Checking in at PJM
I went over to the Pajamas Media website to read their big new report on the TNR-Beauchamp matter* and found this unrelated doozy. The main page summary of John Derbyshire's review of a new book condemning Islam:
Is Robert Spencer’s new book Religion of Peace?—Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t just another addition to the “burgeoning literature of Islamophobia”? That’s the opinion of John Derbyshire, who contends that Spencer’s own Christianity is to blame for the book being “a bit infantile.”
Yeah, except that if you actually read a fair ways into the review you'll find that Derbyshire's complaint with the book is (surprise, surprise) that it isn't nearly Islamophobic enough:
If what [Spencer] has told us is true—and so far as the present state if Islam is concerned, I think it is—then the West should proscribe Islam, and the sooner the better. We should not allow Muslims into our countries, other than for necessary diplomatic or scholarly purposes. We should revoke the visas and permits of resident aliens who are Muslims, and ensure their departure. We should offer to purchase the citizenship of Muslim citizens, and bribe them to leave. Those who will not leave should be carefully watched by the police, and subjected to social disabilities—they should not, for example, be admitted to the armed forces, or allowed to proselytize in prisons. (Take a religion addled with violence and infused with a hatred of our society, and teach it in prisons to the most violent and antisocial of our people? Have we gone stark raving mad?) Mosques and madrassahs should be closed, or at the least punitively taxed.
A paragraph later Derbyshire explains:
Millions of harmless, peaceful Muslims will of course be inconvenienced, but life comes with no guarantee of uninterrupted convenience, and moving from one country to another is not especially arduous—I have done it myself several times.
Well of course... being deported to some desperately poor theocracy or Sultanate isn't really all that different from what John Derbyshire went through when he decided to move to America... in fact he probably had more boxes. This is pretty typical fare for PJM: take a controversial right-wing book and attack it from the right - but quite specifically from the sneering, alcohol-consuming, big-city urbane, possibly-even-athiest, possibly-even-gay right to which PJM directs itself. The only amusing thing is the little dance PJM does to make its utter contempt for tolerant thinking jibe with the respectability it craves in a relatively tolerant society. It's loathe to admit on its front page that it's actually just a cleaned-up version of Little Green Footballs. Like a skin rag for Islamophobic assholes, you have to actually open it up to get the money shots.
* The TNR expose - which Roger L Simon gratuitously informs us on his personal blog he helped produce - turns out to be a go-around with the same former TNR temp who leaked to Ace of Spades two weeks ago. After Ace blew his cover and got him fired in a matter of hours, he found himself free to peddle the exact same information (interspersed with some speculations, opinions and self-justifications) to PJM, which, naturally, treats the information as breaking fresh. Oh: there's also some hiss-spit from a Beauchamp ex-fiancee which actually is original if not totally relevant. The piece does contain one truly great line though: "The New Republic has not responded to repeated phone calls from PajamasMedia.com". Thank God. I can forgive them Jamie Kirchick, but I'm not sure I could forgive them that.
Is Robert Spencer’s new book Religion of Peace?—Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t just another addition to the “burgeoning literature of Islamophobia”? That’s the opinion of John Derbyshire, who contends that Spencer’s own Christianity is to blame for the book being “a bit infantile.”
Yeah, except that if you actually read a fair ways into the review you'll find that Derbyshire's complaint with the book is (surprise, surprise) that it isn't nearly Islamophobic enough:
If what [Spencer] has told us is true—and so far as the present state if Islam is concerned, I think it is—then the West should proscribe Islam, and the sooner the better. We should not allow Muslims into our countries, other than for necessary diplomatic or scholarly purposes. We should revoke the visas and permits of resident aliens who are Muslims, and ensure their departure. We should offer to purchase the citizenship of Muslim citizens, and bribe them to leave. Those who will not leave should be carefully watched by the police, and subjected to social disabilities—they should not, for example, be admitted to the armed forces, or allowed to proselytize in prisons. (Take a religion addled with violence and infused with a hatred of our society, and teach it in prisons to the most violent and antisocial of our people? Have we gone stark raving mad?) Mosques and madrassahs should be closed, or at the least punitively taxed.
A paragraph later Derbyshire explains:
Millions of harmless, peaceful Muslims will of course be inconvenienced, but life comes with no guarantee of uninterrupted convenience, and moving from one country to another is not especially arduous—I have done it myself several times.
Well of course... being deported to some desperately poor theocracy or Sultanate isn't really all that different from what John Derbyshire went through when he decided to move to America... in fact he probably had more boxes. This is pretty typical fare for PJM: take a controversial right-wing book and attack it from the right - but quite specifically from the sneering, alcohol-consuming, big-city urbane, possibly-even-athiest, possibly-even-gay right to which PJM directs itself. The only amusing thing is the little dance PJM does to make its utter contempt for tolerant thinking jibe with the respectability it craves in a relatively tolerant society. It's loathe to admit on its front page that it's actually just a cleaned-up version of Little Green Footballs. Like a skin rag for Islamophobic assholes, you have to actually open it up to get the money shots.
* The TNR expose - which Roger L Simon gratuitously informs us on his personal blog he helped produce - turns out to be a go-around with the same former TNR temp who leaked to Ace of Spades two weeks ago. After Ace blew his cover and got him fired in a matter of hours, he found himself free to peddle the exact same information (interspersed with some speculations, opinions and self-justifications) to PJM, which, naturally, treats the information as breaking fresh. Oh: there's also some hiss-spit from a Beauchamp ex-fiancee which actually is original if not totally relevant. The piece does contain one truly great line though: "The New Republic has not responded to repeated phone calls from PajamasMedia.com". Thank God. I can forgive them Jamie Kirchick, but I'm not sure I could forgive them that.
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