[Apologies to all: I was so eager to get Steve’s Comment of the Day up that I forgot to add the headline!]
The historically literate, unrestrained Ethics Alarms veteran commenter Steve-O-in NJ returns to the familiar (to him) Comment of the Day podium making the case that Rep. Fine was not being one bit unreasonable and certainly not “Islamophobic” when he responded to a New York City Muslim activists assertion that dogs should not be kept as pets in the Big Apple with the quip, “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
In casual conversation about Fine’s line (not to be confused with “a fine line” ) I have yet to encounter anyone who doesn’t feel he got the better of the exchange. One lawyer friend, known for his combative courtroom style, opined that the woman’s ‘Islam is right that dogs are dirty’ remark was such a metaphorical hanging curve ball that it would have been unethical not to hit it out of the park.
Here is Steve-O-in-NJ’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Quiz: Rep. Fine’s ‘Islamaphobic’ Quote”:
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Islamic attitudes toward dogs vary. Some think of them as okay to use as working animals (herding, hunting etc.), but not pets. Judaism also for a time was anti-dog, and I think that ported over to Islam, same as the rule against pork.
I for one have never owned a dog, but I have known many, and I think they are useful in a number of ways, including as companion animals. They assist the disabled, protect and direct livestock, find people (or bodies), save those stranded on mountains, assist the emergency services, and even tow carts with Christmas trees or other evergreen decorations (the Bernese Mountain Dog is the usual breed for this). I’ll take a large gentle dog or an affectionate energetic dog (little yappy dogs are not my thing) over a hyper-religious neighbor who wants to tell me what to do any day. I’ve said a few times that Islam is not compatible with Western values, and this is just one other reason why it isn’t.
Ethics Alarms 
Steve, bravo! You said what so many are thinking, accurately and succinctly. I’m with you especially on the simple truth that anyone who goes to live in any country must at least to attempt to assimilate, or leave. Thank you for this blunt and honest post.
Just swap “Muslim” with “Communist,” or “Nazi,” and the supposed offensive nature of the comment vanishes, which is how you can see that the outrage mob is being dishonest, as usual.
Islam isn’t a race, like Black people. It’s an ideology, like Communism. Leftists want us to feel the same way about Islam as we do about people’s immutable characteristics, like racial heritage. That’s twisted and wrong, but it works for them, which is why they’ll keep doing it.
Amen!
Always an education when Steve holds a History lesson
Peter Boghossian and Raymond Ibrahim had a conversation recently about Muslim immigration. It’s mostly about how it’s affecting Western Europe. I thought it was interesting, but their cameraman objected. (The meltdown isn’t until near the end.)
Apparently there were two camermen. Based on my own viewing of the video, one cameraman had a hissy fit and never came back. The other cameraman stayed and argued (not very effectively) but demonstrated the courage and curiousity to engage with Boghossian and Ibrahim. It seems the cameraman came back for more the next day.
charles w abbott
rochester NY
No, it’s just the one cameraman. At first he said he left because he had to go to the bathroom. Later he said he left because he has a friend who is an immigrant and he was offended by Boghossian saying Europe needed to protect its borders and shoot people trying to enter illegally.
The cameraman was incapable of talking about immigration to Europe separately from immigration to the U.S. He was also incapable of offering any solution. Although he was capable of beginning a sentence with words other than, “I would say”, he mostly chose not to. Everything he said was predictable, except when he said, “my wife”. I was surprised at that. (He had reminded me a lot of the husband of a man I used to work for who had told me that socialism just means living in a society. I bet he would have the same pro-immigration arguments. Or, rather, lack of arguments. Feelings.)
I’m not convinced that you are correct. For example, I’m relying on the description included with the video (the long video that is 2 hours and six minutes long).
Video description states, and I quote:
“During my in-person interview with Raymond Ibrahim in LA, both of the cameramen freaked out and walked off the set. Two out of two!”
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so, that’s my sense of what happened.
I think only one cameraman came back–that is the one that we heard engage Boghossian and Ibrahim toward the end of the second hour.
Parts of the video are hard to follow. And parts are painful!
= – = – =
More generally, I felt kind of sorry for the cameraman who debated Boghossian and Ibrahim–but not *that* sorry. He signed up for the humiliation. And he was unprepared while being smug and overconfident. He was embarrassingly unprepared to debate the two men (older, better informed, perhaps smarter, definitely more serious) who disagreed with him and asked him to support his statements with evidence, and to delve into “mundane specifics.”
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That is a really useful term, “mundane specifics.” Thomas Sowell uses it. Sowell has contrasted “verbal virtuosity” with “mundane specifics.” There is a difference between “verbal virtuosity” about immigrant behavior in the West in general and discussion of “mundane specifics” about different immigrant behavioral trends in specific European countries, their apparent crime rates based on arrests and incarceration, or the fact that “Islam is the majority religion inside French prisons” as I read more than a decade ago. God bless Thomas Sowell.
= – = – =
As the kids say, the end of the video was “cringe.” The cameraman’s attempt to support his statements in the face of reasonable questions was “cringe.”
One sign of the cameraman’s low command of “mundane specifics” was his inability to discuss Western Europe with any confidence, reflexively changing his statements back to conditions in the USA.
In an ideal world, the video might have switched at some point to something like this. “Cameraman, here’s a challenge. Put down your phone. List the countries in Western Europe. As many as you can recall. Better, match the different immigrant streams to the specific countries (e.g., Algerians in France, Pakistanis in England, Turks in Germany, etc).”
I’ll give you $500 if you can name half the countries in the European Union. Right now, buster!
Thanks for reading!
charles w abbott
rochester NY
Right off the bat the cameraman shows that he’s just recyling talking points and fake data. That stat about crimes by illegals is false, and when anyone resorts to it means I don’t care to listen to them. The guy’s an idiot, essentially.
Even if the stats were true, it’s a red herring. EVERY crime committed by an “immigrant” is one that would not have occurred here at all if they had been back where they came from. The issue is that It’s additional and avoidable crime; the supposed rate is meaningless. A comparison of rates is only relevant if your aim is to replace one group with another.
Shorter Steve Witherspoon: Mind your own damn business or kindly GTFO — ten minutes ago.
Well done Steve.