Sometimes, not so often, I respond to my wingnut mail. I got an interesting email from some guy named Tony Harrison. I sent him a brief response. Tony decided to publish my private email and to use my real name. That’s fairly obnoxious, right? The sad thing is, if he only would have asked permission, I probably would have said yes. In any case, you can read his rebuttal to my email here.
Harrison uses flawed reasoning on a number of fronts. For example, I told him that Islam was not expanding territorily but demographically (by differential birth rates). He disputed this by pointing out that the Muslim countries of Afghanistan and Somalia have, in recent memory, been run by radical Muslims. That’s what’s called a non sequitur. It works like this: (A) Somalia and Afghanistan have been Muslim countries for centuries (B) Somalia and Afghanistan have recently seen a turn to a more radical form of Islam, therefore (C) Islam is expanding territorily. See, this is why wingnuts gets D’s in symbolic logic.
Next he mischaracterizes my argument in order to attack it. Fun.
he suggests our troubles with radicalized Muslims would end if we figured out “how to get our oil and gas to markets” from the Middle East. This notion defies common sense.
Actually, I never connected those two things in the way he suggests. What I said was that we need to figure out how to get oil and gas to market without creating generation after generation of jihadists in the process. I also said that we have good reasons not to abandon the entire Middle East and accede to Bin-Laden’s demands. Then I said that (because we aren’t leaving en toto) the fight will go on, that we must live with that, but that it isn’t armageddon. So, Harrison’s whole line of attack here is off base. He isn’t addressing my argument.
Then Harrison asks me why bin-Laden hasn’t issued fatwas against Russia, China, and France. He might note that my whole thesis is that bin-Laden was angry at the Saudi regime first, and America second. I wonder how much the Russians are responsible for what Saudi Arabia has become under America’s Cold War guidance? Sometimes wingnuts have no fangs.
He then goes on to quote Bertrand Russell and Jakob Burckhardt making comments that are basically insulting to Arabs. That’s fine, it’s possible that two greats minds like Russell and Burckhardt could be insulting and still be correct. But, what is the point Russell and Burckhardt were trying to make? That Arabs experience western technology as detrimental to their society, that they are proud and presumptuous, and that the first Arab hordes were more interested in plunder than religion. Somehow, these racial assessments and historical opinions are supposed to be relevant to my article on Michael Barone’s asshattery. Tony Harrison thinks that Arabs are coming to git us because they are a “religion of conquerors”. Well, what the fuck is Christianity? They took Indonesia, we took the Philippines. Why is this a rebuttal?
When wingnuts attack, it isn’t pretty. Oh, I ain’t afraid of no Mullah Omar.
