In the latest American Conservative, John Zmirak offers a useful thought experiment to demonstrate the polarised extremes of contemporary American politics. He writes, in part:
Progressives, every time you complain about the “Christian Right,” just once plug in the “Jewish Left.” Sounds kind of offensive, doesn’t it?
Conservatives, imagine that it had been Arabs, instead of Americans, who killed 200,000 civilians in Hiroshima to save the lives of their soldiers. Then it would have been an act of terrorism.
Progressives, imagine if George W. Bush were using force trying to spread feminism instead of capitalism. Would you still protest his wars?
Conservatives, imagine if it were Bill Clinton trying to suspend the Constitution to protect us against white terrorists like Timothy McVeigh. Would you call reporters “traitors” for covering it?
The rest of the article continues in a similar fashion and is worth reading.
Asking oneself hypothetical questions such as these is a useful means of determining whether one is really acting according to a principle. For example, we might ask ourselves if we would tolerate cartoons depicting gross caricatures of Arabs and Muslims if they appeared in the Jewish press here in the West (as opposed to our tolerance, it seems, for anti-semitic caricatures that appear in the Arab press). Some non-Muslim supporters of Jack Straw et al might also ask whether they would be equally supportive of the right of a Muslim pharmacist, let us say, that asked any women entering his pharmacy to cover her face before he would attend to her.
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If Islam required women to dress revealingly, would the West still denounce it as oppressing women?
If it was aboriginals and not Muslims that lived in their own areas and appeared isolated due to their traditions, would Western politicians still denounce them as promoting division?
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