Liberal Inconsistencies: The Islamic Question

The Wall Street Journal published a very important and insightful editorial in Tuesday's edition. The author, Tawfik Hamid, is a former member of an Islamist terrorist group, now a medical doctor living in the West.

He makes many fine and thought-provoking points in his article. However, for my purposes, perhaps the most relevant are these two: Western moral relativism has removed our bases for criticizing Islamic inhumanity and barbarism, and; American feminists are more focused on relatively minor economic issues in their own country, than more profound issues of basic human rights for women in Islamic countries.

He writes, part,

"But indeed, there is much that is clearly wrong with the Islamic world. Women are stoned to death and undergo clitorectomies. Gays hang from the gallows under the approving eyes of the proponents of Shariah, the legal code of Islam. Sunni and Shia massacre each other daily in Iraq....

Yet it is ironic and discouraging that many non-Muslim, Western intellectuals -- who unceasingly claim to support human rights -- have become obstacles to reforming Islam. Political correctness among Westerners obstructs unambiguous criticism of Shariah's inhumanity. They find socioeconomic or political excuses for Islamist terrorism such as poverty, colonialism, discrimination or the existence of Israel. What incentive is there for Muslims to demand reform when Western "progressives" pave the way for Islamist barbarity? Indeed, if the problem is not one of religious beliefs, it leaves one to wonder why Christians who live among Muslims under identical circumstances refrain from contributing to wide-scale, systematic campaigns of terror.

Western feminists duly fight in their home countries for equal pay and opportunity, but seemingly ignore, under a façade of cultural relativism, that large numbers of women in the Islamic world live under threat of beating, execution and genital mutilation, or cannot vote, drive cars and dress as they please.

The tendency of many Westerners to restrict themselves to self-criticism further obstructs reformation in Islam. Americans demonstrate against the war in Iraq, yet decline to demonstrate against the terrorists who kidnap innocent people and behead them. Similarly, after the Madrid train bombings, millions of Spanish citizens demonstrated against their separatist organization, ETA. But once the demonstrators realized that Muslims were behind the terror attacks they suspended the demonstrations. This example sent a message to radical Islamists to continue their violent methods."

These are eye-opening and very blunt statements by Hamid. If he had uttered them a few years ago, it would be one thing.

However, we are now in a position to take his statements in a different light. The US Speaker of the House is a woman. Where is Frisco Nan's outrage against the Islamic treatment of women? Where is her solidarity, not to mention that of her party's, with women across the Levant, as they are mistreated, physically abused, and treated as property?

Is it not grossly inconsistent for Nan and her minions to squawk over second-order issues of compensation equality, while their Arabic Islamic sisters are under threats of severe penalties for simply desiring basic human rights?

Further, the Democratic party, which champions the withholding of judgment from anyone's situation, from determining 'right' and 'wrong,' have now hobbled America's ability to appropriately judge the inhumanity of Islamic extremists. Hamid notes that the same liberal Americans who decry our involvement in Iraq, fail to apply similar standards to our enemies among the Islamists of the region.

Liberal Democrats are now reaping the whirlwind of what they have sown with their selective application of criticism, their relativism, and their politically correct views on so many important issues. Having stifled debate on so many critical issues in our own society, and demonized even the ability to express dissent and debate issues, they have lost their own ability to realize when Islamic extremists have gone too far. The Liberals' own capitulation on applying universal, unconditional standards of morality or human behavior have now trapped them into being unable to choose between extreme Islam as a protected 'minority,' and extreme Islam as destructive of basic human rights.

How ironic for the Liberal Democrats to have corrupted the old biblical aphorism about seeing the mote in your neighbor's eye, and not acknowledging the beam in your own, to missing the beam in your neighbor's eye, and mistaking instead the mote in your own for a tumor.

The only thing worse than having such "leadership" in the House, is if similarly-minded Democrats win the White House as well in 2008.

More On Trade & Capital Flows

With all the political demagoguery in the air lately about trade deficits, current account deficits, and foreign-held US debt, especially in this time of presidential campaigning, it is worth noting the recent editorial by Mohammed El-Erian and Nobel Laureate Michael Spence in the Wall Street Journal this past week.

They wrote a lengthy piece about the US savings rate. Essentially, they contend that the recent appreciation in US residential real estate has resulted in unexpectedly high, near-term "savings," in the form of those real estate asset values. Many people have chosen to convert some of that newly-acquired, or realized, wealth, into other assets, via spending. Thus, US imports have risen, and dollars have flowed overseas.

The people in other countries have chosen to sell us their goods and services, and accepted dollars in payment, as savings, rather than consume more right now, themselves. They are in the wealth-accumulation phase of economic growth.

This is the key point. Over time, these people, and countries, will, as they become wealthier, spend their savings, and begin consuming more. Some of that spending will be dollars, for US goods and services. Then the trade flows will, to some extent, partially reverse.

It's a timing issue, as the authors wrote,

"Among the policy mistakes, protectionism measures in the US would derail the global adjustment. So, too, would the inability of emerging economies to navigate their complex policy challenges.

Geopolitical shocks would also be a problem, as they could undermine the free flow of goods and services."

In short, trade and capital flows, spending, deficits, and investments are long-term, continuing phenomena which ebb and flow. Once on this merry-go-round of financial spending, investment, and trade flows, it is impossible to simply take a snapshot and declare the situation to be "good," or "bad."

It's clear from recent comments in the press that most US politicians, and, more frighteningly, Presidential candidates for 2008, as I noted in this post concerning Hillary Clinton's recent idiotic comments on international funds flow, do not grasp this in the least. They are playing politics with fears of 'foreign held debt,' and 'current account deficits." To my knowledge, not a one of these candidates has an economics or even a business degree.

Sadly, as El-Erian and Spence cite, these so-called leaders may do lasting and serious damage to our international trading and investment system with their short-sighted calls for protectionism, regulation of capital flows, and other trade- and funds-flow interdicting nonsense.

Let's hope wiser heads prevail, so the natural cycle of differently-maturing economies can continue to productively interact around the globe, to everyone's ultimate better living standards, greater wealth, and peaceful prosperity for generations to come. It's a long term process, never truly capable of being declared "over," nor having "winners" or "losers" throughout the process.