For years, members of the liberal socialist left have claimed that anyone who disagrees with them—including secular advocates of capitalism, individual rights and limited government—will deliver us into the hands of a religious dictatorship.
Enter Barack Obama and the most liberal socialist administration in the history of the United States.
We’re already aware that Obama appeases and excuses the Iranian government. The Iranian government, who murders gay people and denigrates women in the name of Islam, is the mother of all religiously fundamentalist dictatorships. Why would an American liberal excuse or attempt to ‘make peace’ with Iranian mullahs when he would never give a member of the American religious right the time of day? I’m no friend of the religious right. But the hypocrisy is breathtaking.
The insanity goes beyond Obama’s foreign policy. Recently, a New Jersey court upheld the claim of a man that he didn’t have to be held accountable for raping his wife. Spousal rape is applicable under the law—American law, that is. But according to Islamic law—known in courts as Sharia law—a man is entitled to sex with his wife whenever he pleases, including under the threat of force. Therefore, according to the defendant in this case, he cannot be prosecuted. Why? Because he believes in Sharia law, not American or Constitutional law. A liberal judge agreed with him.
Why the insanity? It’s actually quite logical. Liberal socialists believe in diversity for the sake of diversity. Sharia law, according to liberals, is every bit as valid as any other form of law. We all should comply with the law as we feel it to be—so long as the law is consistent with liberalism, or so long as the law gives a liberal judge a chance to look and feel like an advocate of cultural diversity.
Clearly, this is insanity. It’s true that a higher court eventually overturned this ruling. But how could any judge seriously consider such a ruling? Where are the feminists, the gay activists and the advocates for victims of domestic violence? One can only assume that they don’t care about the decision, or perhaps even agree with it. Educated liberal elites are mocking states such as Oklahoma for passing laws to prohibit Sharia law from being upheld in that state’s courts. Does this mean they support Sharia law?
The only possible explanation for this is something we already know about liberal socialists: It’s not individual rights they care about. When a liberal fights for gay rights, or women’s rights, or rights for the oppressed, he’s not upholding the right of the individual. He’s upholding the right of the group. That’s why such a person upholds, or at least doesn’t mind, the self-evident absurdity (and evil) of upholding Sharia law. The consciousness of the group—in this case, the Muslims who believe in such law—must override everything. The individual—such as the victim in a rape, or some other violation of an individual right—does not matter.
Rights apply to individuals, not groups. Nazi Germany was evil and criminal not because it was racist (although racism is irrational), but because the individual rights to life and property of millions were violated. It would have been just as illegal, and just as evil, if the motive were anything else but racism. It’s ironic. Advocates of ‘hate crimes’ are the very people who are tolerating or excusing hateful crimes when done in the name of Sharia law, because Sharia law protects (in the liberals’ eyes) the rights and sensibilities of the ‘oppressed’ Muslims in America. If you’re a white redneck who kills a gay man, you’re prosecuted more heavily than an ordinary killer because it’s a legally classified ‘hate crime.’ Yet if you’re a Muslim brute who attacks his wife, or any other woman in violence, you’re acquitted in the name of the diversity of Sharia Law. How does this benefit anyone except for the criminally violent and insane?
Be afraid. Be very afraid. It’s not that any takeover of the United States by Sharia law is imminent. The thing to be afraid about, and angry about, is the fact that the United States government, and its academic culture who trains most of the lawyers and judges, upholds the doctrine that group rights are more important than individual rights. That’s why we have socialized medicine, that’s why Black Panthers are permitted to harass and attack voters who disagree with them at polling places, and that’s why the U.S. government upholds the rights of terrorist war criminals to be tried in normal courts and even set free.
The lesson here, and elsewhere, is: Ideas have consequences. We’re supposed to ignore ideology in favor of practicality. We do so at our peril, especially when the ideas of our authorities and experts are so painfully and profoundly wrong.