/snark off
Bob, you’re a good man to debate with. I think we got to this point off this post:
“North, please, you’re a lot smarter than that.
As I recall your pres., FDR, removed all Japanese-American citizens to ‘camps.’ And, then to FDR’s credit significantly thinned out the Japanese population. That was the price they paid for a sneak attack on a US military installation, and dude, we’re talking about the massacre of 3,000 American civilians.”

The problem of course is that the comparison is a terrible one. The Japanese were a coherent and relatively monolithic national group (and also a genuine threat). I’ll refer you at this point to Chris’s post on the main page about the great variety within Islam. You can’t group punish Islamists, contrary to even their own dogma they truly are not a coherent group. They have no central command that can surrender. They have no industry to blast. We cannot destroy them without becoming, ourselves, monsters. Our only means of defeating our enemies in this fight is by the strength of our ideas and principles.

A while back I’d agree with your second paragraph entirely but further reading on the demographics and relative populations have calmed my concerns on this issue a lot. The Middle East in general and Muslim immigrants to Europe in particular are showing significant declines in fertility. As for introverted communities I believe historically the western cultures have been able, over the course of a couple generations, to moderate insular communities quite effectively.

Last sentence. I was writing in a hurry. Perhaps retrograde isn’t the best word. I think a defense of it could be mounted but perhaps a better pair of terms would be dynamic versus stagnant? Primarily when comparing Arab and Mediterranean Muslim countries specifically versus western European ones.

No. Because you pointed to a chart that said people think discrimination against Muslims has never wained from 9/11. And that this seems to be a reason people are loathe to be asking the questions MacArthy wants to ask. Actually, your original post said nothing about “perceptions.” It said that the reason we are loathe to ask these questions is because discrimination against Muslims ACTUALLY increased and has not abated since.

But is this a good reason not to ask/discuss those questions? It certainly does not seem to be a good reason to not ask those questions if, in fact, discrimination against Muslims has not increased. In fact, if it has not, now would seem to be a really good time to go ahead and ask those difficult questions without fearing that people will go all cuckoo and start bombing mosques. Because if they did not, actually, do that in the wake of 9/11, I see no reason to think they would start now.

No, not everyone facing overseas deployment would have picked up two guns and started shooting. Society needs a clear narrative, even at the risk of oversimplification. You cannot build or maintain a society based on murkey narratives. It is acceptable for a gentleman to express clear thoughts and strong emotions.

It stopped meaning things for our society after we caught the guy.

Additionally, I’d, without joking, say that my reading of the poll was that “discrimination” was a more generalized “discrimination” similar to “racism” found in the general population.

If we’re also talking about “the government” discriminating against Muslims, I’d point out that the Republicans lost their majorities in the House and Senate in 2006 and took even bigger losses in 2008 and losing the White House quite handily. If the government continues to discriminate against Muslims, I don’t know what else you could ask from the American People to do on a governmental level to rectify that.

If we’re just talking about the general population discriminating, I’d like to see numbers and make comparisons. I honestly think that we are out of the “wake of 9/11″ for the most part (and, hey, let’s define “for the most part” as give or take 15%).

Shooting Raises Fears For Muslims In US Army

Really? Right now the body count stands at:

Non-Muslims 13
Muslims 0

Man….I still remember the feeling of looking over my shoulder at every gas station, doing everything I could to present the smallest target possible, just as I was finally starting to feel comfortable riding the Metro again a year after 9/11.