Foolish liberal question: This morning on NPR's Saturday Edition, there was a
segment on religious and racial profiling. Saturday Edition's host, Scot Simon, opened up the discussion by asking: (emp add)
Is there a profile that would include Mohammad Atta and Timothy McVeigh?"
Cute. Simon was attempting to demonstrate that there wasn't
one profile that would have identified both Atta or McVeigh, especially a profile that included religious and racial criteria. But there can be multiple profiles of likely terrorists, one for disenchanted young men and one for Islamic militants.
Does religious and racial profiling work? Probably, though multiple regression analysis and emperical testing is needed to prove it.
Those who don't like such profiling should not make foolish arguments attempting to show that it can't work. What should be done is admit that such profiling does work (if it does) but declare it off-limits as
a matter of policy. Everybody knows that if the police could perform warrantless searches there would be more criminals caught, but we don't allow such searches because we value privacy. The same can be said about race and religion. Even though it may be an indicator of
something, the United States will not use it in security operations in order to preserve equality under the law for people of different religious orientation or ethnicity.
WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?
We are aligning ourselves more in the direction of Bob Somerby (Daily Howler) than that of Digby (Hullabaloo) or Lindsay Beyerstein (Majikthise). Take the recent NARAL anti-Roberts ad. Howler says:David Souter agreed with Roberts. So apparently, David Souter is also someone “whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against Americans!” Do you see how liberal elites drive voters away when they try to fly turkeys like that? Bush has handed us endless tools—and we just keep playing “Born Loser.”
On the other hand, Lindsay writes:This is not a good time for you to make a show of meticulous even-handedness. If you really care about the politics and not just the ideas in play, now is the time to develop some message discipline.
And Digby posts:The details don't matter, it's the headline and the image.
We like Digby and Lindsay, but have to respectfully disagree. Reason, which is best presented in a calm, honest environment, is on our side. Toss that away by ignoring "details" and relying on "message discipline", regardless of the facts, plays into the hands of the right. They love a fight that hinges more on emotion than thinking.
Is it harder to win by being honest, logical, and fair? Yes. So why be that way? It's a matter of taste, perhaps. We are angry when we see the right-wing lie and distort. We are uncomfortable when the left does it, and will on occasion point out such instances.
posted by Quiddity at 8/13/2005 08:17:00 AM
I agree with Lindsay; however, Bob Sommersby has become so convoluted in his writing recently that I would not want to identify with him for the time being. I think your writing style-- well organized and schematic-- are fine for a blog. I would like to see Sommersby go back to a simpler less meandering style. But political ads do not have to follow the nice orderly schema that your blog provides for us, sometimes in the form of wonderful flowcharts of influence, sometimes, as today, in the wonderfully simplified mazes of Iraw.
thelrd in TEXAS
