more, not less

Liberals are saying that the hearings about “scary radical Muslims” should be stopped. They are wrong. Instead, they should be supporting those hearings… and calling for hearings on “scary radical Christians” as well.

The answer to prejudice and stupidity is always more conversation, not less. If you don’t like the point of view that some person or group is putting out into the world, then your best response—your only effective response—is to put your own view out in the world as well. And to point out the problems with the view that you disagree with.

So when Senator McCarthy (I’m sorry, I haven’t bothered committing his real name to memory) calls for hearings about Muslims in America, your best answer is to call hearings about Christians in America. Why hasn’t every Christian authority figure denounced every single act of violence committed by a Christian? Why hasn’t the Church been more active and more vocal in their denunciation of violent radical Christian mouthpieces like Glenn Beck? Why aren’t there weekly press releases from the Pope denouncing the KKK…. a group that claims itself to be a Christian group? WHY?

There are only two possible outcomes to this kind of strategy: either the people attacking Muslims will get the analogy, realize how stupid they sound, and stop their attacks on a specific religion; or they will not get the analogy, and will have their time taken up having to defend in the public light the reasons why they have not been denouncing the KKK and violent Christian groups. To me, this is a win-win, either way.

One final point: the reason that shutting up bigoted views is a bad idea, is that bigoted views don’t have to be spoken for them to be thought. Bigotry leaks out into the population in so many ways, it seeps into our collective consciousness whether we talk about it or not. Better that it be talked about, than that it only be imagined. Because problems that are imagined but not talked about, never get fixed.

McCarthy