Commentaries (some of them cheeky or provocative) on economic topics by Ralph Musgrave. This site is dedicated to Abba Lerner. I disagree with several claims made by Lerner, and made by his intellectual descendants, that is advocates of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). But I regard MMT on balance as being a breath of fresh air for economics.
Friday, 8 May 2015
Islamic State and the politically correct.
I do like this Financial Times letter from Julia Reddy the grandiosely entitled “Senior Legal Officer for Equality and Citizenship” at the equally grandiosely entitled “Open Society Justice Initiative” - based in New York. Her letter starts: “The attraction of Islamist movements is prompting appropriate soul-searching in “western” societies: how could those who have the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of capitalism and liberal democracy forsake these for a life of violence and hardship?”
Whaaaat? The fact that hundreds of Muslims from the West go to the Middle East to engage in murder, torture, the desecration of historical cultural ikons and various other forms of barbarism and depravity means that Westerners should “search our souls”? Absolutely hilarious. But then all forms of political correctness are hilarious.
The people who should be “searching their souls” (forgive the statement of the blindingly obvious) are the people who engage in the above barbarism. Also members of the movement that nurtured those barbarians should be “searching their souls” – that movement of course being Islam. Even better would be if they just went back to the chaotic Muslim countries they came from and stayed there permanently.
And before some twit jumps to the conclusion that I’m suggesting Westerners are anywhere near totally innocent of barbarism, I’m not. For example I blame Hitler and his Nazi pals for the gassing of millions of Jews. And I blame Brits for the barbaric behaviour towards those backing independence in Kenya a few decades ago.
But perhaps I’m wrong. In line with the PC policy of blaming the victims of crime rather than the criminals, perhaps I ought to blame Jews for being gassed by Hitler. I’ll have to have a serious think about that (ho ho).
As for reasons Muslims turn to barbarism, Julia Reddy claims, “individuals turn to extremism when their path to enjoying the life of their co-citizens is blocked by institutionalised discrimination”. Well there’s been plenty of discrimination against homosexuals, women and other groups in the West over the last couple of centuries. What THEY did was not to turn the sort of barbarity practiced by Muslims: the former groups managed to get much of the discrimination against them removed by normal peaceful and legal means.
Moreover there’s a very strong tendency for Islamo terrorists to be from comfortable middle class backgrounds: a socio economic group that have clearly not suffered from a huge amount of discrimination. See here and here.
And here’s another thought. The “discrimination” suffered by non-Muslims in the Muslim part of Nigeria and in parts of the Middle East is vastly worse than anything suffered by homosexuals, women and so on in the West in years gone by. “Discrimination” in the latter two Muslim areas can easily mean being killed or having your religious buildings blown up or having your children abducted and sold into slavery or starved to death. So according to PC / Julia Reddy logic, non-Muslims in those areas are entitled to acquire AK47s and mow down any Muslim they come across. Hope I got that right.
So to summarise, the solution to “discrimination” advocated by the politically correct and Muslims is for everyone to machine gun everyone else. Hope I got right (as well).
Political correctness is a polite, genteel form of depravity. Or perhaps the politically correct just need psychiatric treatment. It’s got to be one of those two.
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