Or for that matter, a 19-lb penguin lost in the Azores.

He picked a fight with me once. I get 200 – 400 hits a day depending on the week and Instapundit links.

I was looking for moderate Muslims. I blogged about it any way without Deans help.

Surpisingly the piece got picked up by the Muslim Brotherhood. Freaked me out. Michael Totten said I had nothing to worry about. The Brotherhood was just tring to soften their image.

Oh yeah, calling Eisenhower a “dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy” certainly was prescient, wasn’t it.

McCracken, I didn’t proclaim the Birchers to be recipients of God’s word or anything, just that they had a good fix on a few developments that were later proven true. And they were painted as the utter fringe of American thought back in the day.

3) Islam as a religion is no more inherently incompatible with modernity, minority rights, women’s rights, or democratic pluralism than most religions.

If you declare that Islam is more inherently incompatible with modernity, women’s rights, or democratic pluralism than most other religions, then you have essentially stated that Islam is by far worse than most other religions on this score.

A question for Dean Esmay, his supporters, and anyone who cares to answer.

Are there any religions (including Islam) where you’d fear for the safety of yourself and/or your family if you wrote a mocking cartoon about the religion?

Lets say you wrote a book that pointed out flaws and issues with a religion? Is there a religion (including Islam) where you’d fear for a price being put on your head? How many religons, and which ones?

Now, presuming you answered honestly, and with some minor shred of understanding, you’ve now forced yourself to be banned from Dean Esmay’s blog due to your dirty awful Islamophobia. How dare you presecute these lovely people due simply to the obvious fact that they seem to be the sole remaining religion that reacts violently to any possible perceived threat, mockery, or criticism… not all of them; but as a religion it’s quite dangerous to criticise them.

If you answered in a way that Dean Esmay would not call you a hateful Islamophobe who should be banned from communicating from enlightened souls such as himself; then you’re so incapable of identifying a threat that you shouldn’t be allowed outside without a keeper. Seriously I’d stay clear of matches, sharp objects, and anything with corners at that point. And try to stay off hard surfaces, maybe thick carpet and rounded corners would be better.

Dean, give the criminal his book back.

(By the way Jose Padilla was previously held at the Charleston Navel Brig, not Gitmo)

People like Esmay terrify me – because they’re like beacons of self-induced stupidity, singing a siren song to the millions who’d prefer to live in a make believe world, rather than face reality.

And in this case, the reality Esmay is avoiding represents a threat to civilization … and the threat is multiplied exponentially if we simply pretend it isn’t there.

The point isn’t that Esmay’s five bullet points are wrong: the point is that suggesting they are so clearly indisputable runs directly contrary to objective evidence.

Maybe he’s right on every point. But silencing discussion of those points is “inherantly” (sic) dangerous. And his logic is laughably bad.

By his logic, NO group, of ANY kind, can ever be “inherantly” (sic) better or worse than any other group. Ever. He has unthinkingly embraced the moral relativism of our age, in which nothing and nobody is ever objectively “bad.”

By his logic, you could’t claim the KKK was “inherantly” (sic) antithetical to racial equality. You couldn’t claim that Nazism was “inherantly” (sic) anti-freedom or anti-Semitic. According to Esmay, those judgments can’t be made … because after all, not every Nazi wanted to kill Jews, not every Klan member enjoyed lynchings … and theoretically, both organizations could have been reformed. Right, Dean?

That kind of thinking is so devoid of logic it’s scary. And that ANYBODY could swallow such blanket moral relativism in regards to Islam, at this point in history, is nothing short of insanity.

The boy has literally brainwashed himself into believing what he wants to believe. He ignores his eyes and ears, forgets everything he reads and observes, and insists the world is how he wants it to be.

And then tries to insist his co-bloggers swallow his delusions? Yikes.

Is Islam “more inherantly” (sic) incompatiable with modernism than other religions? I don’t know. But, damn, man – open your eyes. There is at least enough objective evidence of that to suggest that we might want to admit the possibility, and continue the dialogue.

The only thing I know for certain is the logical point: by logical necessity, there MUST be one religion that IS “inherantly” (sic) more incompatible with modernity, women’s rights, etc., than most other religions. There must. It is logically inescapable. (And that Dean doesn’t recognize this point says a great deal about his intellect.)

And if you understand that logically one religion *must* be the least tolerant of modernity, equality, etc. …. then you MUST admit that, based on the objective reality of the world today, Islam is a very, very good candidate.

People like Dean are dangerous because his delusions are appealing to many. And the self-deluded will never see the objective truth, until it’s far too late.

Analysis of your writing skills puts you at the 4th grade level.

Spache Readability Formula for This Passage =
(0.141 * 12.18 Avg. Number of Words Per Sentence)+ (0.086 * 25.37 Percent of Words in Sample Not Found on Spache Revised Word List) + 0.839 = 4.73 Grade Equivalent

the New Testament, a series of books that Sullivan claims allegiance to even while he openly rejects a great deal of it. And according to the record we have, prison reform, while laudable, must have come in a distant second to, you know, reconciling mankind with God.

How does the post recommend prison reform before salvation? The basic premise is that Jesus was merciful, even to the wrongdoers, and as such we should follow his example. To be fair, there is a lot wrong with our prison system that could be fixed. What’s wrong with that? I agree Andrew can get preachy from time to time, but I think that’s a stretch.

4) Medieval, anachronistic, obscure terms like “dhimmitude” or “taqiyya” are suitable for polite intellectual discussion. They are not and never will be appropriate to slap in the face of everyday Muslims or their friends.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali used the term “dhimmi” on Bill Maher’s show in reference to the prevailing Muslim doctrine & practice toward unbelievers (even stretching into modern times). That face-slapper…

There, fixed that for you.

Dean Esmay and Andrew Sullivan

I’m sorry, who are these guys again?

There seems to be a disturbance in the force of the Right blogosphere after Dean Esmay enacted what some are calling a purge. At outset, I’ll add that I think this is one of those nuanced debates in which all…