George Takei played Sulu on the original Star Trek series. He’s also an outspoken and openly gay man.
You would think a gay man would not stand up for an ideology, religion or political movement whose most fervent and consistent advocates think that homosexuality is grotesquely immoral at best, and punishable by death, at worst. And yet like his fellow progressive Democrats, George Takei does.
He would never support a socially conservative Christian who opposed gay marriage. Yet when it comes to Islam, the most fervent opponent of homosexuality in the history of all humankind, he’s asking people to sign a petition in special defense of Islam and Muslims. Under the philosophy of individual rights and the U.S. Constitution, of course the government has no right to arbitrarily seize personal property or individual persons, without due process under a rational system of laws. But why the extra and special protection for Muslims? Why does his heart bleed for a people whose ideology has no use whatsoever for him, some of whom would behead or throw him off a building in a minute under the Sharia Law advocated by Islam?
Let’s be real. Islam is not merely a religion. It’s a political ideology. In my own home town of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, there’s an active gay and lesbian community. Just 45 minutes north, there’s reportedly a growing Muslim population whose mosques are already under development. (Source: Susan Monday Show, Delaware 105.9 on 1/12/17). Some people — whether gays and lesbians or their loved ones — are more than a little concerned about the impact on the safety and individual property rights of the gays and lesbians who live nearby. It’s politically incorrect to admit it (Rehoboth Beach is a hardcore left-wing enclave), but I hear private expressions of concern on a regular basis. Such concern is entirely rational. Given what happened at the Pulse nightclub last year in Orlando, Florida, it seems reasonable to assume that individual gay and lesbian lives could be in danger, particularly at bars or in other public places, as Islamic houses of worship proliferate. The mayor of Dover and other politicians insist that existing law enforcement can handle the risks just fine. We see how well that has worked out in California, Florida and elsewhere over the past few years of brutal Islamic attacks.
It doesn’t matter if most Muslims are not active terrorists. The fact remains that virtually all terrorism arises from Muslims who were radicalized at their local mosque. We all know that such appeals to “diversity and justice” like Takei’s ridiculous petition don’t have anything to do with equal protection of all persons under the Constitution. What they do seek is to impose a sense of unearned guilt on the actual or potential victims of Islam, an irrational political-social movement of which the gay and lesbian community represents a bull’s eye target.
On the radio show I heard today, the mayor of Dover argued that Catholics were viewed with similar mistrust back in the 1950s and early 1960s, including when Catholic John F. Kennedy first ran for president. Excuse me, but I’m not aware of any Catholic sanctioned attacks on nightclubs, office parties, skyscrapers or private sporting events occurring around that time. While irrational and unwarranted prejudice certainly exists, can’t fear sometimes be completely rational?
If you read Takei’s petition, you’ll find an unwholesome and untenable false alternative. Either you pretend that Islam and Muslims are about as dangerous as the pacifistic Amish or privacy-minded Hasidic Jews, as the petition does, or else you support concentration camps for Muslims. It’s an absurd choice. The purpose of such package deals is to instill unearned guilt in its victims. “Oh my, if I don’t think in politically correct ways about Islam like that wonderful gay progressive George Takei does, then I must be some kind of Nazi.” Sign the petition, and make sure your progressive friends know you’ve done the same. Progressives, quite frankly, are often “social metaphysicans.” This means they determine what’s right and true by checking with each other, not with their own objectively reasoning minds. It’s the kind of evasiveness and bone-headed thinking that causes people to look back on the years leading up to Nazi Germany and ask themselves, “How could otherwise reasonable and educated people let this happen?”
Hypocrisy is too kind a term to describe the level of willful blanking out of rational thought such petitions require. If a white supremacist movement launched a series of internationally driven bombings and beheadings against anyone who disagreed with them, it would be reasonable and necessary for the governments of free societies to keep an eye on them in order to avoid more killings. Immigration policies would have to be reevaluated as well, to ensure that white supremacists are not entering the country. In that case, Takei would demand the strongest government response possible. If the killings continued or escalated, he’d demand a tougher response. Yet if you so much as suggest that Islam isn’t rational or decent, in Takei’s universe you’re worthy of being charged with hate speech and possibly a crime, as Obama’s Attorney General and undoubtedly a President Hillary Clinton were prepared to take us.
One can only assume that when someone who’s actually gay, and publicly so as George Takei is, makes such a move, that he’s simply trying to prove a point. My own theory is that he’s trying to gain approval from fellow progressives and leftists who seek to show what they view as their own moral superiority over others. They seem to feel that their willingness to risk and sacrifice their own interests and perhaps their very lives for the sake of public displays of political correctness makes them above everybody else. I wonder if anyone who died in the Pulse nightclub had made that mistake. And why should anyone else die just so that Takei and progressives get to indulge their sense of pseudo-self-esteem?
Rational, thinking people understand that we don’t have to pretend that Islam is a movement dedicated to peace, love and tolerance any more than the Nazi movement was in its own time. Takei’s attempt to instill a sneering, fawning sense of unearned guilt in our souls does not work with me. And if you value your life, it shouldn’t work with you, either.
Political correctness is deadly. I’d say ask the victims of Orlando, San Bernardino, the Ft. Lauderdale airport, Paris or 9/11 … but you can’t ask them, because most of them are dead. You excuse or forgive your own would-be destroyers at the cost of your self-esteem, your pride, your integrity and, in the end, quite possibly with your life. Please, I beg of you: Don’t let it happen for the sake of moral and intellectual twerps like George Takei.
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