Lowry: Peter King Doing Good Work
Rich Lowry writes in National Review:
Betty Friedan famously wrote about “the problem that has no name.” Decades later, domestic Islamic radicalism bids fair to become the new nameless problem, at least if the Left gets its way.
The outraged reaction to the hearings being held by Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.) to look into the radicalization of the domestic Muslim community was so mindless it bordered on a collective self-lobotomy. The late conservative intellectual James Burnham once wrote that “liberalism permits Western civilization to be reconciled to its dissolution.” If the House committee devoted to homeland security — which held hearings on “The Future of FEMA’s Grant Programs Directorate” among sundry other topics during the past two years — can’t examine why some Muslims born and raised in the United States wage war on their own country, we might as well turn off the lights on our common culture.
There’s no denying the fact of domestic radicalization. “It is one of the things that keeps me up at night,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in an interview with ABC News last year. “The threat has changed from simply worrying about foreigners coming here, to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens.” Holder once called us a nation of cowards for not discussing race enough; his own party is positively lily-livered about discussing the very threat that makes him lose sleep.
For daring to delve into what has Holder so worried, King was savaged as a new Joe McCarthy creating the predicate for the mass internment of Muslims. If King is the equivalent of “Tail-Gunner Joe,” what does that make Sens. Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, a moderate Democrat and a moderate Republican, respectively, who lead the Senate counterpart of King’s committee? According to its website, “Since 2006, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has investigated the threat facing the United States from homegrown terrorism and domestic radicalization inspired by violent Islamist extremism.” And not one Muslim family has been sent to an internment camp.
If there’s an association between terrorism and Islam, it’s not King’s fault. It’s the handiwork of Maj. Nidal Hasan, who allegedly shouted “Allahu Akbar!” while gunning down 13 people at Fort Hood, and all the other home-grown extremists who have perpetrated or attempted mayhem in the name of Allah.
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