then:  

But the success of the conservative narrative ought to trouble liberals and the Obama administration. The president has had to "own" the economic catastrophe much earlier than he should have. The vast majority of Americans understand that the mess we are in started before Obama got to the White House. Yet many, especially political independents, are upset that the government has had to spend so much money and that things have not turned around as fast as they hoped.

So people aren't just confused (they haven't forgotten that the recession started under Bush,) nor do they simply give the President a certain amount of time to produce a certain output, regardless of process.  Rather, the median voter's thinking, if Dione is correct, is more along the lines of "I spent $787 billion, and all I got was this lousy recession."  Borrowing all that money was supposed to smooth things out, and it hasn't done so in an apparently worthwhile fashion.  Narratives have to relate to objective reality, but they aren't simply irrelevant.  Dione continued:

The president's supporters comfort themselves that Obama's numbers will improve as the economy gets better. This is a form of intellectual complacency. Ronald Reagan's numbers went down during a slump, too. But even when he was in the doldrums, Reagan was laying the groundwork for a critique of liberalism that held sway in American politics long after he left office.

But what did Reagan do in '82?  The New Republic's John Judis explained in March,

Unlike George W. Bush and the Republicans in 2002, Reagan did not try to divert the electorate’s attention away from the economy. Foreign policy and national security played almost no role in the election. Nor did abortion or school prayer. The election was very much a referendum on Reagan and his economic policies. Many Republican candidates wanted to run on local issues, but Reagan knew that he and his economic policies were going to be more important--in the final tally 70 percent of the voters told pollsters that they were voting “for or against Ronald Reagan”--and he wanted to confront his critics. 

Early in the year, Reagan’s chief of staff James Baker assembled a strategy group that included Lee Atwater and Ed Rollins. Baker and Atwater were the premier campaign strategists of their time, as they would demonstrate again in the 1984 and 1988 presidential elections. They devised a strategy for Reagan around the theme of “staying the course.” Reagan would urge voters to have patience with his economic policies and to “vote your hopes, not your fears.” 

Reagan blamed the Democrats for leaving him with “the worst economic mess in half a century.” ''Slowly, but surely, we are lifting the economy out of the mess created over the past several decades,'' he said. ''We are on the road back.'' The Democrats, he charged, had caused the recession through profligate spending, which had caused inflation, which had caused unemployment. By cutting spending and taxes, Reagan claimed that he was showing the way toward a recovery. “If we stick to our plan, if we keep the Congress from going back to its runaway spending, the recovery will take hold, strengthen and endure," he said.

Staying the anti-inflationary course was crucial.  This being the New Republic, Judis has to claim that Reagan's narrative was not based in reality ("It's the narrative, stupid!  Narrative is everything!  The economy is nothing!  Obey your narrative!") 

Actually, voters were wise insofar as they chose to stay the course.  Fed chairman Paul Volcker's ruthless fight against inflation and inflationary expectations devastated the economy, but prior to his chairmanship inflation had reached a level that was badly hurting Americans and had been rising along with unemployment for a decade.  Another inflationary stimulus would have been a disaster, while Volcker's policy at least offered long-term gain to follow the short-term pain.  In addition to giving up on short-term demand-side economics, Reagan's positive agenda was of course supply-side tax cuts.  The economy and stock market went into a very long period of expansion after 1982, which was not, I think, entirely a coincidence.

The long-term narrative works for a long-run economic policy.  Supply-side economics suits the purpose perfectly: let's set conditions for real economic growth rather than inducing a series of bubbles.  The Obama administration's economic stimulus was almost the exact opposite, and it is not surprising that it is narratively failing.  This being The New Republic, however, Judis insists that the problem is that Obama is too obsessed with bipartisanship to be willing to blame Bush for the recession.

Mohammed

He's stirring up controversy again: Comedy Central has decided not to air South Park segments making fun of the Proph.

Ross Douthat writes in his NYT column that "Islam is just about the only place where we draw any lines at all," noting South Park's history of pursuing shock humor. 

Excitable gadfly blogger Glenn Greenwald responds with a story of a play about a gay Jesus being canceled somewhere in Texas, after some death threats.  This is not quite a cultural commanding height on a par with SP, but I suppose folks will take what one can get.  In any case, Greenwald deftly pivots to a mainstream Catholic group who peacefully protested the show (will anyone notice?!) and exclaims that "the very idea that such conduct is remotely unique to Muslims is delusional, the by-product of Douthat's ongoing use of his New York Times column for his anti-Muslim crusade and sectarian religious promotion."  A lot rests on the word unique in this rhetorical device, a word that does not recognize degree (it is not clear what the adjective "remotely" is doing there, however, modifying such a black and white word; makes things all the more slippery.) 

He then mentions two commentators who were fired for opposing the Iraq War, one who was fired for criticizing the conduct of the Afghan War, and one woman who was heavily criticized for something she said about Pope JPII on Saturday Night Live.  The last case involved no censorship at all; the other cases involved self-censorship by networks who did not wish to be associated with unpopular political opinions.  This could be seen as a refutation of Douthat's view that we live in anything goes world, except that he was talking about cultural taboos rather than political correctness.  Greenwald refers to Rudy Giuliani's "censorship" of art by attempting to cut off government money from a controversial exhibit.  This really isn't a problem at all; those who want to live off the state can expect to do the state's bidding.  Moreover, Giuliani lost this battle, and controversial artists are politically and legally in a dominant, unassailable position, an exhibit of Douthat's point rather than Greenwald's.  He charges that "The Bush administration banned mainstream Muslim scholars even from entering the U.S. to teach."  The link makes clear that the individual in question was banned not for mainstream Muslim scholarship, but for giving money to a charity that donated to "a Palestinain militant group."  He cites further incidents, many of them in foreign countries and involving political matters rather than cultural taboos.

None of the Greenwald's anecdotes should obscure the the fact that Comedy Central obviously fears Muslim extremists in a way that they do not fear incurring the offense of others; and that they are not alone.  Greenwald further obscures this point when he writes,

Can one even conceive of having a Muslim NYT columnist who routinely disparages and rails against Christians and Jews this way?  To ask the question is to answer it, and by itself gives the lie to Douthat's typically right-wing need to portray his own majoritarian group as the profoundly oppressed victim at the hands of the small, marginalized, persecuted group which actually has no power (it's so unfair how Muslims always get their way in the U.S.). 

Greenwald has a typical left-wing need to see all of human affairs in terms of power relationships, which must be a very dreary way of looking at the world.  If the total quantitative power of a group can be shown to be small, and that of another group can be shown to be large, then any qualitative observations can be discounted in this reductionist way of thinking.  Douthat isn't objecting to the total amount of power wielded by Muslims; he objects to our culture's willingness to "bravely" violate taboos, while backing down when an actual danger shows its face.