The Retards of the West

Science has proven that progressives are retarded, but after the attacks in Paris, their amygdalas have really gone haywire and pushed some into full retard.

First the half-tards at The Economist: How to fight back

The battle against Islamic State must be waged on every front

Deport all Muslims, burn their cities to the ground, degrade their infrastructure, completely destroy their war making capability?

IS bases its terrorism on a vicious calculation. It believes that successful attacks will inspire the would-be Muslim radicals that it is trying to recruit. But it also wants to provoke a backlash in order to convince those same radicals that the world despises them and their religion. In February IS propaganda described a “greyzone” in which some Muslims’ loyalty is divided between radical Islam and a country where they do not feel that they completely belong. IS wants terrorism to drive Muslims out of this greyzone and into the black-robed embrace of the Caliphate.

There are Muslims in the West who do not subscribe to jihad and recruiting from this pool makes more sense then trying to send in jihadists from abroad. The truth of the matter, however, is that the greyzone people are either apostates or heading towards apostasy. They are bad Muslims who are either on their way to becoming Westernized or who will fall back into Islam. By framing it the way The Economist does, it will push more Muslims into jihad because it will preserve their Muslim identity. If instead the response is to push harder for assimilation, more people will move away from Islam. The sound strategy is not to cut off all Muslims (unless a nation is serious about deporting most or all of them), but to give them a choice of Westernization or radicalism. Then deport the radicals. A policy of de-Islamization can work, but it is impossible with the current multicultural mindset of the ruling progressives.

There's more stupidity in that Economist piece, but I'd rather turn to the full retards at The Atlantic. The Empathy Gap Between Paris and Beirut. The new Narrative is: how come Western people are upset at a terror attack in a Western country where terrorists attacks are rare, but not upset at a terror attack in a Middle Eastern country where terror attacks are normal?

It’s become a predictable pattern: One act of violence in the world overshadows a similar, concurrent violent act, inviting a backlash against this imbalance in scrutiny, sympathy, and grief. But that predictability doesn’t make the pattern any less distressing. Each time there’s a major terror attack in an American or European city—New York, Madrid, London, Paris, Paris again—it captures the attention and concern of Americans and Europeans in a way that similar atrocities elsewhere don’t seem to do. Seldom do events line up so neatly, offering a clear comparison, as the bombings in Beirut and the rampage in Paris.

This is troublesome (of course!).