I voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. Some years ago one of my friends used to enjoy pretending it was a great secret, since I had since converted to conservatism and – given the things I’ve written on this blog – it may surprise many of my readers.
However, in 1992 I was an undergrad in college and had grown up with two liberal parents, went to a liberal high school and so had pretty much been fed the Democratic Party line since birth.
(I should add that while I may have numbered myself with the Dems, I personally was never liberal. I always admired this country, supported the military and believed the United States should take a leading role in the world. So I guess I was in the now-all-but-extinct Scoop Jackson Wing of the Democrats.)
At any rate, a major factor in my conversion was how Bill Clinton and his supporters treated all the allegations of sexual misconduct that swirled around him. Whether dealing with “bimbo eruptions” or using the “nuts and sluts” defense against credible accusations of rape, I was frankly amazed that people who styled themselves feminists could sit by and let this creep remain in office. He reminded me of the kind of one-dimensional villain I remembered from late-70s/early-80s sitcoms, the kind who the hero (Fonzie/Mary Tyler Moore/Mindy/etc.) would tell off in the climactic scene of the show.
I mention this because I was reminded of that when I read this hit piece on Ayaan Hirsan Ali linked by Mark Steyn.
It has many of those same ingredients – starting with the rote dismissal of anyone who ever converted from left to right. I think that’s telling because it does two things.
First, it allows the author to bring up Ronald Reagan and David Horowitz - two people who the leftist readership loathes – so that they are in the right frame of mind for a hit piece.
More importantly, it addresses a major problem with Ms. Ali for the left – that her narrative has a strong personal component. The left is still wedded to the concept that the personal is political. That is why they keep throwing the juvenile “chicken hawk” slur around and rely on fake soldiers to make their points for them.
They understand that others can play their game and they don’t like it very much. Thus, this article is from its outset designed to hammer Ali so that none of the liberal Faithful can be corrupted by her heresy.
I don’t have the time or the inclination to fisk the whole thing, but there are a couple of passages that I find very illuminating because it shows the lengths to which the left will go in order to make a point.
The first concerns the political background of Ali, and her involvement in Dutch politics:
The film, written by Hirsi Ali, was Submission, an amateurish and clunky art flick whose attack on Islamic culture was overarching and anything but subtle. Like the Danish cartoons that would cause such controversy a few years later, the film, directed by Theo Van Gogh -- a distant relative of Vincent -- was an intentional provocation. Van Gogh was a close associate of Pym Fortuyn, a rabidly anti-immigrant right-wing politician who would later be assassinated by an animal rights fanatic, and his constant references to Muslims as "goat f*ckers" had already outraged the Muslim community. In 2004, Van Gogh was riding his bicycle in Amsterdam when Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-born extremist of North-African descent slashed his throat and shot him eight times. A note addressed to Hirsi Ali was found on the body, and she went into hiding soon after. [Emphasis and censorship added.]
So basically, Fortuyn and Van Gogh deserved to get whacked because they were jerks. So if, a Mormon guns down Robert Redford, will leftists say he was asking for it?
This passage is also interesting because it omits two rather important facts.
The first is that Pym Fortuyn was an open homosexual – hardly what one usually thinks of when one reads the description “right-wing.” The second is that Van Gogh wasn’t just shot and stabbed, he was ritually killed by a Muslim who claimed justification under Islamic law.
Now that kinds of undercuts the notion that “Muslim terrorism” is just a Neocon bogeyman, which is why it was left out.
Interesting as that passage is, I think the most interesting part of the article is the attempt to argue that Muslim women like being second-class citizens and that tales of their oppression are wildly exaggerated.
There are some choice quotes from feminists about how the desire to introduce western-style civil rights for Muslim women is really a chauvinist-Crusader-Neocon fantasy, which brilliantly show why the left is essentially worthless on the question of human rights.
This is basically the equivalent of a southern newspaper from 1856 arguing that Blacks like being enslaved because they are spared the pressures of having to find a job and pay bills. I'm sure they could have found (and maybe did, I'm too lazy to look it up) some slave who would argue that their master was kind, and kept them fed and clothed, which was better than those po' free blacks starving in the gutters of New York or Boston for lack of work.
In another stunning display of hypocrisy, the article tries to downplay the problem of honor killings, taking the line that “Well, yes they happen but the UN [hah!] says there are only 5,000 a year.” The article then points out that 1,232 woman are killed by "intimates" in the US each year.
Of course there's a huge difference between the US statistic and the low-ball UN estimate, isn't there? I'll spell it out: In the United States, killing a woman is a crime. Honor killings aren't.
Indeed, we take crimes against women so seriously that we put innocent college students through total hell on the most spurious and easily disproved charges (see Duke, non-rape case).
Meanwhile, 13 women a day are killed around the world by the Patriarchy for daring to do uppity things like hold hands, speak their mind or refusing to wear sacks over their heads and that's basically okay.
This attitude is something to keep in mind the next time a feminist group is holding a rally in your area. Maybe when they do the Take Back the Night thing on campus I'll bring a sign that says "End Honor Killings Now" and see how that goes over. Anyone want to take bets on how warmly I'll be greeted.
I'm not sure why Steyn linked to the piece, but I'm glad he did. At first I thought he was showing how people of all political stripes were able to make a common cause against horrific human rights abuses. But I now see that it was to show how utterly depraved and morally bankrupt the modern left and their feminist allies are.
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