Peter King and His Hearings: Why Do Liberals Believe in Scrutinizing Conservatives But Not Islamists?

The New York Times offers two blasts against Congressman Peter King today for his scheduled hearings on radical Islam. The consistently ridiculous Bob Herbert accuses King of harboring “a fierce unhappiness with the Muslim community in the United States.” And the proposed hearings will “serve to further demonize a group of Americans already being pummeled by bigotry and vicious stereotyping.” In a separate editorial titled “Peter King’s Obsession,” the paper begins, “Not much spreads fear and bigotry faster than a public official intent on playing the politics of division.”

Since when does simply inquiry result in bigotry? The King hearings focus directly on ideology–not on individuals. These are hearings about a belief system. Thousands of individuals around the world are engaging in acts of terrorism based on a certain set of beliefs. Shouldn’t we try to understand them? These hearings will give members of congress a chance to address the ideas behind radical Islam. As Richard Weaver put it, “Ideas have consequences.” And Islamist ideas have everything to do with understanding the threat we face today.

This has long been the approach of liberals in America: assessing the deep seated motivations and belief systems of our opponents is not acceptable, while putting conservatives under a similar light is A OK. During the Cold War, liberals consistently declared that Marxist-Leninist ideology didn’t matter. When Ronald Reagan quoted from Lenin, they would laugh at him. They pushed the idea that the leadership in the Kremlin was just like us and viewed the world the same way we did. When they invaded other countries or supported terrorist groups it was explained away as being our fault. At the same time liberals championed books attacking conservatives and their belief systems like the “Paranoid Style in American Politics” by Richard Hofstadter which declared that conservatives were motivated by inner psychological fears. In other words, they were willing to look at the belief systems and ideologies of conservatives, but not communists.

The same holds true today. Peter Beinart at the Daily Beast recently wrote that King is displaying “shameful religious intolerance” for simply holding these hearings. And that the hearings represent the “Europeanification of the GOP.” Simply holding hearings represents all of that? But repeated links between terrorist acts and radical Islam….don’t mean anything??

So I say three cheers to Peter King for holding these hearings in the first place. There is no direct political benefit for him. How is this going to garner him more votes? Most political consultants would tell him to stay away from these sort of thorny issues. King’s been criticized by the left who declare that he’s motivated by bigotry. And he’s been attacked from the right by people here at BigPeace for failing to put together the proper witness list. But let’s credit King with taking on a very difficult subject and bringing it to public light. Ideas do have consequences, and until we can understand the Islamist belief system we can’t developed a strategy to defeat them.