Year: 2017

We’re living in a dangerous time when confronting opinion with violence (not as metaphor or virtual play, but as actual physical action) is encouraged and celebrated. The advocacy of aggressive violence, albeit generally protected expression, increases the risk of more violence, including government suppression of assembly and speech. Those who respond to opinion with violence are in part responsible for pushing the nation towards the authoritarian path. Those calling for the suppression of speech and assembly are making a whip for their own backs. Those who believe in keeping an open and democratic society must therefore remind others of the morality and practical value and strategic use of violence and, by extension, nonviolence (see Martin Luther King, Jr. for the arguments concerning the use of nonviolence in political action; this essay focuses on the use and ethics of violence).

Violence may be an end or a means to an end. For those who like to fight, injure, kill, maim, and rape, it is an end, an expression of frustration or hatred or power, or a type of thrill. Committing acts of violence make some people happy, give them joyful memories, bragging rights, and trophies. In these instances, one may conceptualize violence as a means to such ends. The line is a bit blurry. However, this type of violence is rarely justifiable (except, perhaps, in sport, where both parties agree to combat). As a clear means to an end, violence can be right or wrong depending on the ends its users seek and how they use it. Violence used to obtain things that others genuinely need cannot be justified. Violence used to maintain the conditions of exploitation or oppression cannot be justified. Violence used to eliminate, punish, or silence others for their associations, beliefs, expressions, or lineages, on these grounds alone, cannot be justified.

There are three conditions that justify violence: (1) self-defense; (2) protection of targets of unjust violence; and (3) the overthrow of exploitative or oppressive conditions.

If you are attacked, you have the right to use force sufficient to end the attack and save yourself – after exhausting reasonable options (such as your duty to retreat). You are defending your right to life and health, which are essential to the freedom you have an inalienable right to. If a child is threatened with bodily harm, you have the right to use force to negate that threat for the same reason. If you are being oppressed, you have the right to overthrow your oppressor, again for the same reason. Slave revolts, for example, although illegal, are morally justified. The violent overthrow of capitalism is also morally justified—after all other avenues of obtaining liberation have been exhausted. The overthrow of tyranny is defense of freedom. All of these forms of violence are defensive acts.

The moral and practical uses of defensive violence have an associated ethics. Even when justified, violence must be used in proportion to the magnitude of the threat. You have the right to repel a threat. You do not have the right to pursue an attacker who is retreating. You do not have the right to engage in excessive violence in repelling a threat. You do not have the right to kill the deposed leaders of the toppled government. You do not have a right to be cruel or moved by malice or revenge. You cannot torture to save lives. Justifiable violence must be a rational exercise. To the extent that persons were using violence in self-defense or to protect others who were under assault in Charlottesville, violence exhibited on August 13, 2017 may be justified. However, much of the violence witnessed and documented was not. 

There are clear examples of white nationalists using wrongful violence in Charlottesville. Indeed, aggressive violence by white nationalists constitute the worse offenses that occurred in Virginia. The beating of Deandre Harris in a parking garage by white supremacists was a horrific display of racial hatred – and slow to get media attention. The murder of Heather Heyer and the maiming of scores of other persons by a white supremacist James Alex Fields, using his car as a weapon, appeared to be motivated by hate and politics. If so, this was an act of domestic terrorism. Fields has been charged with counts of second degree murder, malicious wounding, and hit and run with attendant failure to stop with injury. The US Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation. The US Attorney General has characterized Fields’ actions as terrorism.

The aggressive violence used by antifascists to silence white nationalism was unjustified. It is never appropriate to use violence against persons exercising their right to express an opinion, whatever that opinion it is, in whatever non-violent manner that opinion is expressed. Violence in these instances is a means to illiberal ends: the suppression of the rights to speech and assembly. Government’s duty is protect these rights. The fact that a person expresses hatred towards other people is not physical aggression. Expressing an opinion does not physically harm a person or others, nor does it represent an actual moment of oppression or tyranny. Ideas and words are not violence in themselves.

The potential for white nationalist violence is a perennial problem and there are indications that it is increasing. The government must act decisively to quell this threat through surveillance, education, and policing where violence occurs. Control over weapons is key to reducing the risk of death and injury. We already have models to deal with the potential for white nationalist violence (e.g. the tactics used to deal with the problem of Islamism). 

However, wrongful violence committed by anti-fascists is a growing problem, as well, and the state has a duty to protect people from this form of aggressive violence. Education is an important step in reducing the problem of anti-fascist violence (for example, emphasizing the morality of violence and the ethics surrounding its use). In the meantime, a larger police presence where anti-fascist violence is likely could reduce harm to persons and damage to property.

Two cases illustrate the problem of anti-fascist violence. In May, 2017, a teacher at Diablo Valley College in Berkeley, Eric Clanton, attacked and injured seven Trump supporters in the head with a U-lock bike lock. Some of the injuries were severe. A police search of his home turned up anti-fascist flags, indicia, pamphlets, and patches.   Clanton was charged with several felonies. In July 2017, Yvette Felarca, a Berkeley public school teacher and organizer of the pro-violence anti-fascist organization “By Any Means Necessary,” or “Bamn,” was arrested for attacking a man in June in Sacramento in June 2016 and for inciting a riot. Just as with the assaults by Clanton, Felarca’s violent actions were captured on videotape. In early August, 2017, she was arraigned on counts of assault, participating in an illegal riot, and causing a riot.

We condemn these actions, not because we disagree with the motivation behind them, but because the unjustified use of violence is wrong. The appropriateness of violence is not determined by the opinions or ideology people hold or express; the correct use of violence is determined on objective moral grounds that transcend politics and ideology. Action is governed by the universal and transhistorical logic of civil and human rights, the core of which is the right of all people, regardless of their attitudes and beliefs, to be free of suffering and safe from violence. 

The images, video, and eyewitness accounts of anti-fascists punching, kicking, bludgeoning, and pepper spraying white nationalists are particularly disturbing to those of us who operate with strict ethics in the use of violence because anti-fascists share so many of our values. We, too, condemn racial hatred and bigotry. We, too, are opposed to ethnic nationalism and white supremacy. We, too, protest injustice and prejudice and demand an end to discrimination. But we also observe the moral and ethical use of violence (and nonviolence).

Also disturbing is the ideological defense of aggressive violence and the shaming of those who object to it on moral grounds. If we are going to have moral authority in condemning the unjustified and unnecessary use of force and violence, then we must put aside ideology and hold all parties accountable for wrongful action. If it is wrong for one side, then it is wrong for the other side. This is a basic and timeless moral rule. Moreover, the ideological defense of aggressive violence sanctions violent action for those who share progressive values. Mainstreaming aggressive violence expands the risk of harm not only to white nationalists, but to peaceful protesters and bystanders. Not all, but a very active minority of antifascists believe they have a special right and moral authority to endanger people’s lives and wellbeing. They don’t.

Anti-fascist violence is counterproductive. As we have seen in previous events (for example, in Berkeley, in early February 2017, over the appearance of Milo Yiannopoulos), antifascists are eager to use violence. As in other places, they went to Charlottesville looking to rumble. Without violence, the world would have hardly been moved to think about a small group of white men (a crowd size of 100-200, even after widespread promotion of the event) gathered to proclaim support for a Civil War memorial and chant the atavistic desires of moral imbeciles who never went away (obnoxious white supremacy is not a new thing) but remain few in number. Now the racists enjoy a larger audience. And, for some observers, they look a bit like martyrs; antifascist violence created an opportunity for white nationalists to claim that their legal exercise of assembly and the free expression of their opinions was violently suppressed by those who do not have a legal or moral right to restrict their speech or to physically engage them.

The moral substance of the far right and the far left couldn’t be more different. It’s the difference between those who crave belligerence, rationalize inequality, oppress women, persecute gays, and wreck the environment versus those who seek peace, equality, and justice, and work to preserve the biosphere. Peacemaking expresses love of humanity. It’s the far right who deems members of certain groups unworthy of human consideration. The far left works with a different morality. This is why left-wing violence must be held to a higher standard. 

If violent antifascists and anarchists are actually agent provocateurs, then this needs to be exposed with hard evidence. Otherwise the claim will be dismissed as a manifestation of conspiracism. But there’s a problem here. Even if right-wing machinations could be shown to be true for some cases, is it plausible that this could be true for every case? If violent leftists are not agents of the state or right-wing groups, and it seems more likely they are not than they are, then the complaints about the media creating a false balance, while in substance true, is not only made possible by antifascist and anarchist violence, but by those who support it or fail to criticize it. Perception counts for a lot. Politics is about changing the public mind. If you don’t want the media focusing on left-wing violence, and using it to diminish the significance of growing white nationalism, then condemn it. 

Here are two basic rules to follow: (1) be out front in your support of free speech, association, and assembly; (2) be clear in your opposition to the use of aggressive violence from every side—the police, white nationalists, left-wing activists. 
There is a straw man being floated by those supporting violent confrontation that goes something like this: those who oppose aggressive or violent confrontation of persons exercising their First Amendment rights want to have a dialogue with white nationalists. Protecting First Amendment rights has nothing necessarily to do with the particular content of speech or the desire to engage in particular acts of dialogue. It has to do with the protecting the right of every individual to hold and express opinions, freely associate with others, and assemble publicly to share opinions—and that means seeing, hearing, and reading opinions as much as uttering and writing them.

What about defensive violence? Even defensive violence is problematic when persons using it put themselves in a position that makes resort to it more likely. Peacefully walking into a gathering of KKK members does not justify their use of violence against their opponents. But knowing that the resulting riot will be used by the media to paint both sides as problematic, perhaps it is unwise to make it possible for others to claim that the left is provoking an altercation with their presence. What is to be gained by showing the world that the KKK is violent? Is there anybody who doesn’t already know this? You can try to change the media frame by protesting it. Has that worked? Or you can avoid providing the media with material to frame. It’s not as if the media will explain to the public the difference between aggressive and defensive violence. 

Of course, law enforcement should protect the community from white nationalism, not from left-wing activism. Efforts must be directed at pushing the police in that direction. This is not helped by enabling situations where the police have reason to turn their attention to the left. The left should to set the peaceful example of public politics. The left should show the public why it is different from far right-wing protestors. Aggressive and violent confrontation, even if it reduces the frequency and size of white nationalist gatherings, is counterproductive to the goal of building a mass movement because it alienates potential participants. It reinforces the commitment of the passive majority to not get involved with popular action—or, worse, to support repressive police control of protests. Violent protests suggest to the majority that the left does not have a viable agenda for solving their problems (and, frankly, at this time, does it?). Remember, the left isn’t trying to help the far right. How are riots going to solve the difficulties families face in America? How will costumed street fighting help them pay their mortgage, hospital bills, and for college?

We need to be better teachers. Teachers who teach the people that speech is not violence, that violence is not an appropriate means to silence the opinions of others, and to respect the moral ground and consistently observe the ethical rules that govern the justifiable use of violence. We need a united front against the threat of white nationalism. This means enlisting members of the majority in moral concern about the risks to democracy and freedom extreme right-wing ideology presents. We need them to see the extreme right as the source of belligerence. The left should be the nonviolent and rational alternative. We aren’t trying to persuade Nazis. We’re trying to persuade the persuadable. They’re our audience.

Update (08-18-2024) In this essay from 2017, and in a previous one published two years earlier, Islamophobia has no Place on the Left, I make an argument about the absurdity of reducing rational fear of Islam to a “phobia,” that is to an irrational fear of something, by asking why criticisms of Christianity are not “Christophobia” (or why people concerned about fascism not “fascophobic”). I have made this arguments many times since, here and on social media. Like my comparison of gender ideology to Scientology, which I have been promoting for a few years now (for example, Dianetics in Our Schools and Step Away From the Crazy), the logic of my arguments and analogies find their way into contemporary discourse. Whether Dawkins was inspired by my analogy is beside the point. The point is that my analogies occur to people prepared to think clearly about the world.

The Truth About Islamophobia
by Richard Dawkins pic.twitter.com/lqosiuqGFr

— Ex-Muslims of Norway (@exmuslim_norway) August 16, 2024

To gain perspective, whenever you hear and read anything talking about Muslims, the Muslim community, Muslim-majority countries, or Islam mentally substitute the words “Christians,” “the Christian community,” “Christian-majority countries,” and “Christianity.” Does the attitude/argument still make sense? Can the point your making still be justified? Are analogous criticisms of Christianity “racist” or “bigoted”? Are they “Christophobic”? Are Christians being persecuted because liberals want a secular society? Is tolerating patriarchy and homophobia necessary because these hatreds are part of Christian doctrine? Must people refrain from making or enjoying humorous observations about Christian beliefs and rituals—virgin birth and walking dead, laying on of hands, speaking in tongues, pedophile priests, because these offend Christians? Should we allow Christian communities to have their own laws based on Judeo-Christian doctrine/values? Suppose they have customs that are oppressive to women, children, skeptics, nonbelievers. Shall we accept these as “cultural diversity”? Do what Muslim believe, say, or do sound problematic or troubling when you imagine Christians believing, saying, or doing the same?

If you are not already doing this, then you have either failed to recognize that Islam is, at the very least, a religion like Christianity, and that keeping a secular republic depends on a persistent and vigorous defense of religious liberty. If you are prepared to be a vigilant secularist with respect to the encroachment of Christianity into our public and private lives, and engage in vigorous criticism of Christian doctrine and politics, including satire and ridicule, if you are prepared to offend Christians with profane and sacrilegious utterances, then you must be prepared at a minimum to express the same attitude towards Muslims.

There is a growing effort across the United States to pass laws defining violence against police officers as a “hate crime.” That this idea is gaining traction tells us a lot about the authoritarian moment we are in.

Hate crime laws are reserved for acts of violence against members of groups identified along lines of race, gender, etc., identities perceived to be organic, marked by traits usually unalterable/imposed by society. This special class of law is aimed at deterring violence directed at minority groups/historically oppressed populations.

In contrast, being a police officer is an occupation, like a firefighter or sanitation worker. Or college professor. Occupations are not at all like race and gender. A firefighter is not like a black person. A person chooses to become a police officer. And when he is not on the job, he can take off the uniform. He is not a “Blue Life.” A black person is born black, dies black, and lives black in between.

There’s something disturbing about responding to black civilian deaths at the hands of cops by suggesting that risk associated with an occupation is comparable to the suffering of victims of race oppression. More than disturbing, frankly.

Cop violence against civilians is often marked by racial bias, yet how often are cops charged with hate crimes where the evidence is clear that it was the race of the victim that at some point motivated the officer’s actions? Racial profiling is not a form of bias? I know of no serious research that contradicts the general finding that racial profiling is a serious problem in law enforcement.

Imagine if we passed hate crime laws for teachers, sanitation workers, firefighters, mail carriers, and so on. Why don’t we? Because protecting these groups provides no ideological value for advocates of the police state. That’s right, the purpose of making “Blue Lives” a category akin to black lives is the perpetuation/promotion of law and order/crime control policies.

In this way, “Blue Lives Matter” functions like “Support Our Troops,” slogans designed to deter criticism of public institutions and policies. 

This is unfortunate, because, in a representative democratic republic based on individual liberty, those who have an official control function – who usually carry guns, Tasers, pepper spray, batons, and handcuffs – must be subject to strict professional standards, continual evaluation of performance, and consequences for behavior that imperils the public.

Even if we were to accept the (absurd and repugnant) premise that having a job in law enforcement makes the employee like a black man, the reality is, based on the data I have seen, it has never been safer to be a cop in America. Violence against police officers has been declining for years (this year is on track to surpass last year, but we have no way of knowing whether this is a trend or an anomaly). On the list of most dangerous jobs, police officer doesn’t crack the top ten. It’s much more dangerous to be a sanitation worker (or a lumberjack or a commercial fisher).

Such legislation is not about addressing a “wave” of cop killings across the United States. It’s propaganda designed to treat the police as a special class in order to reinforce the legitimacy of the coercive state apparatus. With the historic decline in crime in the United States, and with police violence against civilians rising, an ever growing number of citizens are wondering whether it isn’t time to rethink the path we have been on, to consider rolling back aggressive policing tactics, draconian laws, cruel sentencing guidelines, and mass incarceration, all of which have a disproportionately negative impact on minorities, particularly blacks. 

Those employed by the vast control apparatus, as well as those who  benefit from it in a myriad of ways, have an interest in preventing a public conversation about policing and racism in America. Hence “Blue Lives Matter.” But there is no such thing as “Blue Lives.”

See the CNN story here. Noor won’t speak to investigators. That’s his right under the constitution. At the same time, he is a police officer who took an oath to defend the community. But which community? Sorry for being blunt, but the balkanization of Minneapolis, the continual harassment of women and gays by Somali Muslims, and the recruitment of dozens of young men from the city for al-Shabaab in Somalia and for ISIS in Syria and Iraq (one of the reason why restrictions on Somali refugees was imposed by the current administration) makes assumptions of good will problematic. The circumstances of the shooting are very strange. Gangs of Somali males have been roaming the Minneapolis sexually harassing and assaulting women (this has been going on for years, apparently, but kept quiet as it is in Europe). Justine Ruszczyk reports what she suspected was a rape in progress in the alley behind the house (what do we know about this?). A Somali police officer, a hero to the Somali community, with several complaints against him, arrives at the scene and promptly shoots Ruszczyk dead. They did not have the body cameras turned on. Why not? Maybe he’s an idiot who shouldn’t be a cop (he is hardly the only one of these). But maybe he is a bit more interesting than that. The family is frustrated by the reluctance of the city to be forthcoming.

Pay close attention to the facts (BBC “Syria war: Thousands evacuated from besieged towns”): “Foah and Kefraya, most of whose residents are Shia Muslims, have been encircled by rebels and al-Qaeda-linked Sunni jihadists since March 2015.” This is not Assad doing this to his people. This is the work of the rebels, who are overwhelmingly jihadis, and al-Qaeda. “People from the north-western towns of Foah and Kefraya are being taken to government-held areas near Aleppo.” The understanding is that they will be safe under Syria control. Two other towns are in desperate straits: Madaya and Zabadani. Of these, Madaya is being evacuated. The situation in these towns is that they is held by the same rebel forces that are making life miserable for those living in Foah and Kefraya. No word yet on whether Zabadani is being evacuated. If regime change were not the goal of the West, the humanitarian mission would be to assist Syria in repelling the jihadis and restoring government control over all of Syria. This would greatly slow the outflow of Syrians and allow for government and international support for the victims of jihadis. The US is responsible for death and misery in Syria.

There is a video of Clinton calling for the US to degrade the Syrian government’s capacity to repel the Islamist terrorist threat (ISIS, al Qaeda, Al-Nusra Front), not to mentioned the armed gangs trying to overthrow the government over against the will of the people. US interference in the internal affairs of Syria under Obama resulted in tens of thousands of casualties and deep penetration by the Islamists. The Obama administration dropped scores of bombs on Syrian and provided millions of dollars to pave the way for the Islamists. Clinton wanted to ramp it up: a no-fly zone and direct confrontation with the Syrian government. Well, she got her wish. It must really eat at her that she’s not the one pulling the trigger.

The Telegraph “Salman Abedi ‘wanted revenge’ for US air strikes in Syria, Manchester bomber’s sister says.” The sister of Manchester suicide bomber Salman Abedi “believes” her brother carried out the Manchester attack because he wanted revenge for US air strikes on Syria. It couldn’t have been for bombing Libya because that’s what made Libya safe for Abedi’s family, who returned there after the overthrow of Qaddafi. However, all the sister’s comments state only what she thinks his motive was. Apparently, the speculations of somebody’s sister is newsworthy. What speaks louder than the words she doesn’t have is the target of her brother’s terrorism. How does blowing up singing and dancing girls exact any revenge for bombing Syria? It doesn’t. It’s the act of a depraved man moved by a twisted ideology. Abedi’s family is a pack of Islamists who were part of the opposition of Muammar Gaddafi. They’re committed Sunni extremists. The Muslim community in Manchester is a known hotbed of extremism. Abedi’s was a supporter of ISIS and of suicide bombing.

I have spent many years cataloging the differences between secular humanist and civil libertarian values of autonomy, democracy, and freedom over against the religious and authoritarian desire to control thought and behavior. I draw these distinctions because I believe that understanding authoritarianism is vital to defending civil liberty and promoting human rights.

Authoritarianism is a fear of freedom and individuality, a loathing of the elements of others and of the self that contradict traditional systems of moral regulation, that is religious, culturally, and politically closed systems. Fear, insecurity, intolerance, and poor emotional regulation leads to the desire in some to control others, to embrace and defend ideologies and arguments for aggressive violence dressed as defensive and just moral action.

The authoritarian mindset cannot abide autonomous lives and unwelcome opinions. The authoritarian cannot tolerate modes of thinking that do not align with his. He opposes association and assembly for groups expressing opinions with which he disagrees. He disrupts gatherings of individuals who are sharing ideas he opposes, although, granting his fashion sense, he hasn’t quite worked out why he opposes them. Either though force, shame, or defamation, he desires the imposition of speech codes. He takes offense at speech that makes him feel uncomfortable, that insults his identity, that hurts his feelings. He blurs the line between speech and violence, claiming at once that those who upset him are assaulting him, or that they are at least a physical threat to his person and with whom he identifies or sympathizes, offenses that justify according to him suppression and violence, coercive actions held up as legitimate forms of protest and resistance.

In contrast to the authoritarian, secular humanists and civilian libertarians teach that we should instead strive to be cognitively free and emotionally autonomous, a state of being that exists when people are at liberty to think and speak as they wish, enjoy free and easy access to the means to produce knowledge and share ideas, social spaces that do not exclude people with disagreeable views, or allow groups with particular political and religious standpoints to regulate and limit interaction by imposing their ideology and behavioral controls on others. Secular humanists and civilian libertarians recognize that free speech and free thought is as much for the audience as it is for the speaker or the performer.

This standpoint permits for autonomy of belief, allows for the richest democratic practices, pushing participation into the fundamental social structures (e.g. the economy), encouraging law and policy to emerge as the work of consensus, work performed in open spaces, while simultaneously respecting individual or collective action that does not physically harm others who did not or cannot consent to be part of that action. Secular humanists tolerate a diversity of opinion and beliefs, permitting ideas to be expressed so they may be engaged. We seek to persuade people to change their minds, not coerce them to behave as if they have.

The authoritarian attitudes I have described mark the right-wing – the conservative, the traditionalist – while that those on the left – progressive liberals, radicals, socialists – are the natural defenders of secular humanist and civil libertarian values. Indeed, I still believe the humanist-libertarian tendency comes more organically to those of us on the left. Yet, today, there are some on our side whose actions betray an internalization and even embrace of authoritarian attitudes. Meanwhile, there are some on the right whose politics are guided by, or at least dressed as such, secular and libertarian values of free speech, assembly and association, and religious liberty.

The tragedy of this is that authoritarianism on the left makes more palatable right-wing ideas, since these ideas come with those who are defending – or at least appearing to defend – the core values of free and open society, values that most people desire in the ideal, but who actually represent a politics for less material freedom and a more superficial democracy. This is compounded by the fact that identity politics, left and right, dovetail with capitalist relations, politics and relations that fracture solidarity, when the left should be unified in an anti-capitalist movement. Without a choice between sides where at least one is engaged in changing the perilous circumstances of economic uncertainty, it is more likely that young men and women will run with the ideas that promote a type of hyper-individualism.

Left-wing identitarianism as a response to right-wing identitarianism is not a solution to the problems of injustice but an authoritarian attitude that serves the interests of the status quo. The one commonalty across all the groups that represents the basis for unified action, the one politics that could transform the system that underpins other divisions and antagonisms, is fractured, and the working class left disorganized, its power siphoned off into self-reifying groups based on socially constructed essences. Left-wing identity politics cannot represent a negation of, but instead serves as a mirror to right-wing identity politics, reflecting its intolerance, exclusion, essentialism, hierarchy, division, rage, and aggression. Left-wing identitarians become like their enemies in form. It is a betrayal of what the left should stand for, namely freedom of thought, the open society, democratic politics, and anti-capitalist struggle.

One’s right to hold religious opinions is no different from one’s right to hold any opinion. We should stop treating the freedom to hold religious opinions as something distinct from freedom of thought generally. Our language and our law create an illusion of significance. One has as much right to be a Christian as one has to be a fascist. There’s no real difference.

It is unfortunate that religious freedom—aimed also at liberating individuals from state organized and sanctioned religious belief—was defined when it was and in such a way as to allow religious institutions to live off the social surplus without the obligation to pay taxes. In this way, the state promotes the creation of religions by recognizing them as such for tax purposes the First Amendment notwithstanding.

That’s what Scientology did. In 1993, the United States granted L. Ron Hubbard’s confidence game operation tax exempt status. In fact, in defense of religious liberty, the US State Department has criticized European countries for not recognizing Scientology’s religious status. This is not to say Scientology is not a religion. It is just as ridiculous as Christianity. It’s to point out how arbitrary all this is.

So why aren’t fascist organizations tax exempt? Fascism is reactionary Christianity. It has as much claim on being a religion as other Christian churches (read Mussolini’s “What is Fascism?”). Is the Catholic Church not a religion? Then why not fascism? The Ku Klux Klan is a Christian organization. It engages in charitable actions. Why doesn’t it have tax exempt status? Why do Mosques get tax exempt status but not fascists? They are both totalitarian, illiberal, and irrational, advocate gender hierarchy and gay hatred, and all the rest of it.

As alluded to earlier, the government sanctioned religious tag on ideologies that reference a higher power runs contrary to the First Amendment, which says that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. Yet the government must in fact make law respecting an establishment in order to privilege chosen religions with tax exempt status.

The term “religious liberty,” except where specifically used to mark my right to not have to put up with religion’s bullshit, should be recognized not merely as an anachronism, but as a grand historic error in thinking and legal reasoning.

There is liberty in opinion. Religion is already included in that. That’s quite enough.

The Swedish government has been on the defensive since President Trump referred to a mini-documentary, published by the Gatestone Institute on May 30, 2016, that reported the problem of overrepresentation of Muslims in crime, violence, and unrest in Sweden. The government has sought to change the impression left by the Gatestone Institution in a GOS report published yesterday. However, belying its framing, the report’s own facts, along with other well-known facts, contradict the impression the government wishes to leave with its audience.

The Swedish government cites the 2010 Stockholm bombings (December 11) as the sole example of Islamic terrorism (Iraqi-born Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly is suspected of carrying out the bombing). However, in 2011, police thwarted a terrorism plot targeting an art festival in Goteborg and a planned stabbing of artist Lars Vilks, who, in cartoons, depicted Islam’s pedophile and mass murder prophet as a dog. In 2016, Swedish authorities thwarted another terrorism plot involving ISIS devotee Aydin Sevigin. Kudos to the Swedish police for preventing these attacks. Shame on the Swedish government for failing to mention these plots in their report.

As for crime generally, up until recently, Sweden enjoyed the historic decline in crime and violence statistics that all Western countries have enjoyed over the last several decades. Sweden continues to enjoy these declines among the native population. However, more recently, violent crime has been rising in Sweden. In 2015, incidents of lethal violence were much greater than they have been for years. Shootings rose 20 percent between 2006 and 2014. The number of people killed with firearms doubled between 2011 and 2015. And the statistics also show interpersonal crimes have generally increased. The Swedish media downplays stories of “no-go zones,” electing to call these “vulnerable areas.” But their descriptions of the circumstances belie (Orwellian) euphemisms.

But it not just spin. The Swedish government has attempted to downplay the overrepresentation of Muslim immigrants in official crime statistics. It initially did this by dropping demographics from its reporting (a practice that forced even the left-wing magazine Mother Jones to scold the Swedish government). In the latest report, the GOS has admitted that people from foreign backgrounds are suspected of crimes more often than people from a Swedish background. In fact, according to the most recent study, people from foreign backgrounds are 2.5 times more likely to be suspected of crimes than people born in Sweden to Swedish-born parents. But the government has not provided a comprehensive study of demographics and crime since 2005, when they found that the foreign-born presence was four times more likely to be involved in violent crime and four and as half times more likely to be implicated in sexual assault.

In denying the claim made by Swedish police officers that there are no-go zones in Sweden, the Swedish government has had to admit that, in a report published in February 2016, “the Swedish Police Authority identified 53 residential areas around the country that have become increasingly marred by crime, social unrest and insecurity.” Government officials also admit to the problem by reassuring the public that they have restricted immigration because of security measures and changes in the law. “In 2015, almost 163,000 people sought asylum here. The measures subsequently taken by the Government, including temporary ID checks and border controls, and the new temporary asylum legislation, have led to fewer people now seeking asylum in Sweden.”

The need for these restrictions is supported by recent riots in an immigrant suburb of Stockholm. Only a few days ago Muslim gangs looted businesses and burned police cars. A news photographer was hospitalized and a police officer was injured. The neighborhood, Rinkeby, has been the scene of previous riots in 2010 and 2013. The report fails to include such mass criminal events.

Finally, the Swedish report is marred by the use of the propaganda term “Islamophobia.” This is an effort to smear those who are concerned about the effect of Muslim culture on Swedish society by suggesting they are bigots and racists. The problems Sweden is facing is not just terrorism, violence, and unrest. Immigrant women, who should be enjoying Sweden’s legacy of vastly superior gender relations, are trapped in Muslim communities where they suffer the humiliation of being viewed as having less value than men. This is shameful in light of Sweden’s history of enlightened feminism. Apparently, Sweden’s multiculturalist practices trump their legacy of upholding human rights.

Sweden’s practice of permitting the existence of Muslims enclaves, its failure to assimilate Arabs and Africans into mainstream society, represents a great injustice to individuals escaping these backwards cultures. Multiculturalism and political correctness are barriers to Muslims leaving behind irrational and oppressive religious beliefs. Given the widespread atheism in Sweden and its benefits, this is a missed opportunity. The Swedish government is not helping anybody by trying to downplay the incompatibility of Islam with Swedish society. Hopefully, they will drop the public relations piece and deal honestly with the problem of assimilation in Sweden.

With the concept of “white fragility,” Robin DiAngelo, who earned a Ph.D. in Multicultural Education from the University of Washington in Seattle and tenure at Westfield State University in Massachusetts, claims that all white people are racist, that they all enjoy white privilege, but only some of them can admit it. She is one of them. Her expertise is “Whiteness Studies.” She also works as an anti-racist consultant and diversity trainer.

“I grew up poor and white,” she writes. “While my class oppression has been relatively visible to me, my race privilege has not.  In my efforts to uncover how race has shaped my life, I have gained deeper insight by placing race in the center of my analysis…. I now make the distinction that I grew up poor and white, for my experience of poverty would have been different had I not been white.” How could she possibility know this having always been white?

In 2015, Robin DiAngelo told a radio audience, “Racism comes out of our pores as white people. It’s the way that we are.” Believing she possesses an extraordinary capacity to harm nonwhites because she is, as a white woman, intrinsically racist, she said of her antiracist work, “I’m really confident that I do less damage to people of color than I used to do.” (See “Why all white people are racist, but can’t handle being called racist the theory of white fragility.”) It seems her argument is actually about “black fragility.”

Sociologists have defined racism in two ways. The first defines the phenomenon as a typology sorting humanity into subpopulations based on phenotypic attributes (for example skin color), as well as ancestry, and arranging these types hierarchically into superior and inferior types. Membership in these subpopulations determines the ability and disposition of those identified as such, traits assumed to be present in all members of racial groupings. As such, racism is an ideology motivating or justifying unequal treatment along these line, either advantaging or disadvantaging groups. Physical anthropologists and geneticists agree that such sorting of humans into racial groups is fallacious; however, racism is a ideological power that uses the typology to predefine social groups according to a scheme that establishes dominate and subordinate groups and justifies law and policy perpetrating this hierarchy.

The second way defines racism as systematic race-based discrimination resulting from institutional arrangements or structural power. Here the absence of conscious racism does not prevent the ordering of society along historically defined racial groups. In this view, groups that do not have the power to impose race prejudice or what would be prejudice if recognized, cannot be racist. Blacks cannot be racist towards whites, for example, since they lack the power to impose their prejudices on the white population.

According to the first definition, a racist would be a person who subscribed to racist or racialist ideology. It might be said (as antiracist activist Tim Wise asserts) that socialization in a culture where the notion of racial inferiority is endemic or ubiquitous exists implicitly in ordinary consciousness. This would need to be supported by evidence, which is lacking. And if one can find any exceptions, then the claim that racism oozes from the pores of white people is false. The same could be said for Christianity, but it would not make everybody Christian. A racist is somebody who accepts the doctrine of racial inferiority. It is simply not true that all or even most white people accept this doctrine.

Following the logic of the second definition, a white person who does not have the power to impose his race prejudice on black people is not a racist. A working class white man may be prejudiced against blacks, but if he does not organize with others to discriminate against them, then he does not possesses or does not exercise power to impose his prejudice. In the absence of legal machinery or political organization that imposes race prejudice, there is no mechanism for mobilizing white racial power in this way. Indeed, the entire legal and political apparatus of the United States is mobilized against the imposition of race prejudice against whites. The concepts of institutional and structural racism are deeply problematic abstractions.

Finally, there are non-prejudiced/non-discriminators, that is those who neither subscribe to racist doctrine nor treat people different on the basis of race. So even trying to get people both ways by accepting both definitions doesn’t make the claim “all white people are racist” true. If you need an example, I present myself. And if you say I’m in denial or suffer from “white fragility,” then you will have simply committed a logical fallacy, that is the fallacy of the self-sealing argument. It’s like the claim that all behavior is selfish. It’s vacuous argument, which is to say it is not an argument at all, but an assertion.

And it’s a self-loathing assertion, one that reflects a need to signal virtue by confessing sin. The psychology behind this phenomenon is the esteem one derives from redemption-seeking. It’s a performative act, one that compels the sinner to convert others to his point of view. Wise and DiAngelo are, in effect, evangelicals who have “seen the light.” Everyone is a sinner and they’re on a self-righteous crusade to steer sinners from the path of transgression so that they, too, can enjoy the elation of redemption. One sees this psychology in the “coming out of [fill in the blank]” personal story. The narrative is a public act of consciousness-altering the subject hopes elevates his status. Indeed, it is what we call in anthropology and sociology a status elevation ceremony. It’s like baptism. Folks love their baptism stories. And, like baptism, it doesn’t really change anything. But it feels so good.

Donald Trump has signed an executive order – “Executive Order 13769 “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States” – restricting entry into the United States. The policy bars all persons from several states that represent in the administration and others’ estimation national security risks from entering the U.S. for 90 days and all refugees from entering the U.S. for 120 days, as well as imposes an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees. It also reduces the number of refugees the U.S. will accept in 2017.

It has been called a “Muslim ban.” It is not. There are some fifty Muslim-majority countries in the world. The ban covers around 14 percent of them, thus allowing persons from the majority of Muslim-majority counties to opportunity to immigrate to the United States. The countries named in the executive order are Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, countries also named in a 2015 law, expanded in 2016, concerning immigration visas as “countries of concern.” It was therefore the Obama administration that passed the congressionally authored Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 (this was after the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris). Trump’s order also calls for a review of the Visa Interview Waiver Program.

Trump’s order has also been called a “blanket ban.” It is not. It allows a case-by-case review of persons from these countries seeking entry into the United States (some have already been allowed in, in fact). It includes among the reasons for entry status as an oppressed religious minority. (For those unaware, Christians are persecuted in Muslim-majority societies. I actually met with Christians in Jordan who sought me out during my visits there and heard firsthand their plight in one of the more progressive Muslim-majority countries.) Thus, on two counts, the corporate media has distorted Trump’s executive order.

As a civil libertarian, I believe in defending individuals against state tyranny by upholding due process. I am a stalwart defender of freedom of thought and expression. I believe in the right to privacy. I believe people have the right to elect their leaders and to have their collective interests represented in law and policy. Majority rule limited by protection of individual rights is the ideal form of government. I say this not merely to disclaim. For these things to exist – for liberalism and democracy to prevail going forward – the state must preserve secular values and practices, and every person who enjoys the blessings of liberty should dedicate her or himself to ensuring the perpetuation of this state of affairs. A liberal democracy must proceed on the basis of reason.

Ultimately, the power of the state from which the individual must be protected must in turn protect due process and carry out the will of the people. Every person should, if they want to keep their democracy, obligate themselves to staving off the forces of superstition and irrationalism. This is the true meaning of religious liberty: freedom from religious obligation and religious interference in governmental and judicial affairs. To the religious and their apologists on the left and the right who read these words, freedom of religion means neither the right to impose religious beliefs and practices on others nor the toleration of such impositions. Religious-based violence represents a significant threat to the values of liberal democracy, including provoking growth in police and security controls. It is in the interests of the public – and democracy – to restrict and aggressively vet those who seek to enter our country and territories.

The terms of the Trump Administration’s order enjoy considerable popular support. A recent poll by Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that 50 percent of Americans are in favor of “banning future immigration from regions where there are active terrorist groups.” Not just restricting, but banning. An AP poll found that 53% agreed that fewer Syrian refugees (there are 10,000 currently permitted annually) should be allowed into the country. Only 11% felt that the number of Syrian refugees should be increased. In several news polls, while half of Americans opposed a specific ban on Muslims (which, again, this order does not do), sizable minorities (43%, 41%, and 35% respectively) support temporary bans on Syrian refugees, non-citizen Muslim entry, and Muslim immigration generally. Taking into account that admitting support for a ban on Muslim immigrants amounts to expressing a politically incorrect opinion, it is likely that at least some of those surveyed were less than candid with pollsters. As we saw with the election itself, there is probably more popular support for Trump’s policy than the polls indicate.

Some would characterize the attitudes that inform these opinions as racist. But throwing that label around mischaracterizes the character of the antagonism. Islam is a religion, and therefore an ideology, not a race or ethnicity. This rhetoric distorts the concerns of the public. As does calling this a “Muslim ban.” To be sure, there is much to debate on the legality and motives of the order. However, the strategy of many on the left of denouncing the policy as “Islamophobic” and “racist” functions to silence legitimate concerns about the future of free and democratic societies, while perversely mainstreaming acceptance of a belief system that is the paradigm of hateful and divisive religious ideology. This is not an acceptable strategy for those who wish to resist government overreach while at the same time preserve liberal democracy. Indeed, Americans ought to have a sober and non-partisan conversation about the impact of Muslim immigration on the United States.

This conversation should be grounded in an understanding of the unique problem Islam presents to human freedom, as well as an examination of the European experience with Muslim immigration. The problem that many on the left fail to consider is the corrosive effects of an ideology antithetical to the values and norms of Western society – government, law, politics, and culture – and the need for a policy that deliberately integrates Muslims with these values and norms, as well as promotes these values in the Islamic world. The reaction to Trump’s order is an opportunity to have a broader conversation about Islam and immigration.

Because of the character of its teachings, Islam is among the religions particularly corrosive. In belief and practice, dutiful Islam is incompatible with enlightened values. To be sure, Islam is not monolithic. There are at least three branches and many sub-sects among them. There are many schools of Islamic thought, as well as movements, the most destructive of these are Salafi and Wahhabism. However, the anti-feminism, anti-democratic sentiment, irrationalism, and illiberalism of Islam survive ideological and geographical variation, even among moderate proponents of the faith. Given that Muslims represent 1.6 billion of the earth’s seven billion inhabitants, Islam represents a very real threat to human freedom and already limits the freedom of a substantial proportion of the world’s population, as the reality experienced by people living under Islamic rule testifies to. 

Islamic culture is patriarchal, misogynistic, and heterosexist, often exercising strict controls over human sexuality. In Islamic regions and societies, women are commoditized and subject to modesty rules, which limits where they can travel and with whom and, in many places, finds them covering the head and even dressing in bags and blankets, with slits or grills for eyeholes (something of a portable prison). Muslim women are reduced to objects, their personalities erased. The abuse have been so thoroughgoing that many Muslims believe the imposition of modesty is freely chosen, desirable, and even liberating. Women and men are segregated in public spaces – this is even allowed in non-Muslim majority countries. Islam does not recognize the intrinsic right of women to control their reproductive capacity; it depends on which strain of Islam controls them and the opinion of their husband whether and how they control the size of their families. Extreme sexual control not only restricts the freedom of women. The genitals of male Muslim children are ritually mutilated; every year millions of children are robbed of parts of their organ that bring pleasure during sex (to both male and female). Homosexuals are ruthlessly persecuted in Islamic society. 

Islam is intolerant of diversity of thought, indeed of free thought itself, and its rules sharply restrict creative self-expression. The punishment for leaving Islam (the crime of apostasy) is death. Muslims in large numbers believe utterances critical of Islam (blasphemy) should be punished – even when those utterances are made by non-Muslims. In many Muslims communities, music that is made for entertainment and amusement is forbidden (haram). Only halal music is permissible. Muhammad taught his followers that singing is a sin for which the perpetrator will be made on the day of resurrection eternally blind, deaf, and dumb (without a body, what is left?). Woodwind instruments draw the same eternal punishment. This prohibition is connected to Islamic obsession with sexual relations; intentionally listening to music for joy is an enchantment for adultery and fornication. Even in the United States, Muslim parents send notes to their children’s teachers telling them to keep their children out of any musical activities. Tragically, our schools capitulate to this shameful act of cultural retardation. Muslims also believe dancing is haram. Can you imagine a world without music and dancing? Can you imagine telling children that if they intentionally listen to music for entertainment or amusement that they will exist eternally blind, deaf, and mute? Adultery, fornication, the consumption of alcohol – all these are Hudud, or crimes against the imaginary being (God) Muslims submit their lives to. Punishments range from floggings, stoning, amputations of hands, crucifixion, and beheadings – all carried out in public, in front of children. 

The fact that these punishments are not practiced everywhere merely serves to demonstrate the horror of Islam where it is most closely followed and effectively holds sway over the population (for example in Iran and Saudi Arabia, and by Islamist movements like al Qaeda and ISIS). As humanists, we should strive to see that these atrocities are not practiced nowhere. We are told that other religions are also dangerous when taken to the extreme. But two things must be said about this. First, these views are not extreme in the Islamic world. Hundreds of millions of Muslims subscribe to them and, where they have not been imposed, pine for them. Second, the chance of reforming Islam is remote; Islam teaches that the law (sharia) is fixed and mandated by their god, and failure to submit to god’s will is an unpardonable sin.  

It is this Islamic demand for ideological dedication – where an irrational system of beliefs must be central to one’s identity – and the failure of policymakers, particularly in Europe, to marginalize its power by failing to help Muslims find their way out of delusion that make it so difficult for Muslims to integrate with Western society. God is the final authority, and the Quran is true and perfect – every word of it. These things are true for all who share the umma, that is the religious community. European policymakers do not encourage or even make it easy for Muslims to question their faith. They insist on defining religious liberty in identitarian terms, passing laws that punish the critics of Islam for the offense of “Islamophobia.” Perversely, criticism of a hateful and divisive ideology has become redefined as “bigotry” even “racism.” Political correctness in legislative and administrative form. This is how multiculturalism erodes freedom: the individual is punished for the sake of an ideology to which they do not subscribe.

Islam is corrosive to the necessity of the separation of church and state for a free society. Unlike Christianity, which teaches Christians to submit to civil authority, Islam does not recognize this principle. Unlike the Christian messiah, who was a spiritual figure, Muhammad was a politician and a state builder, in truth a vicious warlord who slaughtered scores of people in conquering territories for Islam. Devoted Muslims can never finally accept the separation of church and state because that means abandoning their god’s plan for humanity as manifest in the actions of his messenger. Islam is the total solution, Muslims are fond of saying, an instruction manual for a complete way of life. In essence, Islam is a totalitarian ideology and thus antithetical to liberalism, the secular basis of Western civilization. Where allowed to dominate, Islam represents an existential threat to freedom and democracy. It is no more bigotry to warn of the problem this ideology presents to human freedom as it is bigotry to warn of the problem of fascism.

The existence of a just US republic depends on making sure that Islam does not gain such a foothold in our culture that it dictates laws, policy, and politics. The Islamic imperative is the inverse of this: for Muslims, just arrangements can only ever ultimately obtain where Islamic law prevails over everything. In the meantime Muslims can only live a relatively clean life by separating themselves from the kafir, the Muslim term for unbelievers and deceivers. The principle of no compulsion in religion notwithstanding, the Quran, Hadith, and Sira, the main works of Islam, are obsessed with addressing the problem of the unbeliever. Because Muhammad despised the kafir, and because it is obligatory on Muslims to hate what god hates and love what god loves, the kafir are despised by Muslims (who are in scripture explicitly permitted to lie about this fact). Therefore, when in the minority, Muslims separate themselves from the majority and other minorities, seeking their own their own systems of governance and justice. Hence their staunch but advocacy of multiculturalism and their human rights. When in the majority, Muslims impose Islamic law and culture on everybody, and the best you can hope for is that the strain of Islam that prevails is less brutal than the other possibilities. For the kafir have no rights under sharia.

I do not argue that all Muslims or Islamic sects are equally dangerous, that with time Muslims cannot become nominal in their identity like most modern Christians, or that Muslims are the only group whose religious beliefs and practices represent a threat to human freedom. There are millions of Muslims who move peacefully in liberal society. However, Islam on the whole, even its moderate forms, which represent the minority of believers, is stricken by totalitarian desire, while Christian extremists are checked by a large number of Christians who do not subscribe to most of the Bible’s obnoxious teachings. We should strive to see most Muslims become nominal rather than devoted. But achieving this means relentless criticism of the ideology in the same way that Christianity was tempered by the rationalists and fascism was driven underground by the democrats. 

The unique problem of Islam does mean that lax immigration policies work against the goals of integration of Muslims with American society and the deliberate marginalization of Islam. The problems of Europe are a clear warning to America. Europe’s policies have undermined democratic and liberal tradition, failed the people, including Muslims citizens and residents, and provoked an ethnonationalist backlash. The combination of neoliberalism and multiculturalism has given rise to right-wing reactionary forces. These policies have overwhelmed Europe’s societal capacity to integrate and liberate persons from culturally backwards regions. Europe should slow immigration in order to provide time for people integrate. The United States should also devise a plan for the orderly immigration of peoples from Islamic countries at a pace that allows for effective integration with American society. 

Social Democrats and the liberal left that should lead this project. A rational person is only obligated to tolerate religious belief on the basis of his commitment to free thought and expression. He is not obligated to accept Islam – or any other hateful or divisive ideology – as a legitimate way of thinking about the world and ordering social life. We tolerate Muslims in the same way that we tolerate racists, fascists, sexists, and other backwards thinking people: condemning their attitudes as unacceptable. This justice-first approach is not needed only for the sake of preserving the US republic, but it is also vital to the needs of Muslims who are, after all, human beings (which a Muslim women are seen as something less of when liberal feminists defend patriarchal oppression under Islam). Why should non-Muslims love Muslims so little as to abandon them to a backwards and punishing way of life? As humanists, we have an obligation to help liberate people from stifling and irrational belief systems. It’s why our criticisms of Christianity are so relentless and have proven highly successful in pushing Christians away from the extremism inherent in their religious texts. We do this because we love Christians and want to help them escape the limitations on their freedom that devotion to doctrine imposes.

Perhaps the reader might have thought that I would prefer Trump’s order to have actually been a ban on Muslims. This would represent a profound misreading of my argument. I do not believe in religious tests of any sort. I believe in a rational immigration policy that integrates persons with the secular traditions of the United States and helps free them from the burden of backwards and irrational ideology. We are only obligated to tolerate an individual’s beliefs and actions when they do not harm us. Toleration does not demand acceptance or silence. The ideals of the enlightenment demand something quite different: they demand we strive to liberate individuals from the authoritarianism of the corporate state and the authoritarianism of organized religion. 

There is another reason why we should pursue this course. Those of us who want to deepen democracy have to think strategically. We live in a capitalist society where a handful of families and individuals control the productive assets of our society, an arrangement that allows them to exploit the creative efforts of tens of millions of working people. Effective class struggle can only proceed on the basis of a politically conscious working class, a unification that is as thwarted by the divisive effect of multiculturalism as it is the divisive effects of racism and other forms of segmentation. A democratic society, over against a majoritarian one, must put central to its politics the protection of individual rights against narrow group identity. Identity politics is one of the main obstacle to the development of popular consciousness necessary for building a political movement to finally realize the democratic ideal. Suggesting that any religious group has a right to be apart from others is to own the alienation that keeps us from establishing democratic socialism.

I am not an advocate of forced assimilation. As free agents, people can believe and act as they want as long as their actions do not harm other people, including harm to those they claim as members of their own group (we can ban circumcision and arranged marriages and the chopping off of hands without violating freedom of conscience). On the other hand, I do not support deep multiculturalism, a species of the politics of separation and the source of the error left-wing opponents of immigration restrictions make. Instead of these extremes, I advocate integration, which I understand as people living under a common law in diverse communities where non-harmful cultural differences are shared or at least tolerated without controversy.

Race, ethnicity, and so forth are social constructions, in many aspects created to divide human populations, that, when pursued as organizing principles of social relations, entrench those divisions. In contrast, integrationists see humans as individuals first. Our primary obligation is to reason, liberty, and democracy, not to race, ethnicity, or other demographic variables. This is the recipe for an inclusive national community that at the same time tolerates (but not necessarily respects) differences.

It is not unreasonable to expect people who come to our country to at the very least accept the secular character of our government and law – the government and law that is charged with defending their civil liberties – and, ideally, seek to become rational beings, using reason and science to guide their actions instead of faith and superstition. We have a lot of homework to do in this regard. Christian fundamentalism presents the reasonable with plenty of problems. We should teach the value of reason to every child, native or immigrant, even over the objections of their parents. Much of the modern left has not merely been lackadaisical in this regard; it often endeavors to paint proponents of reason as bigots. As if reason has a color and a gender.  

The desire I am expressing is not bigotry, but reflects an anti-identitarian standpoint: pluralism is recognized for its contribution to producing a rich common culture; it is not however a justification for the creation and perpetuation of enclaves based on race, ethnicity, religion, or other exclusive categories. Beliefs and actions that undermine secular values and practices are harmful to liberal democratic ends and are therefore justifiably marginalized and, where manifest in action, restricted and even prohibited. My opposition is not to immigration per se but to the balkanization of Western society. That the desire for liberal democracy has become twisted into an expression of bigotry tells us that our understanding of human freedom and reason has become severely warped. The rot of identitarianism runs very deep indeed.