Right Wing Nut House

Reading commentary from liberals and Muslim groups like CAIR on the King hearings regarding the radicalization of Muslims in America, one is shocked by the over the top, exaggerated, hysterical rhetoric being used to describe it.

It’s “McCarthyism.” It’s “Islamophobia.” It’s Hitlerian, bigoted, racist - it’s every hand wringing, frothing at the mouth adjective you care to use to describe an effort to discover why young Muslim American men have traveled to Pakistan or other countries to receive terrorist training from al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups — and why some of them have turned to violent jihad.

Counter arguments don’t stand up to scrutiny, as I point out in my latest article at FrontPage.com:

In fact, the list of radicalized, home-grown terrorists is a long one. The question isn’t why we are looking at the problem, but why anyone in their right mind would oppose the effort in the first place?

The attacks on Rep. King are as vicious as they are unfair. The New York Times, in an editorial dripping with self-righteousness, blatantly calls him a bigot. Says the Times: ”His refusal to tone down the provocation despite widespread opposition suggests that he is far more interested in exploiting ethnic misunderstanding than in trying to heal it.”

In fact, the Times won’t even grant King the benefit of the doubt regarding any radicalization of Muslims in America. It editorializes, “Mr. King, a Republican whose district is centered in Nassau County on Long Island, says the hearings will examine the supposed radicalization of American Muslims.”

The “supposed” radicalization of American Muslims? This is the CAIR position lock, stock, and barrel. The unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial promote the idea that Americans mistake extremists for devout Muslims and that preaching jihad against the West doesn’t necessarily mean that violence is being promoted. Any effort to say otherwise is met with cries of “Islamophobia” or “racism.”

In an article in the New York Daily News on February 28, CAIR accused King of all sorts of vile offenses, including “hold[ing] hearings on the alleged ‘radicalization’ of American Muslims” and lying about the lack of cooperation between the Muslim community and law enforcement when it comes to terrorism investigations.

Despite CAIR’s caterwauling, police and federal agents confirm King’s assertion. A New York Daily News article quoted local and federal law enforcement officials declaring that King was right about the lack of cooperation from Muslims in terror investigations, although they also point to similar attitudes toward tipping police from other ethnic communities. The point being, CAIR is wrong and they know it. Their goal is not to improve communication between Muslims and the FBI, but rather to stoke the flames of distrust so that their people see a greater need for a “Muslim civil rights group” to protect them from the police and the Feds.

What marks the rhetoric of the left as they seek to bury King (who has done himself no favors by playing fast and loose with some of the facts), is the blizzard of straw men they set up portraying King in the most unflattering ways, and then heroically knocking them down, cheering themselves all the way.

One day, I’d like to have an argument with a lefty where Eugene McCarthy and Adolf Hitler don’t make an appearance.