10
"Douthat is full of crap in several ways."
-Christina Ziegler-McPherson, author of Americanization in the States: Immigrant Social Welfare Policy, Citizenship, and National Identity in the United States, 1908-1929.
Muslims have their myths and he has his. Fair is fair.
For example, he believes that op-ed writers who die in the cause of the neoconservative movement will, upon their arrival in heaven, be given 40 sexually experienced women.
…to do their laundry.
I wonder if they agree on who burns in Hell.
It's fine to take him on from a historical perspective, because it strips the "factual" conceit from his argument.
The larger problem is the argument itself. With apparent sincerity, he applauds an "American tradition" of right-minded oppression that punishes diversity with the intent of eliminating it. There's not a shred of shame in his advocacy.
If he did have a point to make about "why it'd be better if they didn't," he ditched it in favor of blowing his horn to champion a (real or mythic) nation of populist tyrants.
Just guessing here, would one of them be: "to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight for the ends of Being and ideal Grace?"
Reason is kicking ass today.
Balko is a boon. And say what you will about libertarians, but the motherfuckers love stats. All that aspergersy attention to detail.
Yes! That is great! Thanks, Doctor.
I know it's sort of a minor objection compared with that whole defending-the-indefensible thing, but has any history-type person taken aim at the "we got the Mormons to give up polygamy" part of Douthat's column? Isn't he writing about how foreign elements/immigrants get Americanized (through suspicion and oppression)? Doesn't an example of a home-grown religious movement, forced into exile for being weird, kind of blow that whole thing to hell?