Lest we become those we oppose...

The fanatic or theocratic advocates of terrorism and sharia law have a second arrow in their quiver - that we should become them by our own hand, so enthused in our desire to defend ourselves that we surrender our core values, those values and ideals that differentiate us from our foe.

Religious toleration means that even as we may disagree, vehemently, with many of the tenets of the various Islamic schisms and the brutal philosophies and actions urged by the Koran - to preserve our own character, we must limit our responses to those that uphold our values.

Simply being a non-apostate follower of Islam is sufficient neither for deportation or imprisonment. A crime, beyond believing in the wrong faith, must be committed - that is part of what makes us different.

Islamic immigration into the West must be modified into a weapon against those who would destroy our culture, not abolished. By welcoming the GLBT, the women and girls, and boys sufficiently young that wrong-headedness may not be fully canalized such that there is hope they might learn that women are human - we undermine Sharia law by rewarding and sheltering those it would penalize, and to a greater or lesser degree undercutting the societies that support it.

The sedition laws are a blot on the national conscience and fundamentally undermine our First Amendment rights, and that they have not yet been found unconstitutional on the face of them is a blot upon the judiciary. Again, Freedom of Speech is one of the fundamental differences our opponents seek to extinguish - what good do we serve by offering them this reward on a silver platter. Depressingly, however, freedom of speech is measured not be how much we celebrate the speech we like...but how well we tolerate those whose speech we despise, who deride those things we hold dear.

Equality before the law is one of the fundamental values of our nation, and to the extent we make exceptions, we create the pre-conditions for those very exceptions to be used against us in the next great witch hunt by the next politician seeking to wave a bloody shirt. For that very reason, much as it may pain us, we must provide mosques precisely the same (not a whit more or less) treatment as we would a synagogue or a church and an imam the precise same respect before the law that we would grant a priest, rabbi, or protestant minister. That equality is part of what differentiates us from that subset of Islam known as the "bigoted, sexist, and homicidal fundamentalist loons".

Locking the barn door after the horse has gone has long proved to be a rather futile strategy. The sheer numbers of illegal aliens in the United States, bolstered by arbitrary and confusing immigration laws and enforcement, have long since swollen well past the point where a "round-up" would be practical or even possible. That horse is gone and long since dead of old age.

Our actual remaining options regarding immigration are to secure our borders, shape a consistent and logical immigration policy that serves our interests as a nation with a reasonable seasoning of compassion and decency, and with that accomplished both blaze a clear path to citizenship and inclusion for those already here striving to make a lawful life for themselves and rapid deportation for those engaging in crime for fun and profit.

By buying into the mystique of terrorism we glorify our opponents, who in reality are nothing more than megalomaniac thugs with a taste for intimidation and disregard for humanity. We better serve our cause by calling them what they are - murderers, kidnapers, arsonists, extortionists, and rapists. And then prosecuting them under existing laws, providing them every single jot and tittle that any common crook gets, and then punished accordingly. To the extent we make them "special", to them and their ideological allies we somehow justify their heinous act, allowing them to dodge the true vileness of their crimes by acknowledging them as "allah's warriors" and similar tripe.

It boils down to mandatory inclusion of those already here - no special persecution by the state, and not one whit of special forgiveness for "cultural differences". Precise equality. And when our statutes and ordinances are violated, no acknowledgement of alien legal systems - they are irrelevant to the proceeding at hand, and are not in any way or form an excuse for unlawful conduct.

Lest there be any mistake, this is largely in response to what I believe was a misguided statement on another blog, and if I'm going to whack on such a thing at this length and with this level of enthusiasm - it seems darned rude to do it over there.