MC isn't a particularly big fan of Ross Douthat but he's ok. How's that for damning with faint praise? Our fear is he's a David Brooks in training and that's enough to ruin anyone's day. Still, he's penned a not bad piece about how we in America have this thing called the First Amendment and it allows us to shock the rest of our citizens to no end.Except when it comes to the very violent religion of peace. Then something else kicks in and that something else isn't pretty. MC doesn't think Douthat deserves as much praise as he's been getting for this (then again, the courage bar is set awfully low these days) but we're happy to pass along his piece for our readers. Click on the title of this post to read it. We thought the following was his best bit:
"Our culture has few taboos that can’t be violated, and our establishment has largely given up on setting standards in the first place.
Except where Islam is concerned. There, the standards are established under threat of violence, and accepted out of a mix of self-preservation and self-loathing.
This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that “bravely” trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force.
Happily, today’s would-be totalitarians are probably too marginal to take full advantage. This isn’t Weimar Germany, and Islam’s radical fringe is still a fringe, rather than an existential enemy.
For that, we should be grateful. Because if a violent fringe is capable of inspiring so much cowardice and self-censorship, it suggests that there’s enough rot in our institutions that a stronger foe might be able to bring them crashing down."
