Locking Them Up Today...
Via the always informative War and Piece we find some comments on the yet again attempted revival of the defense of internment(no links to Malkin, but you can read this at DemVet instead. I should point out that my girlfriend is Filipino so I don't agree with his modest proposal - also, I know he's effin' kidding). This time it's coming from Daniel Pipes. Mr. Pipes claims that it's liberals and polite society that have conspired to create the "reality" that prevents internment. We say, ARE YOU EFFIN' KIDDING ME? (We're providing a link to his homepage, not the article, strictly so you can see his picture. Why? You'll have to wait and see...) Unlike many bleeding heart liberals who are all up in arms because proposals like that are fascist in nature - an objection with which we obviously agree - we're going to object on one or two practical grounds, if only to show that it's not just our bleeding hearts that are offended by trash like this, but our sense of reason as well.
The reality has nothing to do with liberal bleeding hearts or polite society or people being unwilling to accept "radical proposals"(RUFNKM? Aren't we in the middle of an occupation of a foregin country - a pretty radical notion, right? - with the supposed popular support of the majority of the American people as well as all those polite liberals over at the NYT?)The reality is that to intern all the Muslims, you have to find them, and that's an intractable problem.
You might say you know a Muslim when you see one, but is it really that easy for ShurbCo or anyone else to spot Muslims on sight? After all, they only had to spot 19 of them on 9/11, and they had some of them on watch lists and all that. Of course, 9/11 has made us all sensitive and suspicious(but wait, haven't we had problems with radical Islam since at least 1979? err....), so we really ought to be more careful and learn to spot them.
Here's how I do it: You look for facial features less aryan than Bob Odenkirk's hidden behind big black beards. See why we linked to the picture of Pipes?
We suggest that being Muslim, unlike being Japanese(or Filipino) is less an ehtnic affiliation than a religious one. It is true that many Muslims come from the Middle East and may indeed have certain physical characteristics in common, but going strictly on that basis will cause way too many non-Muslims to get unfairly locked up. And you can forget about catching white Muslims like John Walker. So something other than "racial profiling" will have to be used.
Perhaps a database of all self-identified Muslims would work, except you might find it hard to find all self-identified Muslims if you announce your intention to lock them up. They'll probably all suddenly turn Jewish or something(or maybe Sihk).
No, the best we can do is to suspect and check up on the entire population. This means all the usual stuff normally used to keep guns out of high schools and drugs out of government employees, except instead of metal detectors we'll need Muslim detectors, and instead of drug tests, Muslim tests. This will of course require a huge investment in core technology to detect religious affiliation. It may have unintended consequences like revealing to Baptists that they are in fact Unitarians, but if you need to make an omlet, you gotta break some eggs. I'm sure the DHS can figure out a way to fund it.
The reality has nothing to do with liberal bleeding hearts or polite society or people being unwilling to accept "radical proposals"(RUFNKM? Aren't we in the middle of an occupation of a foregin country - a pretty radical notion, right? - with the supposed popular support of the majority of the American people as well as all those polite liberals over at the NYT?)The reality is that to intern all the Muslims, you have to find them, and that's an intractable problem.
You might say you know a Muslim when you see one, but is it really that easy for ShurbCo or anyone else to spot Muslims on sight? After all, they only had to spot 19 of them on 9/11, and they had some of them on watch lists and all that. Of course, 9/11 has made us all sensitive and suspicious(but wait, haven't we had problems with radical Islam since at least 1979? err....), so we really ought to be more careful and learn to spot them.
Here's how I do it: You look for facial features less aryan than Bob Odenkirk's hidden behind big black beards. See why we linked to the picture of Pipes?
We suggest that being Muslim, unlike being Japanese(or Filipino) is less an ehtnic affiliation than a religious one. It is true that many Muslims come from the Middle East and may indeed have certain physical characteristics in common, but going strictly on that basis will cause way too many non-Muslims to get unfairly locked up. And you can forget about catching white Muslims like John Walker. So something other than "racial profiling" will have to be used.
Perhaps a database of all self-identified Muslims would work, except you might find it hard to find all self-identified Muslims if you announce your intention to lock them up. They'll probably all suddenly turn Jewish or something(or maybe Sihk).
No, the best we can do is to suspect and check up on the entire population. This means all the usual stuff normally used to keep guns out of high schools and drugs out of government employees, except instead of metal detectors we'll need Muslim detectors, and instead of drug tests, Muslim tests. This will of course require a huge investment in core technology to detect religious affiliation. It may have unintended consequences like revealing to Baptists that they are in fact Unitarians, but if you need to make an omlet, you gotta break some eggs. I'm sure the DHS can figure out a way to fund it.
posted by jayinbmore at 2:28 PM
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