Originally published on TheFactIs.org on August 3, 2005.
Exploding Across Arm's-Length Tolerance
Notwithstanding complicating facts and quotations, Amy Waldman's "Seething Unease Shaped British Bombers' Newfound Zeal", in Sunday's New York Times, strives to give the impression that the central corrupting factor in the formation of London's homegrown Muslim terrorists was their politically active, orthodox style of religion.
The reportage seems primed for applicability to more domestic differences: young men growing up "brown-skinned in white" society faced corruption by their "working-class culture"; schools that "made almost no accommodation to their presence" left them insufficiently educated about Islam. While even the liberal British paper The Observer has concluded that "Britain has tilted far too far towards multi-culturalism," the New York Times apparently encourages more.
Informed Times readers might wonder, however, about the thoughts of DC-area terrorist snipers John Muhammad and John Lee Malvo on British society's failure to have "yielded to hyphenated immigrant identities as America has." Perhaps Marin County Taliban John Walker Lindh would have an edifying perspective on London schools' supposed lack of tolerance and culturally balanced history lessons.
Indeed, Waldman's recourse to buzzwords from the intra-Western culture war — such as "social conservatism" and "traditional values" — indicates that factions within the West are all too willing to learn exactly the wrong lessons from terrorism. Conservative intuitions, as it happens, pierce more closely to the mark, and a theme common to them all brings into relief the most maddening quality of the liberal assessment, which identifies the problem but misunderstands its nature in such a way as to exacerbate it.
Some on the right note that welfare and care-giver-government programs free malcontents to spend their time cultivating agitation and bitterness. Others emphasize the lost religiosity that has left the mainstream culture to ignore spirituality and morality — or to reinvent them in low-commitment forms. Still others decry a decadence that simultaneously inspires revulsion and apathy.
The common detriment of such trends is that they encourage disengagement. Welfare, as well as an extended period of youthful education, allows disengagement from the marketplace, the working world, which requires productive activity and some degree of interaction with others. Secularism allows disengagement from the public search for meaning, wherein different groups compare their beliefs in terms of their relevance to particular political issues. Decadence disengages those whom it repulses from those who live their lives more loosely, as well as those who support, or at least permit, loose behavior.
The Times' portrait of the Beeston neighborhood of Leeds in which the London bombers lived is nearly a caricature of the Western world. The drugs, delinquency, and racial strife of the area throw a shadow over the seemingly timid religion of the older generation, for whom both church and state enforce a mutual separation. When the young react negatively to the decadent world around them, therefore, they have no constructive avenue for change. Against harm that originates with individualists' lack of consideration of those around them, private volunteerism is a meek solution. The disengagement goes both ways.
As taken to deadly conclusion by that handful of young men and their supporters (both vocal and silent), the apparent choice is between extremism and political powerlessness. The inclination, therefore, to blame politically active, orthodox religion — and then to fortify and expand a "separation of church and state" — would fortify and expand the problem. People's beliefs about reality will drive their actions whether society encourages them to or not. Political processes that offer hope that the government will align with one's beliefs channel motivation into a constructive and peaceful activism in which those who disagree must engage each other.
The problem with promoting tolerance and multiculturalism, as conceived by Western liberals, is that it creates a culture of imaginary boxes. The "respect" shown for others is to allow them to stay at arm's length, not to emphasize the shared space. Even if it requires that one vision of the universe or another must be able to dominate the political sphere — through persuasion and advocacy — it is preferable for the rules of governance to be explicit. It is preferable, in other words, for the public sphere to provide its own incentive to citizens to engage each other in debate within its rules and boundaries.
Not surprisingly, groups with intolerant intentions manipulate the pieties of a politically correct world so as to increase their room for motion while limiting everybody else's. The law becomes written in subtexts and in the polite avoidance of mentioning certain observations. And when substantive differences are allowed (or required) to become unmentionable, we cannot feign disbelief when the impatient do the unspeakable.
The reportage seems primed for applicability to more domestic differences: young men growing up "brown-skinned in white" society faced corruption by their "working-class culture"; schools that "made almost no accommodation to their presence" left them insufficiently educated about Islam. While even the liberal British paper The Observer has concluded that "Britain has tilted far too far towards multi-culturalism," the New York Times apparently encourages more.
Informed Times readers might wonder, however, about the thoughts of DC-area terrorist snipers John Muhammad and John Lee Malvo on British society's failure to have "yielded to hyphenated immigrant identities as America has." Perhaps Marin County Taliban John Walker Lindh would have an edifying perspective on London schools' supposed lack of tolerance and culturally balanced history lessons.
Indeed, Waldman's recourse to buzzwords from the intra-Western culture war — such as "social conservatism" and "traditional values" — indicates that factions within the West are all too willing to learn exactly the wrong lessons from terrorism. Conservative intuitions, as it happens, pierce more closely to the mark, and a theme common to them all brings into relief the most maddening quality of the liberal assessment, which identifies the problem but misunderstands its nature in such a way as to exacerbate it.
Some on the right note that welfare and care-giver-government programs free malcontents to spend their time cultivating agitation and bitterness. Others emphasize the lost religiosity that has left the mainstream culture to ignore spirituality and morality — or to reinvent them in low-commitment forms. Still others decry a decadence that simultaneously inspires revulsion and apathy.
The common detriment of such trends is that they encourage disengagement. Welfare, as well as an extended period of youthful education, allows disengagement from the marketplace, the working world, which requires productive activity and some degree of interaction with others. Secularism allows disengagement from the public search for meaning, wherein different groups compare their beliefs in terms of their relevance to particular political issues. Decadence disengages those whom it repulses from those who live their lives more loosely, as well as those who support, or at least permit, loose behavior.
The Times' portrait of the Beeston neighborhood of Leeds in which the London bombers lived is nearly a caricature of the Western world. The drugs, delinquency, and racial strife of the area throw a shadow over the seemingly timid religion of the older generation, for whom both church and state enforce a mutual separation. When the young react negatively to the decadent world around them, therefore, they have no constructive avenue for change. Against harm that originates with individualists' lack of consideration of those around them, private volunteerism is a meek solution. The disengagement goes both ways.
As taken to deadly conclusion by that handful of young men and their supporters (both vocal and silent), the apparent choice is between extremism and political powerlessness. The inclination, therefore, to blame politically active, orthodox religion — and then to fortify and expand a "separation of church and state" — would fortify and expand the problem. People's beliefs about reality will drive their actions whether society encourages them to or not. Political processes that offer hope that the government will align with one's beliefs channel motivation into a constructive and peaceful activism in which those who disagree must engage each other.
The problem with promoting tolerance and multiculturalism, as conceived by Western liberals, is that it creates a culture of imaginary boxes. The "respect" shown for others is to allow them to stay at arm's length, not to emphasize the shared space. Even if it requires that one vision of the universe or another must be able to dominate the political sphere — through persuasion and advocacy — it is preferable for the rules of governance to be explicit. It is preferable, in other words, for the public sphere to provide its own incentive to citizens to engage each other in debate within its rules and boundaries.
Not surprisingly, groups with intolerant intentions manipulate the pieties of a politically correct world so as to increase their room for motion while limiting everybody else's. The law becomes written in subtexts and in the polite avoidance of mentioning certain observations. And when substantive differences are allowed (or required) to become unmentionable, we cannot feign disbelief when the impatient do the unspeakable.