The National Library of Medicine defines the central characteristics of a phobia as "...a strong, irrational fear of something that poses little or no real danger." Given this definition, one has to wonder whether the neologism "Islamophobia" really represents a phobia. In light of recent events, what is irrational? Does an ideology that incites even a small number to violence really pose little or no real danger?
My decision to consider this and write about it emerged from a combination of watching coverage of the terror attacks in Brussels and the to-be-expected, knee-jerk reaction of sites like Think Progress to concerns raised once more by Donald Trump this morning. First, let's admonish them for the notion that Trump's response to this is "frightening". That is nothing more than hyperbole and a gross misuse of such a term. What is frightening to any rational person is the fact that (at last count I saw) 26 people were killed in a terror attack while going about their daily activities. Innocent people, no more guilty than the large number of Muslims who did not commit this atrocity. But it is not surprising that liberal media, in the midst of a presidential season, would quickly switch out the fright associated with the terror of killing innocent civilians for the fright associated with the aforementioned Trump and "Islamophobia".
So, what frightening thing did Trump say this time? According to ThinkProgress, when "asked during a Tuesday morning Fox and Friends appearance about how he’d respond to the attacks as president, Trump said he’d “close up our borders… until we figure out what’s going on.”"
"Until we figure out what's going on".
What do we do when we find a defect in a product, say an aircraft. We ground it for investigation. How about a fatal flaw in any product? Withdraw from the market for investigation. We don't say that "Well, it was only one airplane out of the hundreds in the air." We try to find out why, which ones are a risk, and make the system safer.
I say again, for the record - I am not a Trump fan. I do not need Trump to tell me that there is something dangerous going on in the world today and if we do not prepare and plan for it, it will likely get worse. This scourge has only barely made it to our shores, but that time is coming. Then these people will learn what "frightening" means. I personally think the most frightening thing is that there are those who do not look at the situation in Europe, the attacks on innocent people, a situation that emerges most proximally from largely wide open borders that admit a small number of militants among larger groups of migrants, and do not consider a halt to such migration to allow for a serious consideration of how to vet newcomers to enhance security.
Well, if that is frightening then what IS the solution to these issues? We get a lot of hand-wringing, whining, and bloviating but no real ideas. Oh, there's the "given them all a hug" brigade, the "stop bombing them" ideas, and those who would substitute sad pictures of refugees for sad pictures of those killed in Paris or Brussels. It is salesmanship (is that sexist?) at its best. But what they willfully ignore with this misdirection is that there is a hardcore group of people who DO hate us, want to kill us, who see it as their pathway to a glorious afterlife to die while taking large numbers of us with them. Hugging, suspending bombing, being humanitarian might be great ideas - they are efforts to save the other victims of these barbarians. But they will not dissuade the barbarians themselves. And if those among whom they hide will not reveal them to us, then how do we protect them or ourselves? Apparently, in the eyes of some, we don't. Interestingly, even on MSNBC this morning there were those who remarked that the Muslim community needed to react to this by starting to identify the extremists among them. Can liberals really say that? We will see if that happens.
Of course, we know how liberal America responded to the small scale terror attacks here in our homeland (and even to some extent the Paris attacks), so it is not hard to imagine how they will react when it happens on a larger scale. As with San Bernardino, they will absolve religion, fanaticism, terror and hatred in favor of attacking their fellow citizens' rights. It was not the religion, the hatred, the fanaticism, it was the guns. Don't deal with the root cause, simply tinker with the means. That is the liberal approach.
A last observation this begs for - and I have made before and will reiterate: It is disheartening, while also revealing of the liberal mindset, that when a small group of Muslims commits act of terror, liberals all run to FB, MSNBC, or the nearest camera to say "But is it not all of them!". Yet, when a scrawny little POS shot up a church in Charleston, all gun-owners and Southerners were indicted in absentia.
That is the liberal mindset. If they like you, you are golden, if not, you're shit.
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