The Black Republican

The debate at Dean's World continues, with a response from Dean. In one curious passage, he tries to make a parallel that undermines his case, I think.

But hiding your head in the sand and pretending there is no Islamophobia problem would be like, in the 1950s, hiding your head in the sand and claiming there were no Communists in America. After all, McCarthy was discredited--and rightly so--so therefore, there was never any Communist problem?

First of all, for the analogy to work, the people we would be "sticking our head in the sand" about, analogous to the Communists, are Muslims whose loyalty to the Great Experiment we are questioning. The Lizardoids of LGF would be McCarthyites. And Dean's belief that Islamaphobia is a great concern would put him in the role of Edward R. Murrow.

The problem is, Dean's hypothetical and the question that follows is a common belief among the hard left and their friends in the media. Or, at least, many of them say it's true that there were no Communists in Hollywood in an attempt to influence the American people to believe it. I can't count the number of people who have told me that there never were any communists, really.

As an example, Good Night, and Good Luck certainly leaves the impression that if there were any Communists, they were vastly outnumbered by the false accusations. The KGB archives and the Venona project show us otherwise. Which do you suppose more Americans believe? How many Americans have even heard of Venona, and understand its significance?

Ronald Coleman countered with this insightful comment:

Is every expression of one's ideas entitled to be accepted in the public debate -- even when those ideas themselves are antithetical to such debate and, if adopted, would end it?

That is the concept in play here. McCarthy said, Communism, like Nazism, is beyond the pale. They only want debate so they can end debate.

Modern critics of Islamism say the same about that ideology.

Assuming they are right, do we not agree that democracy is not a suicide pact? Must not the price of admission to the debate be a rolling acknowledgment that there will always be debate?

If not, democracy is not even worth fighting or dying for -- in which case our concerns are moot.

Ron is right - while we continue to allow all Americans the right to free speech and free association, there are some groups that we have attached a stigma to, in effect saying: don't buy into the rhetoric from these people. The KKK and the American Nazis rightfully bear that stigma. Communists, not nearly so much, but the Communists have a different plan than the KKK and the Nazis. They seek the advancement of their goals more than the banner they fly under. When someone comes close to pinning someone else with this stigma as Communist, they say, "This isn't communism, this is Liberalism or Progressivism." Then they spin it around: "This is just the attempt of our McCarthyite opponents to shut us up." Progressives and Neo-Liberals (because today's Liberals aren't really), out of sympathy for the ideals they share or out of ignorance, do not shun the arrival of these Leftists to their ranks.

How are we supposed to respond to this? Classical Liberals long ago decided (I think, wrongly) to redefine themselves as "Conservative", and continue the stigmatization project by demonizing Liberalism. It's worked to a lesser extent (less than 20% of the American people will now identify with the label "Liberal"), but at what price?