Most of the time, I try to stay out of politics here, except for EMS politics. Today, I digress into international politics and religion. Why? Because I’m calling out hypocrisy. If you don’t like my views, that’s ok too. Google “cute kitten pictures” and come back when I’m blogging on a medical issue again.
Today, I’m calling out the progressive community. On some issues, I agree with them, especially regarding individual freedoms. Want to open up a casino that performs gay marriages and has a women’s health clinic that additionally distributes marijuana on site? Go for it! Having said that, don’t expect me to subsidize it with my tax money.
But here’s the hypocrisy of the modern left. By and large, the modern left embraces cultural relativism and multiculturalism. That’s well and good to be tolerant. But tolerance is a Western value. A lot of other cultures don’t embrace tolerance. Tolerance to them is that you submit to their ideologies and beliefs.
Over the past month, terrorists have kidnapped 200 Nigerian schoolgirls for getting a Western education, a Sudanese woman has been condemned to death for abandoning the faith of her father to become Christian, and several honor killings have been publicized in Pakistan. George Takei has publicized the plight of the woman in Sudan and no less than the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama has tweeted “#BringBackOurGirls” in response to the Nigerian kidnappings. (Personally, I think a visit from SEAL Team 6 and/or the British Special Air Service would go a long ways toward bringing those girls back.)
For years, mostly conservatives and secular European libertarians have been pointing out that Islam does not always share our Western values, in particular many of the values that the progressive left claims to value such as freedom of religion, secular government, and women’s rights. What did the Left tell those Cassandras who warned us of the intolerance of politicized, radicalized Islam? Why, Islamophobia of course.
Of course, the minute the Nigerian girls were kidnapped by an Islamic terrorist group whose name literally means “Western education is wrong,” the progressive movement had to say something. After all, feminism is a core tenet of the modern left. And at that point, the warning and condemnations came out. Why, Jay Leno’s wife even came out against sharia (Islamic) law. Previously, the left described warnings against sharia as Islamophobia from the Tea Party and chuckled a smug, knowing laugh. (You know, think Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert, or Jon Stewart.)
Tolerance is a virtue (as the old saw goes), but tolerating and granting moral equivalence to a culture and belief system that is diametrically and violently opposed to your own ceases to become tolerance. Rather, it becomes a suicide pact. To my liberal friends who wish to appease the barbarians at the gate, don’t think that the wolf won’t eat you. The wolf may just eat you last.
