freedom and reason

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. 

I had an argument with a Christian last night in which I was told that my reference to Hell, which I regard to be one of the worst features of Christianity, was an “interpretation,” and, moreover, that I can’t know what Christians think. Let me take up the second claim first, a claims sometimes rendered, “You don’t know what’s in my heart.” This is a favorite argument of racists, as if being a racist is determined by what one thinks of himself and not what he believes and how he acts. The same applies to being a Christian but in reverse: with racism, you don’t get to deny you’re a racist while embracing racist beliefs and practices; with Christianity, you don’t get to say, “I’m a Christian” and then deny the core elements of your faith. I’m not giving anybody the wriggle room to escape their responsibility in these matters.

The fact is that the New Testament is full of references to Hell. In 2 Thessalonians 1:9, which has historically been considered to be one of Paul’s epistles, in which case it was written some three generations after the alleged birth of Jesus and therefore represents the earliest Christian writings (Paul’s epistles), putting the notion of everlasting destruction and eternal alienation from God at the beginning of Christian thinking. The verse: “They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.” It has been supposed more recently that 2 Thessalonians was probably written four to six generations after the alleged birth of the Christian messiah. If you are among those who put distance and authors between 2 Thessalonians from 1 Thessalonians, then Mark, widely believed to be the earliest gospel (probably written four to five generations after the alleged birth of the Christian messiah, and forming, along with perhaps a second common source, the basis of the gospels of Matthew and Luke), gives us chapter and verse 9:43: “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out.”

Hell is discussed elsewhere in the New Testament, as well. For example, in Revelations 21:8, the author writes, “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur.” (This book was probably written approximately four to five generations after the alleged birth of the Christian messiah.) Then there’s Matthew, who seems particularly keen on scaring the crap out of people with the idea of Hell. Matthew 10:28: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matthew 13:42: “They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 13:50: “and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 25:41: “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’” Matthew 25:46: “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” (Matthew was probably written four to six generations after the alleged birth of the Christian messiah.)

One does not get to say that Hell is a product of my interpretation of the Christian scriptures. Hell is a central construct in Christian theology and appears in the earliest Christian literature, the very text deemed canonical and divinely inspired. If you believe the authors of the gospels had access to Jesus’s words, or were inspired to accurately reflect his views, then the fact that Matthew 10:28 is directly attributed to Jesus himself gives you no room for interpretation. If you believe you can be a Christian simply by saying you are, well, then have fun with your own self-satisfaction. But it doesn’t impress me at all.

Sure, you can rationalize Hell. You can say that it is not there to scare us into loving God, but that salvation is a gift from loving God to provide a way to escape Hell. There’s a downside to this view. It means that Hell is a place that exists independently of God – not a place created by him to scare you – and that, while God does not have the power to make Hell go away, he does have the power to save you from going there if an only if you sign your life over to him. God says, “I will save you from eternal torment if you love me.,” God says “If you don’t love me, sorry, there’s nothing I can do. You will burn.” Some all-powerful deity you got there. So full of love for his creatures. And if you object to me quoting God, remember, I have as much authority to do so as anybody else.

UW-River Falls is pursuing a “Check Yourself” campaign. Its purpose is to teach faculty and students proper etiquette surrounding talk about sex, race, immigration, and so on. It’s a speech code designed to impose terms of political correctness by those who have appointed themselves bearers of truth on the matter. 

One of the things its audience is warned about is the claim that all human beings are bisexual. The reason for this prohibition is because the claim denies bisexuality’s unique identity, as well as undermines the identity of those who do not believe they are bisexual. Everybody has a right, the campaign tells us, to their own identity. (Right, tell that to Rachel Dolezal.)

There are many problems with etiquette campaigns. But I find this item about bisexuality particularly troubling and representative of the problem of wide-ranging speech codes. There is a position, articulated for example by Sigmund Freud and Alfred Kinsey, albeit in different ways, that homo sapiens are, as are many other species of mammal, innately bisexual. We are born without a sexual orientation (or a race, religion, gender, etc.) but experience socialization in heterosexuality as an social and cultural imposition, albeit a process that is never completely effective – nor should it be. However much our homosexual tendencies are repressed, our bisexuality is not erased, but lies in a latent, or unconscious state in our psyche. We remain, somewhere in the layers of our mind, sexually attracted to members of our designated and acquired gender.

Acknowledging the possibility of this basic reality provides important insights into human attitudes and behaviors. For example, because a heterosexual man finds other men sexually attractive, even if he is not directly conscious of this attraction, he escapes into rituals that sublimate his sexual desire as higher-order asexual relations and activities. The structure of masculinity can be explained in part as a bulwark against culturally disapproved sexual feelings towards other men. Compulsory heterosexuality thus comes with a complex symbolic system of ritual self-denial, which, without being able to posit innate bisexuality, is mysterious. In other words, homophobia exists in part because heterosexuality is an imposition – we fear ourselves. Repressive sexuality is a source of self-loathing.

If we are told that we cannot argue that all human beings are bisexual, then what we are being told is that Freud and his ilk are wrong. An official, or at least official sounding position, has thus been taken on a contested matter. UW-River Falls is telling faculty and students that this is a settled matter. Why else would there be a speech code?

But it is not a settled matter. Indeed, we should be encouraging students to consider whether human beings are innately bisexual. It is an open question. Being able to make this claim is not only important for scientific reasons. It is also part of a political argument that faculty and students should be allowed to make. If we are all innately bisexual, then the justifications for compulsory heterosexuality, for example the notion that we are born with a sexual orientation, becomes problematic. The ideology of heterosexuality loses its naturalist appeal. The deconstruction of the normalcy of compulsory heterosexuality is accomplished, not with revised etiquette pamphlets, but rather through dialectal engagement.