The Liberty Papers

Over at RealClear Politics, Tom Bevan takes Ron Paul to task for his recent statements about people who use the term “islamofacsism”:

In the spin room after the Republican debate on Tuesday evening in Dearborn, Mich., a reporter from the Arab-American News asked Ron Paul what he thought of the term “Islamic fascism.”

“It’s a false term to make people think we’re fighting Hitler,” Paul responded. “It’s war propaganda designed to generate fear so that the war has to be spread.”

Now, when Paul asserts that the war in Iraq is a mistake that is bankrupting America, he’s making a serious argument which current polls suggest a majority of Americans agree with — though not most Republicans. When he says 9/11 was the result of “blowback” from decades of U.S. foreign policy abroad, he’s on somewhat more precarious ground, but at least there is still some shred of intellectual basis for his view — albeit a Chomskyite one.

But when Paul says that the term “Islamic fascism” (or, for the purpose of discussion, its synonymous twin, “Islamofascism”) is propaganda designed to spread war, he’s veered off into the sort of paranoid fringe kookiness that keeps his campaign relegated to a side-show novelty act

(…)

For Paul to ridicule the term “Islamofascist” as propaganda and to insinuate that anyone who uses it is a warmonger seeking to spread conflict in the Middle East shows how wildly out of touch he is with the vast majority of the American public. More to the point, Paul’s willingness to so severely downplay the threat posed to America by Islamic fundamentalists calls into question his fitness to fulfill the constitutional duty of the Commander in Chief to protect the country from all threats, foreign and domestic.

The closing paragraph, I think, is completely over the top. The reception that Paul’s outspoken views on the War in Iraq and the possibility of war with Iran have gotten demonstrates quite clearly that he is not as far out of the mainstream. The American people have turned against the Iraq War in overwhelming numbers and, largely because of the experience in Iraq, are not at all enthusiastic about the idea of taking on Tehran anytime soon.

Nonetheless, Bevan does have a point when he criticizes the Congressman’s dismissal of those of us who believe that radical Islam is a threat and a danger and, fundamentally, anti-libertarian is entirely correct.

Take a look at any nation where radical or Wahabbist Islam has taken hold and you will find a complete lack of liberty. Women, of course, are treated as second-class citizens, but it doesn’t stop there. Freedom of religion is a concept that doesn’t exist. Freedom of speech ? Forget about speaking out against the government, and heaven help you if you dare criticize Mohammed.

But it’s not just in the Middle East that we’re seeing this happen. The Mohammed Cartoons controversy was, by and large, a European phenomenon. Theo Van Gogh was murdered on a street in Amsterdam for daring to make a film about the state of women in Islamic societies. And Osama bin Laden has said that the only way for the West to save itself from further attack is to convert to Islam.

This is not the ideology of a peace-loving people. It’s the ideology of fascists. Hence, the term Islamofascism, coined, by the way, by a leftist named Christopher Hitchens, not a neoconservative.

At The Crossed Pond, Rojas makes this point in addressing Bevan’s argument:

I have argued time and time again that my fellow Paul supporters need to stop treating their political opponents as if they were troglodytes motivated solely by malice. I never thought I would have to say the same thing to the candidate himself. But really, Dr. Paul: there are people who detest the brutality of orthodox Islamic regimes, and who express that sentiment, who don’t necessarily want to drop bombs on them. Me, for one.

So let’s stop lobbing accusations about “newspeak” on matters of this sort. It’s my strong belief that many of the people who use the term “Islamofascism” are among the strongest potential supporters of a Paul candidacy. Let’s bring them in instead of driving them away.

And driving them away is precisely what seems to be happening. Instead of recognizing the opposition to Islamic radicalism for what it is — an opposition to an ideology fundamentally opposed to human freedom — there seems to be a tendency from the Paul campaign to believe the leftist/paleo-libertarian idea that the Islamists would leave us alone if we just withdrew from the Middle East completely and stood by and did nothing while they overran Israel and any moderate Arab nation that dared stand in their way with every suicide bomber they could find.

Not everyone who believes that Islamic radicalism is a threat to human freedom wants to invade Iran tomorrow, so maybe it’s time to stop claiming that they do.